I’m still exhausted from the last few days, and still seem to have a nagging pain thats either muscular or a trapped nerve. On the plus side I’ve been feeling a bit more creative, so I have some things to show for the day.
Today’s creations
I had a bit of a double-whammy in the delivery of some replacement grey, black, and sepia ink pens in the morning; and then my digging out my venerable graphics tablet this afternoon.
The sketchbook image above is freehand line art drawn this evening while Lady M played some Assassins Creed. The other two are Photoshop enhancements of some pieces I doodled last year. I’ve cleaned up and added to them over the course of the afternoon.
And thats what I’ve done to settle myself a little after the events of the last couple of days.
Lady M is still recovering but seems brighter this evening, and has been answering good wishes and enquiries through the day.
I finally got round to updating this year’s Inktober gallery under the Art pages, and after a few days rest the drawing bug has returned, so some of the more coherent doodles will continue to appear here
This one has been gradually growing in my new sketchbook, mixing block structures with finer lines reminiscent of magnetic force lines. I hadn’t had any image in mind when I started, and the larger fragmenting piece only developed into something resembling a heart when I saw the resemblance and wanted to fill the page.
The finer lines started as more practice at the style, again with the intention of just filling the page, until it felt like any more would spoil it somehow.
There wasn’t any conscious design element to this, but I’ll be interested to hear what it says or suggests to people.
Oh, wait, I’m working again this weekend. Okay, it’s nearly the end of the week. Lady M’s nephew is staying with us this weekend, so hopefully they won’t end up as semi-drowned rats while I’m at work and I’ll be greeted with smiles as I get home.
A quiet Sunday will hopefully then be achieved before I have to go get prodded by disappointed diabetic clinic nurses and ambushed with a flu jab on Monday.
I did have an interesting character come into work and try to engage with me at work over art, writing, the creative process, and the angels and demons that inspire us – but the need to stay professional overrode the temptation to play along. No doubt they’ll return at some point. There’s something to look forward to…
Oh well, was nice to have the doodles on the scrap paper admired
We’re nearly into the final week of Inktober, and I’m about to have a few days off so finding time to draw as inspiration strikes should be a bit easier. Well, that’s the theory
Day Twenty Three gave us Ancient as a prompt, and while I initially toyed with doing a wider Stonehenge/Avebury landscape I settled instead on focusing on a classic trilithon to practice rendering a set of stone surfaces and a bit of perspective. I’m really happy with how this one turned out, layering successively darker greys and some fine black lines for outlines.
I struggled a bit with “Dizzy” and originally drew a full-length pirouetting figure before making horrible mistakes with feet and leg proportions. So I started again with a head and shoulders shot. I only realised as I took the photo that I’d drawn a blonde to lean into the “dizzy blonde” stereotype.
I’m not as keen on this second image as I am on yesterday’s, but it’s also about of an apples and pears comparison. Onward!
These were a couple of fun prompts these last couple days – well, I say fun, but what I really mean is that the inspiration and execution came relatively easily, even if again I was trying different things to make them happen.
Being an avid gamer for many years, the prompt of Treasure immediately suggested a great big chest of it. I wanted to create the impression of a great big mound of it without actually drawing every single element of it, and I think I managed to imply several rises and falls of piles of coins. As with many of this month’s prompts it’s a subject I’ve never tried before.
Today’s prompt was simply Ghost, so I challenged myself to draw the most ethereal sight I could, to let the mind’s eye assemble a picture from the bare suggestions. Many descriptions from people who talk about seeing ghosts talk of vapours or shimmers or movement in the corner of the eye, so it was that kind of representation I was going for rather than a floating sheet, or a clear-lined transparency. This again was a very different style of drawing, and one I think I’ll come back to.
I’ve got a bit out of sync with my days, so I’ll do another of these tomorrow to get up-to-date. Today has been a day off, so I’ve been relaxing with a box set on TV and sketchpads around me (ok, and a modicum of housework too)
Day Nineteen: Sling – I think calling a catapult a slingshot and therefore a valid use for the word just about scrapes above the bottom of the barrel. I could have shown someone injured or in a playground, but an Angry Birds-style picture allowed me some practice with drawing clothing, some mud squelch, and some humour. I’m particularly proud of the trousers and the mud around the shoes.
Day Twenty One: Tread – I didn’t feel like doing anything particularly dynamic as I was quite tired (pun noted but not intended), so I modelled this on the tread on the bottom of a pair of my trainers (sneakers for those in the US). It’s simple, but it’s practice from a still life, which is an area of weakness for me.
I was too tired to post anything yesterday as it ended up being quite a draining day at work – on the other hand I’m now sitting at my desk with a cup of coffee while my neurons wake up properly so it’s all swings and roundabouts
Day Seventeen brought us Ornament as a prompt, and there were so many ways I could take this. In the end I opted to do an earring based on a design I saw on a customer. The longest time was spent trying to do an accurate earlobe – and in the end I used Lady M as a model while she sat on the sofa next to me.
Day Eighteen’s word was Misfit. I considered doing something with jigsaw pieces, or those shapes toys we give toddlers to improve their spatial awareness while they bash them about. In the end I went with the black sheep in the herd that stands out as looking so different, but really isn’t at heart any different from anyone else. A metaphor for family life? Yeah, a bit ham-handed, I’ll give you that, but it’s a simple visual that appeals.
Okay, now we’re halfway through the month, and there’s a nice body of work to look back over. I’ve started assembling a mosaic gallery of pieces from this year to match last year’s gallery, and these can be viewed through the menu links above.
Day Fifteen’s prompt is Legend and what better than a Dark Knight who is so fixed in our cultural legends that I don’t even need to draw a full figure or the logo on his chest. It’s a reminder that superheroes are the myths of our modern day – Odysseus or Jason, Helen or Heracles, Zeus or Athena – all were as known to people as Batman, Spider-Man, Magneto, Deadpool, The Flash or Billy Butcher. You can argue with reasonable certainty that the same principles and vital energy are evoked in the new myths as with the old.
And then we have Day Sixteen, which prompts depictions of the word ‘Wild’. Animal from The Muppets just jumped up, grabbed the pens, and demanded to be given first shot at the title. Who am I to get in the way of such energy? As a work colleague commented on social media: “could be any of us after a trying day”
I think I’m getting over the bug that flattened me last week, but I’ve definitely enjoyed having an extra day at the beginning of the week where I don’t work where I can feel a bit more human in comfort before diving straight back to work. These next two have been a bit more fun, if only because I haven’t been uncomfortable while making them.
Day Thirteen is Ash – and while I could have gone with cigarettes, or a bonfire, I wanted to do something a bit more dynamic and challenging – hence a phoenix arising from a jar of ashes. I wanted to capture an explosive moment of creation and formation, rekindling life from what seemed dead and gone. The phoenix is an image that I work with quite a lot, and that has a lot of resonance with me in terms of the new leases of life I get when recovering from dips in physical or mental health. As this last week’s bug has had me feeling quite down over how long it has been, a resurgent image felt needed. Its not the most detailed line work – I think I spent more time on the ash and its trails – but it feels like one of those split-second moments of things being in flux with lots of movement. No doubt, like some of the others in this sequence, it’s something I’ll return to as imagery in my doodles.
Im really proud of Day Fourteen – Overgrown – as its another of those concepts that came easily, and I really like how I executed it in the time allotted. The broken statue overgrown in vines and moss feels like something that belongs in a fairytale, or perhaps a gothic romance, as a pointer to tragedy in the past and the passing of time. It was done, like all the others here in 0.1 and 0.5 light and dark grey ink fine liners, and the border with a 0.3 black just to outline. I’m just really happy with how its worked out.
Everything hurts, my sinuses are convinced they’re on fire, and I’m officially fed up with whatever this bug is. But the artwork is a good distraction, so here we go…
Day Nine brings us Swing. I considered a child’s swing but went for something inspired by Poe instead – recalling The Pit and The Pendulum, which enthralled me when I was probably far too young to be raiding relatives’ bookcases while on holiday. Maybe it’s just being ill that makes the thought of ever-approaching death so appealing right now
Day Ten has the prompt of Pattern. My initial thought was something like a leopard or a tiger, but I didn’t have the energy to look for references. As a result you have a creepy alien/robot made up of repeating patterns instead. It looked a lot cooler in my head, but I was trying something different, so yay.
