The pitch-black skies crawl with the spooky shades of night during the month of October, in preparation of the fateful Hallows’ Eve. But this inky color also creeps across the canvases of artists everywhere as they take on the month-long drawing challenge known as Inktober. Every day of the month in October, a one-word prompt sparks the minds of these creatives to make a composition that displays how their mind and hands operate under the 24-hour time crunch, giving them a way to both express themselves and hone their skills further; or at least, that would be the case. Not only have social media artists been closer to radio silence under the “inktober” tags this year than in previous years, they have been pushing back against the creators of the challenge in the first place. So what are the spine-shivering secrets behind these daily drawings?
What seems to be a recent issue actually begins all the way back in 2020 (and a moment of silence for those who realized just how long ago 2020 was). The creator of Inktober, Jake Parker, was just about to release his new book, “Inktober All Year Round: Your Indispensable Guide to Drawing With Ink.” However, author Alphonso Dunn published a YouTube video on his channel outlining how his already published book seemed to share quite a bit of similarity to parts of Parker’s book, launching a plagiarism scandal that caused a massive wave of originally loyal practitioners of the exercise to drop off completely.
Now, this wasn’t actually the first time the art community got mad at Jake Parker. In 2017 and 2018, Parker filed and registered the “Inktober” trademark. Several cease and desist orders were sent to other artists, though Parker claims the trademark was only meant for individuals selling Inktober merchandise. However, that issue was relatively resolved due to Parker publishing a statement in 2019 in which he explained that the trademark was used to protect sponsors, the identity and integrity of Inktober and prevent misleading commercial uses. He also acknowledged his error and invited those artists to contact him, resulting in mixed reception on social media. But with this second strike placed on the “Inktober” name, the support for Parker and his challenge started dwindling. For the next few years, those who were being introduced to Inktober were met with reminders of Parker’s past and immediately turned away from associating with the challenge at all. At the end of the day, the overall message of trying to implement any mechanisms of “control” around an artist event that is supposed to be all about freedom of creative expression has consistently put a bad taste in people’s mouths.
What no one would have expected was a force beyond one person, challenge, event, community, platform or even medium of expression. The final nail in the coffin for the Inktober challenge seemed to be the issue plaguing artists in all aspects of life: Artificial Intelligence. Something that needs to be understood is that behind the bubbly exterior of a community-building and skill-enhancing experience, Inktober is a social media trend used by artists to grow their platforms and further their own individual goals and aspirations. Now, with the infestation of AI on social media, bots are stealing billions of pieces of artwork to produce slop never touched by a human hand, exploiting already polarized feelings toward AI to rack up millions of views and likes in no time. It has even butchered things like this challenge, turning what was once a game for artists, by artists into a get-rich-quick scheme. Some online conversations have concluded that Inktober is utterly pointless now because of how AI has effectively spoiled social media platforms for artists as a whole, not just within this community.
Is this year the last year of prompts for the artist community? Is it the end of Inktober? Is social media artwork doomed as we know it? Of course not. When a community is built on passion, brilliant minds and shrimp-like bodies, the solutions they come up with for problems like this are extraordinary, yet so simple.
Artists have decided to continue the tradition by making their own “draw-tober” challenges! These challenges are usually geared towards smaller communities and oftentimes have themes, such as drawing plant-based words, types of frogs or words actually related to the spookiness of Halloween. Most common are fan-based Inktober-style lists, with word prompts based on references from pieces of media, and they’re not always restricted to one-word prompts. Many lists prompt artists to draw their favorite TV character one day and their least favorite character on another. Although not a new concept at all, the incorporation of drawing one’s favorite things through these personalized lists allows for the mindset to slightly move away from just turning a profit via likes and views and move more towards drawing for the individual. This also ends up creating a layer of control against AI, due to most niche communities not having much of an AI presence and cracking down harder on AI in the first place. So, come the 2026 Inktober season, you can find millions of artists prepping, sketching and inking away at their own unique Inktober drawings day after day!