It’s that time of year again—Inktober! This annual event gathers the creative industry. Artists, designers, and creatives from all disciplines post one drawing every day throughout October.

Inktober is an amazing challenge. It unites artists and designers. It allows you to consistently post on social media and find your community. Most importantly, it helps every designer, no matter their discipline, improve their drawing skills.

What is Inktober?

Inktober is a challenge where you post daily drawings on social media throughout the month of October. Each day, there’s a list of 31 different drawing prompts for you to complete and upload.

Click to discover this year’s prompts and earlier drawing prompts.

Every year, there’s a new prompt list, and each prompt is uploaded with the corresponding #inktober hashtag. This allows other artists and designers to see your work and for you to see theirs. Inktober has become one of the biggest social media challenges, attracting an incredible number of artists and designers.

Who Created Inktober?

Inktober was started by illustrator Jake Parker in 2009. His goal was to improve his drawing skills and build a better understanding of the tools and techniques that would elevate his work. He started with a brush pen, posting a new sketch every day throughout October.

What’s the Purpose Behind Inktober?

The main goal of Inktober is self-improvement. The month is dedicated to exploring your drawing ability and pushing the envelope of what you’re capable of drawing. It’s not a contest but a challenge to see how you can improve your art in a month.

Drawing skills are in decline, and by committing to a full month of drawing, you can identify your strengths, weaknesses, and how you convey yourself visually.

In design, we use ideation to get our ideas out of our heads and onto the page. This requires quick, small sketches (or thumbnails) that you can gradually refine into viable solutions for clients.

How Does Inktober Work?

Each year, Parker releases a new set of prompts for Inktober. These prompts are typically simple, like “Backpack.”

How you draw the backpack is entirely up to you. You can sketch it on a character. Alternatively, render it like a product design sketch. It can be realistic, or it could be a cartoon. It’s entirely up to you.

When you’ve completed the prompt, you upload it to social media with the hashtag #inktober or #inktober2025, and you can add the prompt hashtag too.

The challenge isn’t complicated, but the drive and consistency to draw and post every day make it difficult.

What Kind of Artwork Will I Make in Inktober?

The point of Inktober is to improve your drawing skills. While it started as black-and-white ink sketches by Parker, the challenge now allows for digital art and typography. The prompts are open to interpretation, so it’s less about the tools you use and more about the act of drawing.

Use whatever tools feel best for you—ink, watercolors, digital sketching, and more. There’s no right or wrong answer.

If you’re using pens or pencils I recommend using these soft cover sketchbooks. These are easier to fit in a scanner for uploading them in the best quality. (If you don’t have a scanner, try your local library or buy a cheap portable scanner.)

Remember Inktober also accepts Digital Art, so if you prefer sketching digitally on tools like Adobe Fresco, that’s ok too!

Why is Inktober so Popular?

As someone who’s done Inktober before, it’s easy to see why it’s so popular. You can check out my Inktober sketches here.

Posting your work allows you to find inspiration from amazing artists and designers, influencing your work and helping you improve. It also allows others to see your skill level and be inspired too.

Inktober also teaches you consistency. Social media can intimidate designers. Many struggle to put themselves out there. The challenge provides multiple prompts to draw. It forces you out of your comfort zone.

One of the biggest rewards for me was understanding the content that should be made for Nollie Design. I also learned what content shouldn’t be created. Some prompts fit well with our multidisciplinary mission, and those that did can be repurposed into more content.

Common Misconceptions About The Challenge

One of the biggest misconceptions I had about Inktober was that it would be easy—a drawing a day sounds simple. However, the challenge aspect is real.

To give yourself the best chance, check out the prompts as soon as they come out. Start drawing the ones that excite you the most. These often turn out to be your best drawings!

One of the best tools I used to help me complete the challenge was Adobe Express‘ Scheduling Tool. Once I had the drawing completed, everything could be scheduled. I would have piece of mind knowing everything was already taken care of.

Scheduling: Use tools like Adobe Express to schedule your content ahead of time. Draw several prompts in one day and organize them to be posted at a specific date and time across multiple platforms.

Flexibility: Life can get in the way. If you miss a day, you can upload it the next day or combine it with other prompts. There’s no prize—This is about self-improvement.

Alternative Approaches to Participate

The best thing about Inktober is its flexibility. It has created many spin-offs and reinterpretations. You can focus on alternative prompts or combine different prompt lists.

Two alternatives I used were Vizcom’s Viztober and Productober. Vizcom offered a free yearly subscription for their AI rendering software. This offer was available if you completed their challenge.

You can even combine the prompts that line up like I did here…

Productober focused on industrial design sketches. Combining different prompt lists can make it easier to come up with ideas.

Conclusion

Drawing is a foundational skill for designers. It allows us to get our thoughts and ideas on paper, communicate them effectively, and build authentic design ideas without relying on computers or AI.

At Nollie Design, we aim to show you the transferable skills in design, helping designers become multidisciplinary. In a rapidly changing world with new software democratizing design and a saturated job market, building a holistic skill set allows you to be adaptable. Drawing is one of those skills.