KugalInktober is an African themed version of the annual Inktober challenge started by Juni Ba.
Every October since 2009, illustrators around the world participate in Inktober. Illustrators post new work, an ink drawing every day in line with a prompt list provided by Jake Parker, a comic creator, concept artist, illustrator, and animator. Jake started the prompt as a way to challenge himself to improve his inking skills and as a way of cultivating positive drawing habits.
Over the last ten years, the challenge has exploded into a fun global exercise with thousands of artists participating. On Instagram alone, the #Inktober hashtag has more than 12 million posts.
African artists are not left out of the celebration of ink. In 2016, we curated some of the spectacular #Inktober submissions by African artists. A cursory look at the prompts over the years reveals nothing intrinsically African which makes sense, considering these are not Jake Parker’s realities.
This year, Juni Ba, a Montpellier based illustrator and comic book creator from Senegal is switching things up. Juni Ba in partnership with Kugali has launched an African prompt list for #Inktober. This prompt was made in response to a request by two Kenyan artists, Odile Art and Nemo.
The goal is to try and get people to express whatever parts of their African identity they want. This is for the Africans and the diaspora to share what those words mean to them related to an African context.
Juni Ba
This doesn’t mean the challenge is limited to only Africans. Non-Africans are allowed to participate as guests.
Asked about what inspired the names in the prompt, Juni Ba shared that, he didn’t want the usual cliches about Africa like wildlife, safaris and such. He wanted something “focused on everyday life but broad enough that everyone can find something of their own to do with that.”
According to Juni Ba, he had some names recommended to him while he came up with a few that focused on little things from his life in Dakar. This comes as no surprise considering how much Juni is influenced by his upbringing. This is peppered all over his art and he documents some of these in Kayin and Abeni.
Check out the Kugalinktober prompts below.
Juni Ba is a regular contributor to Kugali Anthology with his comics Kayin and Abeni and Monkey Meat Island as well as several illustration and design work. Check out Juni Ba’s portfolio on Instagram, GumRoad, ArtStation and Juni Ba’s website.
We’ll keep our tabs on all the submissions that come through and curate that on our social media and in a special Kugalinktober post as part of our Bahari Blue series. Don’t forget to tag your submissions with #KugalInktober.
Will you be participating this year? Tell us in the comments.
The cover illustration is titled Afro Mononoke and illustrated by Juni Ba.
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