Here’s a new tip for your #Inktober challenge:
Use geometric shapes!

Ask yourself this: Can I take part of an image and replace it with another object related to the message I want to communicate?

Geometric shapes can always be associated with another recognizable object that shares the same shape. This makes your images much more engaging for your audience.

Try using this technique in your next #Inktober2024 drawing!

Thank you,
Dario Paniagua
Visual Thinkers Coach

Here’s another tip to help you with your #Inktober challenge:

Try exploring contrarian thinking. 

What does it involve? If an object is usually depicted from the same perspective, how would you communicate the complete opposite?

Take this example: passports are government-issued documents that certify a person’s identity and allow them to travel to other countries. 

But what if you communicated the opposite? 

Could a passport symbolize a denial of rights or freedoms for someone?

As you see, you can express the negative side of positive things or the positive side of negative ones. 

Everything can be reversed. And with the results you get, you can always tell a story.

Give these tips a try for your next #Inktober2024 drawing!

Thank you,
Dario Paniagua
Visual Thinkers Coach

If you’re following the #Inktober challenge, I’m sure these two tips will help you!

Did you know that one of the wonderful things about metaphors is that they don’t follow any rules?

What happens if you take an object and draw a person using it in a completely unconventional and absurd way?

Here’s a secret to help you find different uses: change the perspective! Draw that object from another point of view, and then try to find new, unexpected uses for it.

Don’t stop playing with your next idea for #Inktober2024! Any absurdity is a great excuse to create a story.

Thank you,
Dario Paniagua
Visual Thinkers Coach

Here’s another tip for your #Inktober challenge:

There are no limits to creating disruptions. Even a simple scene, like watching the horizon and a sunset, can be used to play with and create some kind of disruption.

What’s behind the objects we draw? Can we peek inside them? Can we reveal what’s hidden behind?

Feel free to experiment with anything you draw. 

Anything can be altered, modified, flipped, or inverted to create a story around it.

Keep applying these tips in your #Inktober2024 challenge!

Thank you,
Dario Paniagua
Visual Thinkers Coach

Here’s a new tip that might help you generate ideas for the #Inktober challenge.

When we talk about exotic things, you can use two techniques to create metaphors that allow you to explore unusual concepts. 

Let’s remember that something exotic is extravagant, rare, strange, unusual, or infrequent.

Try one of these two:

1. The first is the "out of context" technique: you place something (an object, person, or animal) in an unusual location where people don’t expect to see it.

2. The second is substitution: you replace an object, person, or animal that you expect to see in a specific situation with something else that takes the place of that predictable element. 
For example, instead of seeing a dog, you replace it with a pigeon.

This technique creates disruption by breaking the predictable, and it's a great way to capture attention.

Give it a try with your next ideas for#inktober2024!

Thank you, 
Dario Paniagua 
Visual Thinkers Coach

Here’s a new tip for your #Inktober ideas.

There’s a technique for creating metaphors that involves humanizing objects.
'Humanizing' doesn’t necessarily mean adding faces, arms, and legs. It can also be just a small detail.

This means you don’t need to humanize the entire object—you can humanize just one part of it.

Now, why should we humanize an object?

There are two main reasons:

When we add a human element to any image, it becomes much more interesting to your audience, because when there’s a person, it means you're telling a story.

The second reason is that by humanizing an object, we can often describe characteristics of a person through that object.

Even if the image seems completely absurd, we can always create a story around that absurdity, which gives meaning to the situation we’re drawing.

I hope these tips are helpful and that you can use them in your upcoming #Inktober2024 drawing ideas.

Thank you,
Dario Paniagua
Visual...

Today, I want to give you the second tip for the #Inktober challenge.

The word "discover" means to find something unexpectedly—to see, find, or become aware of something for the first time. 

Sometimes, these things are right in front of us, but we don’t notice them because we don’t allow ourselves to stop, search, and look closely. 

We must look unusually and from different perspectives—looking up and looking down. In fact, discovery is tied to curiosity.

Here are some questions to help you explore this concept:

- Can you show a familiar object from a less common perspective?

- Does seeing another angle of an object allow you to discover new shapes?

- Can you use the shapes you’ve 'discovered' to create new elements?

- Can you use negative space to uncover images that relate to the theme you want to represent?

Don’t be afraid to explore, and don’t fear the absurd. You can always give meaning through a mini story.

Look, play, and...

#Inktober is a month-long art challenge created by artist  Jake Parker
Although I won’t be participating, many of my students ask how to find daily inspiration for this challenge, which demands constant creativity for 30 days.

So, I’ll be sharing random tips to help you see things from a new perspective and realize that mental blocks aren’t real if we know how to create disruptions and tell stories around them.

Here’s the first tip for #inktober2024
The first word in this challenge is "backpack." My advice is: don’t always be literal—think laterally.

You don’t have to draw a backpack as it is.

- Could your thoughts be a backpack?

- Could the backpack take a human shape?

- Could it transform into something else?

- Does it have to be a physical object, or could it be a gas or something organic that takes its shape?

- If you draw a backpack to represent someone traveling, could you also draw one to show what people think about or worry...