Month: Nov 2018

Wait, where’s November going?

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I swear sometimes it’s like I blink and I’ve time travelled, or fallen through a crack in the space-time continuum, and it’s suddenly halfway through the month.

Admittedly we spent the week after MCM London largely recuperating and sleeping – and then celebrating Lady M’s birthday. Going back to work after that felt like standing at the bottom of a steep set of stairs, but I think that’s fairly normal.

I think the time has slipped past simply by dint of it being one of those periods of time where you just need to get your head down and plough on.

We’ve had some nice little highlights: we’ve more or less finished our Christmas shopping for example – and we had Lady S come by for a surprise weekend visit with the cub. We’d plotted this as a surprise so she and Lady M could have a proper date night as a delayed birthday treat.

(I had a boys night in with the cub on the xbox – and there was hardly any rage quitting on either side.)

So, a quick and quiet update post for you all 🙂 and here’s a recent photo of my sketch pad, because getting me to stop sketching is always an issue…

Picture of intricate inkpen artwork taken over the artist's shoulder, showing the page, his arm, and fine pen

Inktober – The Final Picture

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It’s here, at last – the final picture of Inktober – and I’m particularly proud that I managed to wait and do this image actually on the 31st October. It has felt sometimes like a breeze and others like a chore, but it has certainly kept me engaged and interested the whole way through.

Someone asked if it was something I’d feel able to complete, and my answer at the time was that it was usually more difficult to get me to stop drawing. I think if this month has proved anything to me, it’s that it can be very easy to get stuck in a rut, and that challenges like this are a great help in shifting me out of my comfort zone.

The final prompt for this month was ‘slice’ – and I’ll admit I initially groaned at how similar it was to the Chop prompt for day 24.

I was determined to use some of the practice this month had given me on perspective for this image. I saw a couple of other images online that wet with a variant on things being sliced with a blade of some description, so that got me thinking about the number of YouTube shows around forging blades I’ve seen, and their propensity to showcase the sharpness of their projects on various objects.

A watermelon seemed a good simple object to start with, and the rest of the image flowed from there.

So, there we have it – thirty-one images in thirty-one days to a preset prompt list.

I’d say I need a rest, but then I seem to have carried on regardless…

In this case I’ve already started reusing and updating the page my original ‘jolt’ image was on, using a mix of inks and coloured pencils and my usual mix of aliens and ugly monsters. I’ve been using a 0.05 size inkpen to do these particular creatures, and it’s a different approach to filling space to many other sizes of pen. I’ll see where it leads…

Inktober Twenty-Nine to Thirty

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So this was the last big push, back from MCM, determined to get back on track to actually complete Inktober within the month itself.

These two did make me think about how to represent them within my framework of not over-working things as far as possible.

Number twenty-nine was definitely me trying to be clever with the prompt of ‘double’, and no one has escaped seeing it as something else entirely. The concept was to represent cellular fission – one cell becoming two.

Instead, everyone who has commented on it has said they thought it was a pair of boobs, possibly on someone being bounced around. While that technically still covers the prompt, it’s just shown me I should probably look at reference pictures more often. Oh well. Oh, and I wrote the wrong day number on it as well, for good measure.

By contrast, day thirty started as a simple image and then kind of grew in size and complexity. It’s still a simple enough composition – someone leaping in the air as they are jolted by electric current.

I should probably have started with the plug and the spark of electricity, but instead I did my usual start with the eyes and found the picture getting bigger and bigger to fit the whole thing in.

Still, if you’ll pardon the pun, there’s an energy to it so it works for me, and it’s a posture I don’t often depict, so new ground again.

Inktober Twenty-Seven and Twenty-Eight

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These are another two that didn’t get done in their respective days because we were at MCM London Comiccon

Fortunately they were both really simple as inspirations go, so sitting down to do them when the dust has settled was the start of a couple of days of renewed energy and drawing.

Day twenty-seven was inspired of course by my love of comics – and with having already depicted a thunderstorm of sorts back with ‘spell’, I wanted to do something different. So with memories of recent Marvel films and a number of cosplayers fresh in my mind, I decided to draw the tunic of a certain god of thunder, complete with sparkles.

While not “screen accurate” I like this interpretation of this particular item of clothing.

Day twenty-eight was inspired very simply by Lady M’s upcoming birthday. As usual I’ve been giving her little presents in the days leading up to the actual date, so creating a simple drawing of one to represent ‘gift’ seemed only natural.

It was also a good exercise in practicing perspective, and has highlighted that I really need to do more work when it comes to ribbons and knots – because those elements seem weak to me in this.