I tried inking digitally for the first time last year, and got through about 12 days of Inktober before I stopped. I simply had to let it go--my day job demanded more time in October than I could allocate to participating.

It took a long time for me to come to the conclusion that stopping was okay, because I really felt I'd crashed and burned and failed. I felt like, if I couldn't even do Inktober how could I possibly be able to handle being a professional? And since everyone else seems to be doing it around their professional responsibilities, what does that say about me?

It has taken me a year to come to the understanding that Inktober is what you want it to be. Seeing Jake's personable nature in the SVSLearn videos has (somehow, for whatever reason) given me "permission" to realize that he's simply wanting people to play and explore and maybe discover something new. That's all. And if you want to turn it into a "thing" (however you want to use it), hey--he's down with whatever. It's not like this thing is like playing with fire. Some people use it to deep dive into practicing their skills, some use it to promote themselves, some use it to try something new, some for... well, whatever. It's all good.

And it's all up to you. I wonder if the "pressure" one might feel to participate isn't necessarily strictly about Inktober as much as it's about seeing a whole bunch of artists pile on to something and feeling pressured to participate or be left out. Sorta like <big booming voice> "POST ON INSTAGRAM CONSTANTLY" is a thing for artists...

I'm gonna do maybe one a week, I dunno. If one of the prompts tickles my fancy I may play. But that's it. I have a very busy schedule and there ain't no time for guilt. I think we can all agree Jake would be the FIRST one to urge you to not let it turn into that. It's awesome that so many have the opportunity to do it, and wonderful they choose to invest so much into it. Kudos to them. I, personally, just can't be one of those folks. And I, for one, am really REALLY gonna enjoy being stimulated by all the incredible creativity being spawned. It's gonna be fun to sit back and watch the feed, ya know? I mean, who else can appreciate the artistry like we fellow artists, right? That's my hope this year: to be a phenomenal cheerleader. I'm looking forward to that.

This article goes through a bit more depth about the changes coming.

https://bardotbrush.com/procreate-5-preview/

I love your "freelance by force" phrase. The universe is pushing you to higher and better things. Look at this as an opportunity, and go forward with gusto!!

As others have alluded to above, a Master's Study can mean a lot of different things depending on what you want to get out of it. My own personal Master Studies are about trying to copy as closely as possible, and learning what I can through that process. But as @TessaW said above, exact replication can sometimes lull a person into not thinking about what they're doing, so try to make the experience an "active learning" endeavor instead of passive--sometimes that means looking for specific things which can help make the process of creating the study be less overwhelming.

I suggest you frame your approach to Master Studies by narrowing the purpose for which your studying it: Direct copy? Values? Technique? Textures? Colors? Composition? Line weight? Edges? Etc.

Conversely, it can be daunting to dive in head first and try to replicate everything all at once but sometimes that a good learning experience as well.

For my own digital copies, I learned not so much how the illustrator did their work but how to use the tools at my disposal to replicate their pieces. That helped me learn more about what my tools could and couldn't do, and where my own skills were in relation to what they did. It enabled me to see how I could use my digital tools in a way I hadn't thought about before, as well as think about how the illustrators used the various elements of design (line, color, texture, shape/form, etc) to achieve what they got.

It was a useful process for me, personally. But I also think that I will approach Master studies/copies in the future with a bit more internal focus.

Stating exactly what it is that you are looking for and then being able to articulate exactly what you are discovering as you go along could be a good way of making the experience work for you over and above just a simply copying.

I'm not sure there are any Apps that are specifically for the Arts community, but I can say that ArtStation as a hub is growing in popularity. The challenge with it is that it's mostly other artists. It's a bit like Behance without being so overwhelmingly Adobe brand-centered.

Instagram and Facebook were good because they could reach outside that artist circle to buyers who aren't artists.

I've personally contemplated this a lot. I had some hiccups with Instagram but things seem to be back on track. I use it not to reach anyone interested in my work but to simply share and put things out there in a stream that doesn't require people to come to my website. 99% of my followers are fellow artists. And that's good in the sense that I want to see and support their efforts. But not necessarily in a "I want to purchase a print" kind of way. I don't think Instagram is as useful for leveraging sales as it used to be.

Facebook is experiencing an entropic decline for numerous reasons. And Tumblr pretty much imploded. Snapchat seems very juvenile in a lot of ways... And Twitter can be a morass of noise and nonsense impossible to rise above or even mitigate at all nowadays.

The vast sea of social media options seems to finally be reducing down and the new platforms are becoming more and more specific. I don't think it's possible to think of Social Media the way we thought of it 10- or even 5- years ago. It's not the same path to "connection" or "finding one's audience" that it used to be.

@MissMushy You may be right. Who knows?

I'm incredibly stoked for this update!

The fact that it will do CMYK and it looks like brushes will have their own pressure curves and color dynamics (more pressure creates a different color!!!) means that it's getting much much closer to Photoshop.

The Procreate website says it's also improving their selection tool (which was already pretty good to begin with) and their transform tool (which honestly needed work as the transformed selections always ended up significantly pixelated).

A clone tool, and more animation tools just makes it even that much better.

I'm willing to bet it will come out shortly after the new iPadOS, which is supposed to be released in September, so we'll see...

Congratulations!!! That's awesome!!!

Kudos!!!!!! That's awesome!!!

I fifth Art and Fear. Seriously. It changed how I looked at everything. It's so spot on.