Day: 30/10/2018

Inktober Nineteen and Twenty

Tim MaidmentLeave a comment

We’re on what feels like both the final approach and yet still a long slide towards the end of the month with the Inktober project. All month I’ve been inspired by complex and hyperdetailed ink illustrations across social media while sometimes just dashing off small little pieces that feel inconsequential in comparison.

The thing is, I’m taking a different approach to some people by doing (by and large) a piece per day rather than planning and executing grand illustrations.

Some of the pieces I do come easily and I can relax as I let them flow into existence. Others I’m really wrestling with and struggling to produce anything that I can feel happy putting my name to. It’s proving to be a very valuable learning experience and I’m trying all sorts of new things I otherwise wouldn’t even try.

Scorched – for Day Nineteen – was scribbled in a lunch break after a long morning of frustration and yet another day of grim news that didn’t do a great deal for my contentedness with life.

The concept is a piece of paper, scorched, and I was doing my best to try and recreate semi-burned pieces of paper I’ve seen.

Yet another round of horrors and lies in the news reporting on that day prodded me to write The Truth and extend the scorched feel to it. This piece was a bit of a struggle to realise.

Day Twenty – Breakable – by comparison was simple and easy and a pleasure to draw. It’s a more figurative piece and it’s very much in my comfort zone.

The breakable twig is a simple image, and didn’t take long, but also had room for me to add little extra details at a leisurely pace. It was actually quite relaxing to create this one.

Inktober Seventeen and Eighteen

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So, after nearly a week’s break, we’re back with the Inktober round-up of posts inspired by the list below:

Fortunately I’ve generally been able to keep broadly up to date with the pieces despite being ill and then going away to MCM. This morning, after sorting the first load of laundry, I sat down and dashed off a few more. I’ve posted them in a flurry on the Instagram account today, so they may be linked via the Twitter feed on this page.

So, on to day seventeen and the prompt was: Swollen. I had my finer ink pens to hand today and started out as usual with the eyes. I wanted to do something that breaks the normal symmetry that we see when looking at someone, so this seemed to be a good excuse to let my imagination wander with the grotesques.

I took inspiration from cinematic representations of the transformations of the Incredible Hulk, and from depictions of daemons of Nurgle from the various Warhammer games and books.

All in all, a fun little piece, done on a larger paper pad that I’ve been doing a number of sketches and doodles on.

Number eighteen’s prompt seemed an obvious one – it’s Inktober, so why not draw a bottle of ink? A number of pieces I’d seen online went with depictions of bottled emotions, but there was something simple about this that appealed as I worked on it.

I was back on the smaller book for this one, purely for ease of carrying around as I was on the move a lot and wasn’t sure how or when inspiration would strike. With some of these pieces I’ve been waking up with ideas, while others have needed prodding towards the end of the day after ruminating for hours.

Okay, back in the room

Tim MaidmentLeave a comment

The Inktober posts are resuming now that illness is rebuffed and we’ve survived the madness that was MCM Comiccon this weekend

Speaking of the Convention, it was huge fun, somehow aptly summed up by the image above – a great rush of geekery, humour, and catching up with friends. I’ll write more on it as my brain settles down, but the whole polycule was there, along with the cub at his first Con, and it’s been exhausting.

Anyway, back to the ink sketches…