I've always had a passion for drawing. But over the years, my drawing shifted away from being a personal joy and became something I only did for work—quick, rough sketches to communicate ideas in my role as a UX designer. The kind of deep, focused drawing I used to love simply faded out of my life.

Inktober always seemed like an intense challenge that would add more stress than joy. I watched my partner, Jen, participate over the years, and it often seemed to leave her with just that—stress. But this year, something shifted. I wanted to reconnect with drawing as an act of creation rather than a task, to find out if I could still enjoy it.

So I decided to take part in Inktober, but on my own terms. No polished pieces, no pressure to create something grand—just 30 minutes each day, sketching whatever came to mind. My goal wasn’t to be perfect; it was to let go of my self-doubt and see where my pen would take me. I even convinced Jen to join me and share the sketchbook, hoping the experience might be lighter for both of us this time around.

Since we will be sharing a sketchbook, I have edited Jen’s images to appear in blue ink so you can distinguish who’s who. 

Let’s get on with the prompts.

Day 1: Backpack

I set my timer for 30 minutes and started sketching literal backpacks. I was just using an old fountain pen and drawing straight to paper, no pencil sketches to guide me. I drew a few things and even went out of my comfort zone, trying to draw people. When I passed the sketchbook to Jen, she zeroed in on my ladybug with a backpack and decided to draw bed bugs and ladybugs. Overall, the first day was a success—it got us both picking up a pen, laughing at each other’s sketches and most importantly…actually drawing.

Day 2: Discover

Like the first day, I sketched various ideas around “Discover.” This is also when I started putting in a little effort into the prompt titles. After finishing my 30 minutes of drawing, I put the pad down and didn’t look at it until the next day. Jen ended up sketching a single composition of a submarine discovering what I can only assume is the Titanic. Impressed with her scene she demurred and proclaimed it's not even close to being technically accurate. 

Day 3: Boots

I wasn’t feeling inspired, so I didn’t take the first crack at sketching. Jen took over and drew a climber going up a mountain. To avoid falling behind, I drew the first thing that came to mind: “Green Boots” on Mt. Everest. This was my first time trying to draw/ink a human from a photo reference straight to paper. I didn’t spend long on it, but it turned out to be somewhat recognizable and I was impressed I pulled something out at the last minute.

Day 4: Exotic

I struggled with ideas for “Exotic.” The concept of something being exotic is only true when it exists where it shouldn’t, so any animal or food I drew would have to be in an unexpected location to truly be exotic. Instead, I spent my time drawing the word “Exotic.” Jen, on the other hand, drew a fantastic, or should I say “Marvelous” Spatuletail bird. Feeling like I wasn’t contributing, I decided to draw, from a photo reference, a ridiculously fat Spotted Pardalote. Side note: the Spotted Pardalote call is a “Ding Ding”. 

Day 5: Binoculars

By this point, I was really struggling with the prompts and went back to randomly sketching things based on the theme. I was probably just not in the mood to draw humans, especially ones holding binoculars. Jen outdid me again and drew two different scenes. She mocks me…

Day 6: Trek

“Trek” felt redundant, especially since “Hike” was also coming up. I was so uninspired that all I could manage was a flying burrito with two hotplates, something vaguely Star Trek-inspired. Jen, being amazing at drawing humans, sketched actual Star Trek characters. And, to add insult to injury, she also drew a fantastic Himalayan scene. I felt so bad about my contribution that I quickly sketched a person walking away on a trail.

Day 7: Passport

I think at this point, I wanted to give up. I didn’t spend any time drawing the prompt title, and I spent my 30 minutes drawing random passport-related images. Jen also seemed uninspired but still managed to draw several things at a much higher quality than mine. At this point there are two things at play here. The first is the prompts felt too close together. Sometimes one scene could be several prompts combined. The other was I didn’t feel motivated by my output. Meaning, Just roughly sketching something wasn’t enough to keep me engaged.

Day 8: Hike

For some reason, I wanted to draw the scene from Roy’s Peak lookout in Wanaka, NZ. Having been there, I figured I would try drawing the shot and see how well I could depict mountain features, something I’d never done before. I was kind of surprised at the result, which gave me a much-needed boost in morale. Jen, after seeing my actual attempt at drawing something, decided to put me in my place with a detailed scene of two climbers bushwhacking their way to a crag.

Day 9: Sun

With my mood slightly improving, I decided to test myself again and draw a Sun Conure from a photo reference. Still, we weren’t using any pencils for base sketches. While the beak of the conure was off, looking more like an African Gray, I was impressed with the feather work. Jen, on the other hand, was at a bit of a loss and decided on a simple play on words: a sun using a computer powered by Sun Microsystems—nerd stuff.

Day 10: Nomadic

Resisting the challenge of drawing people, I decided to draw a ghost shark—close enough to the theme of a nomad, in my opinion. Jen went all out, drawing a camel jockey with three camels, making my fish look pathetic in comparison. I think this is where things started to change for me.

Day 11: Snacks

Jen, feeling confident, went first. She drew the title and an amazing illustration of Alex Honnold eating one of his favorite snacks, red bell peppers. I was furious (not really). I was tired of being shown up, and it was time to start being creative and serious about my contributions to Inktober. But I also wanted to draw what I wanted to draw. After spending 20 minutes watching videos of adorable Fennec foxes, I decided to draw one carrying a backpack of snacks, leaning into my ability to draw “cute” things.

Day 12: Remote

Jen, still high from her Alex Honnold illustration, once again grabbed the sketch pad and drew the title along with a fantastic scene of a location in Greenland. I especially liked the little boat. I, on the other hand, wanting to stay on the “cute train,” decided that drawing a robotic remote-controlled red-breasted nuthatch would be in my best interest. Once again, both of us have yet to use any pencil backing, and I was starting to resent this chosen burden.

Day 13: Horizon

Having had this idea in my head for some time, I once again became the first to draw and reclaimed the top spot on the page. I was chuffed to come up with an idea that was not only representative of the prompt but also a surreal form of a visual metaphor where the bill of this ibis is also the horizon. Jen, incensed that I stole her idea of a tall ship on the horizon, vowed revenge—or at least that’s what I like to tell myself. In response, Jen drew one of the most complex and beautiful illustrations of the entire challenge. Keep in mind, this is still without pencil and straight fountain pen to paper. Can I take this abuse much longer?

Day 14: Roam

The gloves were now off, and I decided to change the rules. Pencils were now allowed. Keeping with the visual metaphor route, I decided to draw something I’d never thought of drawing before—an elephant. But not just any elephant, one that is so large it has the Roman Colosseum on its back. So it’s roaming with Roam. I also wanted to lean in with the texturing to complete the complexity of the image. Jen, awestruck and at a loss for words or ideas, defaulted to one of our favorite movies and drew the Orca from Jaws.

Day 15: Guidebook

After Roam, we took a short vacation, and in doing so, fell a bit behind on the prompts. At the same time, I had zero ideas for the prompt and contempt for the entire list. So I defaulted to what I naturally do and found a way to draw a cute animal I had recently seen on the internet. In this case, it was an Arctic Hare. They are amazingly fat when they fluff up, so I decided to draw one, giving it a timepiece around its neck as a reference to Alice in Wonderland and the white rabbit that guides her. Jen, sensing my weakness, pounced and drew a fantastic set of images of bird jokes about our experience in Tasmania earlier in the year.

Day 16: Grungy

Still trying to catch up on prompts, I needed to make this one a bit faster. One of my crutches is to draw things I know Jen likes. In fact, the previous night we were prompting ChatGPT to create Toyota Celicas rally racing, so I decided to draw a fourth-gen Celica blasting down a muddy course. And for fun, I threw in a chicken. Jen, in awe of my grungy Celica, defaulted to the common definition of “Grungy” and drew a young woman dressed in the grunge-era style of Seattle.

Day 17: Journal

This would be the third image in one day that caught me up with the list. At this point, I think my choice of imagery speaks volumes (pun intended) about my opinion of this challenge. At least I got to draw a burrowing owl. Jen, deciding to put in effort (as she usually does), leaned into her superpower of drawing people and sketched a hiker journaling over the view of the Pickets Range in Washington State.

Day 18: Drive

Wanting to challenge myself and do a better job than I did with “Grungy,” I decided to put in real effort and try to draw a car. I don’t think I’ve ever really “tried” to draw a car, so I decided to draw one of my favorites—a Nissan Fairlady Z. And for extra difficulty, I drew it in the streets of Tokyo, where I once lived. The results were terrible. I completed the drawing enough to call it “done,” but I never added more details. The perspective was so whack... more time would not have fixed it. Jen, being the car person she is, also drew one of her favorites and nailed an SC/Rambler with meats and a shoot package. It’s also important to note that this is the first set of drawings where we abandoned the basic fountain pen and moved to our preferred inking pens. I personally purchased a new set of Mangaka pens direct from Japan and chose to start using them for the rest of the challenge.

Day 19: Ridge

It was time. Time for me to go as hard as I could and attempt to draw something I had wanted to try drawing for some time after seeing it in person almost nine years ago. Mt. Fitz Roy is a sight to behold, and I wanted to try to draw the entire ridge. This would be my second attempt at drawing mountains after the Roy’s Peak drawing for “Hike.” The results were inspiring, and after recovering from “Drive,” it became apparent to me that I do better with organics than I do with man-made objects. Jen was so taken aback that she strangely drew something she strongly dislikes... trail running. She admitted to not being into the drawing and even smudged the heck out of it, having gone back to the overly wet fountain pen.

Day 20: Uncharted

Still riding the high from my Ridge drawing, I decided to lean into my love for organics and draw what became one of my best drawings (to date) of the challenge. While the composition calls for a giant robot, it is abandoned and falling apart, so no real perspective or measurement of angles is needed when you can cover it with growth. Also armed with an entire set of pens of different widths, I dug deep into my love of texture. Having seen the level of effort I put out in the last two prompts, Jen responded in kind and drew one of her favorite birds, the critically endangered New Zealand Rock Wren, building a nest with its partner. After talking to her, she also felt this was probably her favorite drawing thus far.

Day 21: Rhinoceros

I didn’t know what to draw this time, but I didn’t want to draw the obvious prompt of a rhino. Instead, I decided that the spire of Cerro Torre was close enough to a rhino. It just so happens that this same mountain is Jen’s favorite mountain. So here I am, once again drawing something I know Jen likes in hopes of impressing her. The finished result... it’s okay. I had to cobble together several reference photos because I was too lazy to pull out my own photos of Cerro Torre from nine years ago. And I feel like I messed up the linework where I tried to make the vertical lines closer to denote darker colors on the wall. Jen’s reaction? She wasn’t having it, as this was (in her mind) a blatant violation of the prompt. In response, she struggled to put together a sketch of a rhino trying to masquerade as a triceratops.

Day 22: Camp

Having tried drawing things outside my comfort zone (minus humans), I wanted to recall a previous lived experience when I was up at 3 a.m. defending our tent from a marauding flock of kea outside the Brewster Hut in New Zealand. The little bastards are as smart as toddlers and worked in a pack to try to draw me out from the tent. Serious “clever girl” vibes that night. Anyway, I had to study the kea form and sketch quite a few kea poses before I felt like I could tackle this drawing. The result? I think it’s okay. The kea could be better sized, but Jen said she loved it and that it told a great story. For her part, Jen went back to her love of cars and drew an amazing scene of a VW Westy. Pretty sure I would like to live in her drawing more than mine.

Day 23: Rust

Completely inspired by Fallout 4 and the corresponding art book, I wanted to draw a post-apocalyptic scene of a large vessel rusting away. I wanted to lean in heavily into the texturing and push my new pen set to the limit. The drawing itself is not complicated, but I love the perspective and vibe of the image. It is definitely an extension of what I drew for “Uncharted.” As for Jen, she struggled emotionally with this one. Being a car person who restores old cars, it took her some time to come up with the concept, but of course, with people as her power move, she nailed it—or rather, spot-welded it.

Day 24: Expedition

If I am going to draw people, I am going to draw people I like. And as such, I chose one of the greatest expeditions of all time: the Orca out at sea fishing for the “SHAWK,” aka Jaws. In this scene, they are approaching the hunt as if it’s just a regular old shark fishing expedition. Brody is flinging chum, Hooper is setting up his gizmos, and Quint is pounding a beer and shit-talking both of them. My Hooper came out way too narrow, but I was impressed I was able to capture the disdain in the man's face. Jen reached into a fantastical place and decided to draw a school of Amazonian angelfish combined with a Greek sponge diver. She told me she struggled with the complexity of the angelfish and ended up erasing a sixth angelfish as she was “tired of drawing damn angelfish!”

Day 25: Scarecrow

Personally, there is something unsettling to me about scarecrows—not in the actual sense, but in the illustrative sense. It’s about as enjoyable as candy corn. So if I was going to draw one and couldn’t think of a way out that was tangentially related, I would combine my love of birds and draw a crow-scarecrow. As for pens, this would be the first time I tried out the brush pen from my Mangaka set. There is something very freeing about expression when drawing with one of these pens. More tests are needed. At this point in time, Inktober is over for me, but Jen is in catch-up mode. When I asked her about her drawing, she threw her hands up and said something I can translate to “whatever.” Personally, I love the idea of a plastic owl that doesn't do a damn thing—if anything, the seagulls find companionship in the owl. You will also notice that Jen has chosen to use markers here. When pressed, she said she really wanted grayscale but didn’t want to spend the time texturing. I will be curious to see if she continues to use them as she finishes the set.

Day 26: Camera

Complexity was the word that came to mind for me. I wanted to combine my human and machine struggles into one. Since I am still going through the Fallout art book, I came up with the idea of a camera robot that catalogs humans' past existence. There was no photo reference for this, just my memories of previous robots and cameras I have seen. For Jen, when asked why she chose to draw this, she stared at the illustration for a while and said, “because they are at a party and taking a selfie.” I did not follow up. It will remain a mystery to me.

Day 27: Road

Almost at the end, I asked Jen where she felt my weak points were. She said I should lean into spot black and focus on cars and perspective. I have admired all of her drawings where she uses spot black, so I wanted to give it a go as well. In addition, I wanted to give another shot at the brush pen. Originally, I thought of Route 66, but I was really just thinking of the high desert. I’ve never been there, but I love the idea. I wanted to draw a desert highway with a single car, but it turned out I really wanted to draw mountains and cacti, so I ended up with a remote gravel road. For me, this is my favorite piece of the entire series. But... it took me five hours to draw this. I had to learn about the flora and fauna of the high desert. I drew that damn lizard five times before inking it. I swear, if I had to sketch it one more time, I would have erased a hole right through the paper. Jen erased her first idea and then doubled down and drew a complex yet beautiful scene of a hairpin turn in the North Cascades.

Day 28: Jumbo

I love drawing cute things. And I love anime. Since I had already drawn an elephant, the first thing that came to mind was a giant frog—a JUMBO frog. One of the things I love about anime is the world where anthropomorphic creatures exist alongside natural creatures. So I ended up with a frog crossing guard protecting a pack of frogs crossing the street. The most difficult part was drawing the frogs hopping across the street. I had to research this extensively and draw them several times before I could capture four distinct poses. Jen claimed foul play—actually, she was too distracted by the cuteness of my little frogs. We chatted about the idea for a while and ended up with an idea for her from our past backpacking in Patagonia. The gist of it is that around 2 p.m., you would get curious/hungry Rayaditos hopping around your tent searching for food. And what if there was just the biggest Rayadito you ever imagined that made it into the tent?

Day 29: Navigator

I hated this prompt. I tried to pull from the expedition concept and think of something from a movie, but all I could pull were H.R. Giger ideas, and they were too complicated. Wanting to use the brush pen one last time and practice spot black, I was reminded of the fishermen in China who use cormorants to fish. The result... well, the man crouching is facing away because I am scared of drawing faces. I think I succeeded in drawing the two cormorants with the brush pen. Either way, this is pretty low on the list for effort. Jen, however, leaned into her love of fifth-gen Celicas and drew their WRC championship-dominating car dripping in Castrol livery. Honestly, I am surprised it took her this long to draw this.

Day 30: Violin

I wasn’t going to draw a violin—and definitely not a person playing one. As I thought through the idea, I ended up with a fiddlehead fern. But ferns are just boring. What’s not boring is Jen’s favorite New Zealand bird, the Piwakawaka (New Zealand Fantail). So I went all out on drawing a Piwakawaka on top of a fiddlehead fern. This was probably one of the more nerve-wracking images I have drawn—making sure it was scientifically accurate and trying to nail the texture took me several hours. As for Jen, she went with a concept she has previously explored based on a string wielding crustacean who has a panache for high places.

Day 31: Landmark

Just to be honest, October has passed. It’s November 2, and I have been beating myself up trying to cross this damn finish line. I don’t want to cheap out, and I want to do this, but I’ve built this thing up to quite the production level of effort. It’s now Saturday, and I have time in front of the sketchbook to focus. I want to draw another mountain—one that we consider a landmark when orienting ourselves in the mountains. Originally, I thought of Prusik Peak in the Enchantments. I have several photos from my time at Gnome Tarn looking at Prusik, but when I thought about drawing that level of detail, I decided to look elsewhere. One of my other favorite mountains in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness here in Washington State is Kaleetan. It stabs skyward from any angle you look at it, so I found a photo reference I wanted to tackle. After outlining the main features, it quickly dawned on me, I’ve made a huge mistake. How was I going to draw this mountain with details and texture, and how was I going to draw the surrounding forests? Over 900 trees later, I have my answer—through complete and utter obsessive-compulsive focus. I won't say this is the best one of the lot, but it’s one where I really leaned in and started learning what it takes to recreate the world around us with a detailed eye. I also learned how to draw a shit-ton of conifers as fast as possible. Jen: pending

Closing thoughts

Inktober. It feels strange to be done, yet satisfying in a way I hadn’t expected. Jen is still working on it—she has five images left, with two still completely blank. But for me, this journey turned out to be more than just completing a series of prompts. It was about transformation—about reconnecting with a part of myself I’d almost forgotten.

These drawings are some of the best and most complex I’ve ever done, and I didn’t think I was still capable of this level of detail and creativity. Twenty years ago, drawing was a huge part of my life, but somewhere along the way, I let it slip, reducing it to utilitarian sketches at work. Inktober was a chance to take back drawing as a source of joy rather than a chore. It pushed me, challenged me, and ultimately helped me let go of my need for perfection.

Through this challenge, I realized that just because I have a skill doesn’t mean I need to monetize it or turn it into something grand. Sometimes, the best part of creating is doing it for yourself, for the pure enjoyment of it. I’ve been selling myself short, thinking I "cannot draw," but the truth is, I just needed to reconnect with the reasons I love it in the first place.

The past few days since Inktober ended have felt strange—I’m no longer beholden to the sketchbook, yet I find myself wanting it again. I’m craving that time spent exploring, trying, and sometimes failing, but always drawing. Jen and I have already agreed: next year, we will not share a sketchbook. Right now, I’m eager to find another commitment—something small, just for myself—so I can grab that sketchbook and keep going.