Inktober 12 through 14

And here are the next installments in #Inktober 2015!

In these drawings, I continued to scribble my way through some new things.

First up, I drew from a photo (with permission) which appeared on a friend's Facebook page of her donkey.  I used several different black ink pens for this one, just to see what I'd think of the combination of line and shade.

The wonky perspective of the photo intrigued me.  I know lots of people prefer drawing from life--as do I, most of the time.  But I was grateful for the still image to capture the perspective so I could really have a good long look at it, as I drew it.

Isn't it funny how angles of sight make things look so very different?  No wonder four witnesses to the same event never give the same story!

Scribble #13 also came from a photo, which I took in my back yard last winter.  I started with my Noodler's Ahab flex pen, but it suddenly fell apart in my hands (that was messy--but I saved the drawing!).  I'm not sure what happened with the pen.  I've used it reliably for a long time.  But nothing broke and I put it back together, refilled it, and continued on.

For the red, I just grabbed the closest red pen I could find, which was some sort of gel pen.

In the last month or so I've done several detailed drawings of trees and their bark, so in this sketch, I intentionally devoted my time to capturing the bird's patterns as accurately as possible.  I only scribbled in the major line patterns on the tree.

And finally for this post, Inktober #14, a pinecone, done with an inexpensive but fun green Pilot Varsity fountain pen.

So, here's a weird thing:  I find pine cones nearly impossible to scribble.

I can do slow detailed fairly accurate sketches about almost anything.  But not pine cones.  And it's not that the pine cone drawing isn't "good"--I don't really care about that.  Most of my scribbles don't look a whole lot like the thing I'm scribbling.

No.  It's just that I seem to dislike using pine cones as models.

When I draw a pine cone, I get bored really fast.  Really fast.  And then I stop looking and start making stuff up.  I don't do that with almost anything else I draw.  But I do it every time I draw a pine cone.

I wonder why that is?

Anyhow, Inktober continues to be lots of fun.  I'm trying new tools.  I'm using new subjects.  I'm seeing and thinking about new things.

I am also reminded, amid all the bad news coming from the media all the time, that life really is cool and fun and spectacular.  I mean, life on this planet includes this donkey, this bird, and this pine cone!  My gosh!  Amazing!!

And that's the point of scribbling with spirit!

Inktober 8 through 11

Keeping up my #Inktober scribbles!

First is a sketch of a spiky gourd-like thing that a friend of mine has on her table for decoration.  Actually she has a good dozen of these baseball-sized green seed pods.  I asked her what they were.  She said the guy who sold them to her simply called them "hedgehogs."  So if anyone knows what they are, we'd be glad to hear!

I set myself two challenges with this drawing.  The first was to use a pen I bought a while ago and never used:  a pen with two tips in two colors, one black and one a midtone gray.   So using that was easy enough, though I need to think more about better ways to use that gray.  More practice needed!

The second challenge with this drawing was to scribble the whole thing using only lines that followed the shapes of the parts, and no outlines.  I have to share, I'm pretty proud of pulling that off.  You can see the overall shape of this thing, but I didn't draw any outer edges!  In fact, I think the drawing turned out better that way.  I'm not sure such a complex overlapping thing with so many spiky parts would have turned out at all if I'd try to draw edges.  Anyhow, it was an interesting experiment which I'm going to try again soon.

Next up, a funky perspective drawing I did of my nephew while he checked out his recent texts.  I again used the new dual tip black and gray pen.  He was a good sport, not moving at all while I captured him in these quick scribbles.  

The challenge for me here, aside from simply trying to capture a human being, was moving fast, because I didn't want to inconvenience him!  I find it hard to draw people who are posing.  I feel so responsible for not making them feel badly with whatever scribbly thing comes out of my pen.  I much prefer drawing strangers in public!  Needless to say, this doesn't look anything like my nephew, but I really liked many parts of it!  And paying attention to hands and shadows!  My goodness, how hard such common things are to draw!

Inktober scribble #10 is a super quickie based on fast gesture sketches of ducks and seagulls hanging out in the grass of a local park.  I did this with a #33 brush pen (Kuretake?).  It came out more cartoon-y than I anticipated.  But, dang, if it doesn't catch my happy mood about the whole thing.  I really did enjoy watching them watching me, to see if I'd brought them any food.  The one duck's stare continued unabated.  Evidence, I think, of him living in perpetual hope.  The gull got bored with me pretty quickly and returned to self-care.

And finally, for today's post, anyhow,  Inktober #11 depicts a little magical realism.  It is my left foot in my favorite running shoes (I actually ran in these shoes, during a brief period of insanity about two years ago).  I used a Namiki Vanishing Point pen filled with Noodler's Saguaro Wine ink.  This color captures the color of the shoe perfectly, but I decided to use it for the whole drawing anyhow.  Well, except for the magical bubble accents in a green.  I used a Pilot Varsity fountain pen for that.

I can't quite explain where the magical bubbles came from.  Probably some sort of "Glinda the Good Witch" imagery buried deep in my  brain.  As I thought about how much I loved those shoes, the notion just popped into my head to try to represent their magical powers, and this is what came out.

I did have fun trying to work out how to represent all the dark tones and textures with one color and different hatching.

Little games or challenges like Inktober are such great creativity starters.  Short, focused, intense exercises with "rules" that limit you keep you motivated and challenged and stretch your creativity to find new ways to innovate inside of the rules of the game.  

Inktober rocks!

Inktober 5 through 7

Here are my #Inktober drawings numbers 5, 6, and 7.

A portrait of part of a tree.

Super interesting spatter effect.

Next, a pot, with a smidgeon of colored ink.

I forgot the black ink I used wasn't waterproof and so got some smudging.

Finally, a guy and a galaxy.

I pulled out a dual tip black and gray pen and a sepia pen for this one.

I look forward to more experiments with ink.  It is pushing me--I felt a pretty strong desire to pull out the watercolors and make these look more like my "usual" scribbling work.  But I'm resisting, at least for a bit!  In particular, working with the pens and fewer colors is making me pay attention to light and dark tones more carefully.  And the direction of shapes, which I need to follow with contour lines.

A "game" like Inktober does stretch your creativity.  The more confined the rules are, the more you have to be creative to work within them!

Inktober 2 Through 4

Here my #Inktober scribbles, numbers 2, 3, and 4.

A person named Joe.

A backlit selfie with my dog Nik.

A squash.

In the squash picture I graduated from just using a pen, a tool with which I'm pretty familiar, to brush and dilution.  I know, basic stuff for people who work in pen and ink, but I've never done it.

Yesterday I went into my stash of art supplies and dug out a bunch of pens and inks which I haven't used in a long time.  If I'm going to do 31 ink drawings in 31 days, I figure it's a good time to try out some of the ink-y supplies, right?

I'm looking forward to more drawings in ink and the new challenges in seeing and scribbling this challenge will bring!

Inktober Begins

I'm going to try to complete #Inktober this month.  So I'll be putting drawings up here.

You can learn more about it here and give it a try!

The basics:  31 drawings in 31 days.  In ink.

So here is day one.

I doubt I will do all portraits.  But lately I've been drawing people from photos in magazines, so maybe I'll keep up with the people for a while.

It does make me look at them much more closely!

Portraits from Magazines

Every now and then, when I don't know what to draw,  I practice drawing people (often celebrities) using magazine photos.

This doesn't give me the same feeling of connection to the world around me that most of my sketching does.  Probably because I'm drawing someone else's vision of the world--and a retouched one at that.

But it pleases me as a sort of game and an exercise in skill development.  I can go slowly and really try to practice my skills at rendering people in minimal line drawings.

I still have dreams of being a graphic novelist one day!  So it's good to practice.

Here are a few of my recent ones.

Both of these are after images which appear in the October 2, 2015 issue of Entertainment Weekly.

These are a good warm-up for Inktober, which starts Thursday!

My Favorite Tutorials about Sketchbook Making

Some friends asked me recently to post links to the sources I've found most helpful when it comes to making my own sketchbooks.

I'm happy I found--by accident!--the tutorials made by Sea Lemon which are available on YouTube.

Here are the three I've used over and over.

Coptic binding a text block:

Creating your own bookcloth:

Casebinding:

Once you get in the hang of making your own sketchbooks, it doesn't take too much time.  And the results are worth it!  You get to pick the paper, the size, the orientation and the cover of the book which will hold your art!