Gearing up for Inktober

I have decided to do Inktober again this year. The idea is to do an ink drawing every day of the month of October. Last year I did pretty well - I may have missed a few days, but did catch up in the end with extra drawings. For me there are no hard and fast rules - I will just do the best I can. To prepare I am thinking about pen and ink drawing, which I pretty much think about all the time. I am also considering the size of my sketchbook and materials.

The image above is from a class I just took on Sktchy with Joan Martin called Make Your Mark. Part of that class was drawing two handed. I find it makes my dominant (left) hand line very loose, which I like a lot. On the left is a sketch I did using two pens. I liked it so much I didn't want to draw and paint over it, so I scanned it, printed several copies and played with each one. After drawing her image Joan goes in with some hatching and then paint and other mark making tools. I haven't progressed that far.

Here I am experimenting with outlining value shapes. My goal has been to loosen up and to get better with hatching. Actually, I probably don't need to loosen up, many of my drawings are loose, but not quite where I want them to be. Perhaps they are too loose or not skilled enough. Maybe they need a little more structure, I'm not sure.

This last drawing was done with no pencil sketch, just fooling around. I think all of these approaches will play a part in my Inktober. I will also make a sketchbook with hot press watercolor paper that fits on my scanner. I don't want to have to stitch together pages if I have a two page spread. And a smaller size will be less intimidating.