Len Grant Cranes at Circle Square, Manchester, pen and watercolour in sketchbook, 16½x12in (42x30.5cm). Drawn on a cold December Saturday afternoon from a KFC window, this building site covered a double page in Len’s A4 sketchbook. More crane than building, each of his black, red and blue-filled Sailor pens have been used, along with a dab of watercolour
Do you share your work online, perhaps on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter? If so, there is a chance over the past few years that you have come across drawings with the #inktober tag. Inktober is a month-long international social-media campaign held each October that focuses on drawings that were created with the medium of ink. Since Inktober’s creation in 2009 by the illustrator Jake Parker as a way to improve his drawing skills, successive years have brought a steep rise in work tagged in this way: Instagram works hashtagged #inktober2013 numbered about 600, but by last year 4.6 million works were tagged with #inktober2018. (A simple #inktober is also fine: there are already more than 12 million of those.) Daily inspirational themes are suggested so the dedicated among us can post 31 ink drawings over 31 days, and perhaps in the process kickstart and develop an interest in the medium.