Tag: Inktober

Inktober day 31 (final day!) – slice

Wow! I can’t believe I’ve actually achieved and completed this challenge. I genuinely drew one picture every day through October. I’ve had the opportunity to try out different styles (cartoon, realistic, portrait, single line etc) and learn shading techniques. I’ve found that drawing every day really does reduce the pressure to produce a perfect picture as you know there will be another chance to draw something new the next day.

Sometimes I’ve been brave enough to just draw with pen, other times I’ve started with pencil and gone over it with pen. Both have been valuable in their own ways.

I wasn’t sure how I would do with the challenge, or even if I would complete it, but I’m proud of myself for keeping on going, for facing the challenges and for not letting fear stop me from trying.

Today’s final prompt was slice and that made me think of a slice of lemon. Here’s the photo, and here’s my drawing.

It’s not my best (though I don’t think it’s my worst either… That dubious honour will always go to my roast chicken!), but it was cool to really look at the photo in detail and think about how the segments are made up. Interestingly I don’t think I can say which is my best, because they are different styles, but my favourites are: my chicken, battle of ypres, Rapunzel, the goldfinch, the turtle, Paris, the wine bottle and glass, the drain swirl, and my hedgehog. Which was your favourite from the month?

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Inktober day 30 – jolt

Well today’s prompt was a bit of a difficult one. I had no idea what I was going to do for this. A google search of images linked to the word showed a character from sonic the hedgehog, who is called jolt. With nothing better to do I decided to copy him. Here is my first photo of him

After taking the photo I thought his eyes looked a bit lifeless, so decided to shade part of them in.

Unfortunately I think that made him look a bit drugged, which wasn’t what I was aiming for! I suppose I could get my white pen and go over it again?

There, still not great but I don’t know how else to fix it now!

From an uninspiring prompt I actually had quite a bit of fun with this picture.

Only one day left and the final prompt is ‘slice’. Anyone got any cool ideas for this one?

Inktober day 29 – double

I’ve tried something a bit different today. I wanted to draw a jazz musician playing a double bass, and i wanted there to be a sense of movement and freedom in it. I wondered if attempting a continuous, single line drawing would help achieve that effect, so I gave it a go.

There are obvious things that haven’t really worked, like getting the body parts in proportion, but I do quite like the loose feel to it and the fact that I could add more lines when one wasn’t quite in the right place. That seemed to work better on the double bass itself, and I seemed to forget that I could do that on the musician himself (other than his face). Maybe it would have worked a little bit better if I’d done that. But it was a fun technique and one I’d like to try again

Inktober day 27 – thunder

Here’s the photo I used for today’s prompt. And here’s my attempt at it

I’m not happy with the sky but I really don’t like shading big areas as I don’t think they ever look right. Does anyone have any advice on this? Do I just need to be more careful at getting the lines even and all going in exactly the same direction

Inktober day 26 – stretch

Today I was thinking about this prompt and decided it could be fun to try to draw the squirrel who visits our garden, climbs up the bird feeder pole and stretches across to get food from the feeders. But then as I was sitting in our living on the first floor, he suddenly appeared on the windowsill next to me. He had a precarious climb up the railings, though I’m not sure what he was trying to achieve with this, and then climbed back down again! I managed to snap a couple of pictures of him on my phone without scaring him.

Sure enough he then joined his mate at the bird feeder and some more serious stretching occurred, but seeing as I couldn’t get any good photos of this I decided to draw him on the railings. Here he is

Inktober day 23 – muddy (plus some beach art !)

Today’s prompt is muddy, and I’ve taken some real life inspiration from a beach side walk I did today (I know… I’ve left Mark at home working and I’m having a cheeky seaside break by myself for a couple of days!!). Anyway, I saw these black headed gulls paddling around in a muddy puddle and enjoyed watching them,so I took a few photos and had a go at drawing them. The photos are awful as I had to zoom in to get the birds’ shapes, as they flew away if I got too close.

I’m finding I’m getting stuck with how to represent texture and shading at the same time. This is water surrounded by mud and then grass, but with darker patches of grass as they were on slopes leading down to the water. I don’t think that comes across in the drawing, but I really don’t know how I could have achieved it. Still, it was fun drawing the birds in different postures (that I took from different pictures to create my own scene!) . And it was funny to realise that their puddle was a bit like the shape of the UK, though with Ireland on the wrong side!

Also I had a go at a bit of rock balancing

And I discovered that someone had started to line up pebbles, and I couldn’t resist adding a few of my own (it was more tricky than I anticipated as I had to wedge some of them up on smaller stones to get the to stay where I wanted them)

And finally I had dinner in a restaurant looking out over the sea where I got to watch the most amazing and dramatic sunset from my seat.

Tomorrow’s plan is to find a cafe overlooking the sea and spend lots of time with my book and my sketch pad🤗.

Inktober day 22 – expensive

I was struggling with this prompt but as time went on and I still had no ideas I became aware of my piggies munching away in their cage. OK so they’re not exactly expensive but they do cost more to look after than you might expect, as we get through rather a lot of hay and I Possibly buy more fresh vegetables for them than I do for us each week!

I’m quite pleased that I drew them from life, rather than from a photo.

In fairness they did keep their positions for quite a while, but I had to do a very quick pencil outline that I then filled with detail in pen after.