What is Inktober?
And what's the controversy?
Sunday 23/19/22
So in 2009, a concept artist and creator named Jake Parker started a challenge, mostly for himself, to complete a hand-drawn art piece for every day of October. In subsequent years, other artists worldwide joined in on the challenge, and from 2015(sic), Parker has posted a list of prompts prior to October for artists to inspire what they'd draw each day.
Originally, as the name suggests, Inktober participation would only count if you completed ink-drawn pieces on paper, often with a fountain pen, but it has since grown to a challenge incorporating all artistic mediums, include paints, music, writing, and even digital art.
But in 2019, Jake Parker made the decision to copyright the term "Inktober", meaning that artists trying to sell art under the "Inktober" title were receiving cease and desist notices or legal action would be threatened. Parker has given several reasons for the decision, including protecting his own work; books of his own art, and about doing ink art; and to not allow predatory profiting off the brand; people using the Inktober name of discriminatory tshirts or posters, selling merchandise using the brand name without permission from Jake Parker and his team.
He has assured artists that it is not his intention to scare artists away from participating in Inktober, or selling their own art made during the challenge. But there are guidelines on how to avoid action from his team. Artbooks must use Inktober as a subtitle and not as the main title, ideally, together with the year of the challenge (e.g. Doorbloggr: Inktober 2022), and avoid using the official Inktober Logo in any merchandising.
In August 2019, it came out that Parker may have plagiarised most of the content for his book "Inktober All Year Long" from an artist named Alphonso Dunn, and their book "Pen & Ink Drawing".
Rightfully so, this brutal stance and the controversy around it scared away a lot of artists from participating in the Official Inktober challenge. But luckily, the variety of artists that this original challenge brought in gave rise to iteration and elaboration on the idea. And so the Inktober spin-off was born.
October: A Month of Art
In the same way that Parker made prompt lists for each new October, many different communities made their own challenges with their own names and flavours. Many still have prompts for 31 days, while others ease it down to 16 days, or even once a week.
One of the first offshoots was Drawlloween in 2012. And from my own limited research, it may have not even been inspired by Inktober. It just so happened to also take place in October. Since October is Spooky Month, Drawlloween prompts are all based on Halloween, many very specific to pieces of spooky media and horror stories. In a similar vein, other Halloween themed challenges are Witchtober, Spooktober, Drawtober, and Goretober.
INKTtober is a spin-off I've seen on a couple different social media's I'm on that focuses specifically on Tattoo art. OCtober or OC October is a common one I see on Tumblr where each day is about an artist's Original Characters or OCs.
Other artists have grown the idea of a monthly challenge beyond October. And I wanna specifically shout out @regal-bones for their beautiful work on Swordtember (Sword designs in September) this year. Amazing work.
Day 2: Candle, Day 25: Spider
And finally, the one that I have been partaking in, Linktober. Linktober is a celebration of the Legend of Zelda series. The challenge began in 2015 as a spin-off of Drawlloween, and in 2016, the team created their first full month calender of prompts.
Each year of Linktober has brought a new calender of prompts and in some years, they even introduced alternate challenges that spice it up beyond just Legend of Zelda art. 2018 introduced Linktober Chance, where the prompt is only half finished and you roll a d6 dice to generate a more specific prompt. 2019 introduced Linktober Quest, where each day is part of a story about a Zelda OC you make and the adventure they go on to save the world. Linktober 2020 introduced Linktober Shadow, a counterpart to the regular challenge where every day is spooky, or about the villainous side of the Zelda series.
I want to talk more about my experience with Linktober, but I fear this post may be getting too long. So I will talk more about Art and Deadlines in a Part 2(?) to this post.
Thanks for Reading
A lot of the information I wrote in this blogpost I sourced from the following article, so I implore you to read it too if you want to gain more insight:
The Controversy with Inktober, Alexis Epinoza (September 2020) The Telescope
Also, if you don't already, please follow the tags #drawlloween #witchtober #linktober #swordtember or any other drawing challenges promoted across this and other sites. Artists love reblogs and if there's a fandom you like, there's likely to be creative people making things for you. So show them some love.
