Let's start off with a few notices:

ALL of the illustrations from this year's Inktober have been scanned in, enhanced and uploaded to my website. You can see them here as well as over on my Instagram.
ALL of the witchy pieces are available for you to buy as stickers, cards or prints on my Redbubble shop.
If you want to know more about the art supplies I used, as well as information on my prompt list and inspiration, check out my last Blog Post. The only addition I made was for day 31; I used my Arteza Premium Gouache, and if you want to know what I thought about it check out my Inktober Instagram Story Highlight!

I don’t think I’ve been this productive in a while - it’s a good feeling!

I figured I'd start off with some quick-fire questions (mostly to prevent me rambling):

What's my favourite piece/s?
Ancient Witch and Sea Witch are my two most favourite illustrations overall. They just make me smile and I love how they both turned out; I feel like every time I look at them I notice something new!
What's my least favourite piece/s?
It’s a toss-up between Merchant Witch and Cat Witch. I just don’t think I executed either of these the way I wanted to - I think I could definitely do better.
What's been the biggest surprise?
Probably the way that some of the pieces I thought would be the most difficult ended up turning out. Glitter Witch, Fire Witch and Autumn Witch were all pieces I was worried about because I didn’t know how I was going to make them work, and they actually ended up being some of the easiest and most fun illustrations to put together. I think the key here was simplicity and being creative with whatever medium I chose.
What's been the biggest lesson I've learned?
That investing time at the beginning to really visualise the end result is a key component of planning. I’m a neurotic planner anyway, but this year I took the time to think about each of my captions, and which pieces I would film the process for, and which ones might take longer to work on due to the medium I chose - this saved me so much hassle overall because I knew my schedule was tailored to catering for these factors.

Overall, I'm really proud of what I've managed to achieve this year for Inktober. In case you haven't been following along over on Instagram, I went away to Cancun for a week in October, and so for most of this year I've been in two minds about whether or not to participate in the challenge at all. It was for my cousin's wedding and, if I'm honest, I really wanted to enjoy every second of the time I had with my family and completely disconnect from everything else. But the allure of Inktober was too much to resist and I decided, quite last minute, to bite the bullet and do it.

So, with the goal of trying to get the best out of both worlds, I spent the first 15 days of October illustrating all 31 pieces, including colouring, filming and editing most of the video footage. I made sure that I scheduled enough posts to cover the entire time I was away, plus the day after I got back, just to alleviate the pressure during the wedding/holiday.

Now, I won't say that this month hasn't been stressful. I pushed myself quite hard, I definitely zapped more energy from myself than I'd intended, and it certainly took its toll given that I’ve now got quite a bad cold. But I am really, really pleased that I committed to the work and have produced 31 illustrations that I'm really happy with. I'm also quite chuffed that I didn't miss an upload - I know it's not the be-all and end-all, but in the past I've had to play catch up at least twice and I can't quite believe I avoided that this year.

How have you found Inktober this year? Did you participate? How did you approach the challenge? If you didn’t take part this year, are you inspired to try in 2020? Let me know in the comments!

Thank you to everyone who has supported my work by liking, sharing, following and commenting - you’ve made this challenge extra special for me and I truly appreciate you all!

Don’t forget that you can find the full portfolio of illustrations here, and get stickers, cards and prints of them here!