I’ve always wanted to join drawing challenges online but I’m always either too intimidated or shy to do anything. Even after I bought my 2018 iPad and installed Procreate back in 2018, I never had the guts to participate in art challenges.

A global pandemic can change things.

This year, I finally decided to do it. Even with a few controversies attached to it, I thought it best to start with the most popular art challenge on the planet: Inktober.

If you’re not familiar with Inktober, it’s a worldwide art challenge where participants draw and share a piece of art everyday for the whole month of October. Ink on paper is the preferred medium by purists, but really, you can use anything to make your art — including digital tools. An official prompt list is given, but participants are free to create and follow their own prompt list. Here is the official one for 2020:

To make things even more interesting for me, I followed a spooky theme on top of the prompts. I used horror movies, characters, monsters, and other spooky things because it’s October, Halloween month.

In this blog series, I’ll share my entries with some commentary on why I did what I did. Because I feel like I have some explaining to do.

First up on the prompt list is Fish. I deliberated on doing a lake monster or a spooky mermaid, but I settled on something simple. I drew the shark from Jaws.

Get a full view of the image in the gallery at the end of the post.

I used the iconic movie poster as a reference but without the swimming lady. I had fun drawing the teeth.

Jaws is one of those famous movies that I haven’t really seen in its entirety. I should get on that soon. I love sharks. This love for these ancient perfect alpha predators and this first drawing for Inktober also influenced the logo I made for this blog. It’s an upside-down F — for Flipping — that kind of looks like a shark’s fin.

Let me know what you think about this fishy first piece for Inktober by leaving a comment below. Also, I shared my Inktober 2020 entries on Instagram. Follow if you fancy.

Thanks for dropping by! Watch out for sharks!

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