October is here, and so is Inktober—but for me, it's Zingtober!

I think my record for participating in an Inktober was 20 days, and that was over four years ago. I hopped on Instagram and saw a lot of amazing artists who create incredible work in very little time saying they’ll try to finish it—and I’m in the same boat. I’m starting with a lot of faith and motivation to complete all 31 days, but it’s tough.

So, you’re going to have me here for 31 days straight, spamming (sorry!). But before you panic—yes, I do plan on making more art while doing Zingtober. I already have a couple of Splinterlands drawings half-finished, along with some for Holozing (you know, those ideas you leave unfinished to start a new piece). I also want to make some cool little stuff for Halloween. Will I manage to do it all? It’s super difficult, but I’m writing it down here so it becomes a real challenge and a goal.

🔅 First Prompt: Mustache

For the “Mustache” prompt, I wanted to give it a fun twist within the Holozing world. I imagined one of the healers taking advantage of a playful moment to draw a mustache on Cinerala’s face with a marker while she’s fast asleep.

It’s a cool scene that would even fit well with the kind of art I usually make for Holozing—though here, I feel like it didn’t completely convince me. The idea ended up feeling very horizontal, and I want to maintain a consistent size standard for all the Zingtober illustrations. But it’s only the first day! This is a challenge that helps improve artistic fluency, and that’s how I want to approach it: making each day better than the last. 🎨✨

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⏰ CREATIVE PROCESS

✏️ Phase 1: Ibis Paint for Sketching

First, I used ChatGPT to generate a sketchbook image since I didn’t have one on hand and wanted all the drawings to have this setup. But then I had to lower the saturation of the page because ChatGPT has this habit of making everything yellow—and it was really bothering me to draw on a yellowish background.

-I hope using ChatGPT to generate the sketchbook doesn’t disqualify me under Zingtober’s rules-

Then, I moved on to sketching the idea using Ibis Paint. Like I mentioned in the Arachlet post, this software lets me show you a speedpaint of the sketch without lagging my PC. Here, you can see how I start from a rough idea quickly put down and then refine it layer by layer.

🎨 Phase 2: Lineart

Then I moved over to my beloved Photoshop to continue sketching and use the horizontal canvas rotation feature—because in Ibis Paint, I could only rotate individual layers, and with multiple layers, it just doesn’t work smoothly.

This way, I was able to improve the quality of the line art and the proportions of the Healer.

🌗 Phase 3: Gray

I started painting each of the character's elements in grayscale—but unlike my usual method of working precisely with the Pen Tool, this time I went straight in with a hard brush.

🌟 Phase 4: Final Touches

I'll say it now—I'm not satisfied with the result. I still love the idea of the Healer playing a prank on Cinerala, but I don’t feel like the line art and grays are what I’m aiming for in this Inktober.

I tried to step out of my comfort zone, where lately I’ve been achieving good detailing in grayscale before moving on to color. That’s why I wanted to get closer to something like painting with diluted ink. I’ve done it traditionally before with good results, but today I just couldn’t pull it off digitally.

But don’t worry—I still have 30 more days to keep exploring and working toward the result I’d be happy with.

And you? Are you doing Inktober, or focusing on Zingtober? Or maybe following a different prompt list?

Let me know in the comments—I’d love to check out your art and see how you interpret the prompts!

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