Over the past several months I have been consumed with working towards a challenging physical fitness goal and regrettably, keeping this thing up to date fell by the wayside. However, that goal was achieved (yay) and now I am ready to get back on top of it. I don’t have a particular schedule for posting in mind but I do want to cover my Inktober experiences by week. I’ll share some of my thoughts behind/about each drawing and assign a score out of 10 for my level of satisfaction.
For those who don’t know, Inktober was started by the artist Jake Parker in 2009 as a personal challenge to himself to see if he could develop some better drawing habits. You can look at his drawings and read about that here. Over time it became a thing and now every October you can see a wealth of art from all kinds of artists who have chosen to participate. Every year, Parker puts out a list of prompts to help people along. I am following it and as a side goal, I am looking to up my watercolor game. Let’s get to it!
Day 1: Swift Honestly, here I was just getting warmed up. I literally painted a Swift. I tried to think of a creative way around it but then decided that I should just go with what felt natural. Drawing something obvious is better than not drawing anything. I did try to jazz him up just a bit, he isn’t super realistic and I hoped to bring a little goof to the proceedings.
Day 2: Divided
My initial idea was drawing a cartoon donkey and a cartoon elephant but the idea of the conversations that might pop up surrounding that exhausted me. Instead I decided to draw something a little unusual and attempt to make my watercolor usage worthwhile.
Day 3: Poison
Went pretty obvious here again but I just really wanted an excuse to go for a Bruce Timm type drawing for fun. This is the only Inktober drawing so far that I have allowed myself to redraw (3 times!!!) before accepting the result. This still falls very short of what I was hoping for but I chose to put a stop to the madness. The thing is, unless it is a direct copy, I can’t really draw like Bruce Timm. Yet…
Day 4: Underwater
The watercolors sort of did the opposite of what I wanted here. They muddy the scene, I’m still happy with the result but it was a cautionary tale in the use of watercolors.
Day 5: Long
I lost a little steam at this point and was still stuck on drawing a donkey so we got this more conceptual interpretation of “Long”. Long walk for a short drink of water. Get it? Yeah, I was just sort of in a weird place on day 5.
Day 6: Sword
It isn’t particularly clever, but it IS cute. Instead of focusing on the sword wielder I thought it would be fun to focus on the other side of the usual sword equation. So, the wielder here wasn’t as lucky, dragons can win sometimes too. This piece has more detail than previous Inktober entries or at the very least it required more precision. It is not yet fully painted but I was very happy with the lineart.
Day 7: Shy
This was the first drawing that I decided I would try filming. I kept it simple and tried using a more uncommon use of the word shy. This giraffe is juuuuuusst shy of getting that delectable leaf.
Week 1 Conclusion
It took me a while to get warmed up but I am very happy with how this year’s Inktober is progressing. Far surpassing my experience last year. Even if I don’t make all 31 days, I have produced at least a handful of drawings that I am very happy with and had a great time creating.
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