Inktober 2018

The healing process after finishing art school has been much more of an ordeal than I had expected! While pursuing my degree, there was so much focus on producing a high volume of high quality work, and less on how not to destroy my body in the process. I sought professional help for the wrist tendonitis, and I'm currently working on building sustainable work habits and bolstering other aspects of my life to help me recover from an acute level of mental burnout. Even though it's taking a lot of time, I have been seeing a lot of improvement over the last several months.

My creative output has been focused mainly on writing, which I had largely set aside to study illustration. I'm involved in a weekly writing group with my friends, and I love it! Having people to gush with about all the behind-the-scenes work has been really restorative, and I've started feeling less stress about drawing again.

When Inktober (an annual daily-ink-drawing challenge during the month of October) rolled around this year, I was still largely banned from my cintiq due to the wrist injuries. Traditional art was easier on my wrists, and I needed a project on which to practice kind work habits. Not to mention, inking my own pencils has been something that's given me trouble in the past, and I wanted to get more comfortable with it, so I decided to do it and see how it went!

I centered on one original story for all the prompts: the least developed of my writing projects, titled "Diliken," about an estranged royal who teams up with a dragon shapeshifter and a corrupted thunder mage apprentice to meddle in international politics and find themselves along the way.

I didn't finish the whole month, but I achieved a personal best for Inktober (21 out of 31)!