So I was getting burned out on trying to catch up on Inktober and was missing my watercolors (I could hear them calling to me) so yesterday I took a break and started working on a painting and finished it today. It’s something from my imagination or a combination of things I’ve seen hiking in the past.
Yesterday I got a good start on it but I got stuck. The sky wasn’t as rich and textured as I had hoped and I reached the ugly painting stage. When ever I hit this point and I’m not sure what to do I’ve learned to just walk away.
Isn’t that ugly? Or maybe it’s just me.
So this evening after dinner I decided to finish it instead of having Another half dinner thing lying around the studio. Anyone else have a stack of unfinished work? Any who, here is the finished piece. I hope you like it.
Day 14’s prompt was overgrown and I knew what I wanted to do from the start. A old, abandoned, overgrown house with columns that vines are growing up. I only had 1.5 hours to work on it and I’m happy how it turned out given the time.
What do you think? How long do you spend on each piece?
It has been a busy week or two. I was off in the mountains for five days and only penciled my Inktober pieces and that whole life/ work being busy has kept me on my toes.
I shall persevere! Here are the drawings for days nine through 13 and a bit of commentary for each one.
Day 9 – Swing
I really wanted to go detailed and bury myself in this one but I didn’t have time so I held off. I’m beginning to think I’ll be redoing some of these prompts in greater detail. Things I liked about this one: I feel like I have the wind blowing left to right consistently, the tree is fairly good. Things I don’t like: I didn’t realize until now just how barren that middle ground looks.
Day 9-Swing
Day 10 – Pattern
After a few days walking through the Rockies it’s hard not to see patterns in the trees and that’s what day 10 was about for me. Seeing the different clusters of aspens and pines.
Day 10 – Patterns
Day 11 – Snow
My first thoughts on this was snowflakes but it’s October and even though we’ve already had our first snow I wanted to keep it Octobery and so they became cobweb snowflakes.
Day 11 – Snow
Day 12 – Dragon
Dragons, oh dragons, how I love them. However I’m horrible at drawing them with all the time in the world so I decided to do a dragon in the style of the coats of arms. Did I hit it?
Day 12 – Dragon
Day 13 – Ash
I had no idea where to go with this prompt. Honestly I found myself scraping through it. Spilled ash from the wood stove? The spade falling in midair and scattering ash everywhere? This one was a struggle. I’m happy with the stove pipe and the spade. Everything else… room for improvement there is and that’s what the challenge is about. Improvement.
Day 13 – Ash
I hope if you stuck with me this far you’ve enjoyed my commentary.
Who else is struggling? Any victories in your art?
It feels like Inktober has been going on forever but we’ve only had seven days so far.
Build started out in my mind as something larger but I decided to go smaller with better details. So some wooden building blocks that a toddler would play with.
For day 6 I thought about bodybuilders and action heroes. You know husky. Many others did the dog breed Huskie so I didn’t want to do that, though it would fit in with my goal of including animals. As I was getting ready to start I thought about the old comic characters Sarge from Beetle Bailey, Garfield the cat, and Hagar the Horrible (who really wasn’t so horrible) and decided to go that route.
The piece isn’t perfect. The proportions are off a bit but I enjoyed drawing it (my first comic character) and I learned from it.
Day 7 was something I was looking forward too. I had in my mind a enchanted forest to go with the promopt “enchanted”. Alas, by the end of the day I was running out of time so it became a bit frenzied but I think I hit the points I wanted to. There is darkness and light. A bit of whimsy. What do you think?
Well this was a fun one. All sorts of ideas rolling through my head. Settled on icicles on the underside of a rock. I’m finding that doing something small that I can do well while pushing my limits a little is more satisfying than trying to do something larger and stressing over whether I will be able to finish it or it looks horrible. I’m happy that the icicles look like icicles. 🙂
How did day 4 go for everyone else? Who’s following the official prompts? If not which list are you using or are you using your own list? I’d love to hear from everyone.
Well this was a fun one. All sorts of ideas rolling through my head. Settled on icicles on the underside of a rock. I’m finding that doing something small that I can do well while pushing my limits a little is more satisfying than trying to do something larger and stressing over whether I will be able to finish it or it looks horrible. I’m happy that the icicles look like icicles. 🙂
How did day 4 go for everyone else? Who’s following the official prompts? If not which list are you using or are you using your own list? I’d love to hear from everyone.
Some times I wish Inktober only occurred on weekends that way I’d have more time to work on a piece but alas, then it wouldn’t be nearly the same challenge would it?
Day three’s prompt was bait. This word can inspire many ideas depending where your head is. For me it brought two common ideas to mind. A fishing hook/ fishing bait and a box trap. Thinking about them I was more inspired by the fishing one ((and judging buy all the fishing day 3 at it there I was not alone). I was short on time so I thought about what was the most fun way to draw fish? I decided that the simple 1-2 line crisscross pattern with light details would be fun but to do it in a single plane one dimensional manner but bent like it was three dimensional and have it as a school of bait fish. I have so say I did enjoy it. The restrictions to my time and attempting to keep it simple and flowing was a challenge.
This prompt was not a favorite. My mind was empty, I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t some cliche bit and I couldn’t think of a design for it. So at the last minute my brain looked to anything it could think of and this was it. Still mildly cliche I guess. I like to think it has a Gary Larson Far Side flare to it but that’s wishful thinking.
So did anyone else struggle with this prompt?
I’m hopeful that today’s prompt; bait will turn out better. Here’s to the next drawing.
Yesterday was hectic. My plan for day 1 was a forest scene with a deer in it, large majestic rack with a crown nested among the tines… but the inside cover piece that I started the night before wasn’t done and I needed to finish it first.
So over lunch I finished the cover piece. It didn’t turn out like I had hoped. The Artsnack Inktober Plumchester sketchbook says it’s 108# paper but it feels thinner than my Canson 98# mixed media sketchbook. Lots of warping when using a brush loaded with ink. Lesson learned, I’ll stick with dip pens and multiliner on this challenge.
Sketchbook cover art
I did manage to find time over lunch to get a basic sketch of what I wanted to ink in. My big fear was that given how long the last forest scene took (9 hours) that I would struggle with this one and have to cut corners. So after my daughter was done with her homework we sat down and started working on day one. In all it took a little under three hours to ink.
What do you think? How did everyone else’s day 1 go?
