#CCInktober2020: where art rushed in to meet science!

Jake Parker originally created Inktober in 2009 as a personal challenge, where he would draw something everyday for a month to improve his own drawing skills, while also learning to imbibe good drawing habits. This practice slowly gathered pace until it became the popular worldwide as the Inktober series on Instagram.

With the pandemic coming down hard on general morale, I felt the time was ripe for some wonderful mental engagement by hosting Current Conservation’s version of Inktober for the first time. As a magazine that focuses on science communication, we believed there was no better time than now to creatively interact with our audience by giving them drawing prompts on topics like ecology, conservation, climate change, and species education.

Freedive spearfishing with the Sama-Bajau, a seaborne people from Southeast Asia, who practice subsistence fishing and live off the sea.
Rajasee Ray is a Kolkata-based illustrator and co-founder of Ladyfingers Co.
Every day and the collective memory around suburban flowering trees like the sweet-scented chaffa/ plumeria.
Vastavikta Bhagat is an architect, educator, and artist
Panda caregivers in China disguise themselves in panda costumes, in the hope that when young pandas are reintroduced into the wild they can learn to live free of human interaction.
Shrishti Chatterjee is a visual artist and researcher.
The Rainbow Agama is a social animal that spends its waking hours basking
in the sun, often congregating in small groups on boulders or tree trunks.
Antara Raman is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer.
The ethereal gelatinous beauty is a pelagic sea slug known as Clione Limacina (sea Angel), inhabitants of the deep waters of Arctic and North Atlantic ocean.
Priyanka Gunjal is a doctor and medical Illustrator.
For most of us, coral feels like an alien species, residing far away at the bottom of
the sea, out of sight, and unfortunately out of mind. Might we care for them more if they lived right next door?
Karunya Baskar is an illustrator & graphic designer
By picking up seashells for your jar of memories, you’re disturbing the coastal ecosystem, where a lot of animals, like this soft bodied Hermit crab, depend on shells for protection.
Sefi George is an illustrator and a social anthropologist.
I was fascinated with Lichen in Denmark, where temperate climatic conditions help them grow abundantly in fascinating forms and colors.
Akanksha Apte is a visual designer, illustrator and a nature enthusiast.

Which made it incredibly fun for us to curate the prompt list. Some of the most popular ones were: ‘invasive’, ‘waste’, ‘gentle giants’, ‘indigenous lives’, ‘human wildlife interaction’, and ‘home’. Participants were encouraged to look at the prompts through an environmental conservation lens.

Over the course of 31 days, Greta Ann Sam, the Assistant Managing Editor, and I carefully went through every submission to pick out 10 entries that spoke to us most. As a visually centered magazine, we were in perpetual awe of the construction, design intelligence, and thought put behind the entries that poured in.

We are very grateful to everyone who participated. Eagerly looking forward to hosting #CCInktober again. Until then, keep drawing!
Manini Bansal Author
This article is from issue

14.3

2020 Sep
Look Inside →

More in Editorial