This summer I started experimenting with using watercolors in the hope to start doing more drawing while out hiking and birdwatching:
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| Great Egret |
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| Red-footed Booby |
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| Giraffatitan brancai sketch |
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| Giraffatitan brancai + watercolors |
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| Red Knot |
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| Raven |
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| Thalassodromeus sethi |
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| Helmeted Hornbill |
I thought last year was a great experience to push my artistic skills out of my comfort zone, and so decided to participate in Inktober again this year. I really embraced the limitations of the physical media and focused on being consistent over perfection. I also tried pushing myself further by playing with watercolors and other mixed traditional media this year. I like some more than others for sure, but am happy to have completed it among all the other things I'm working on. For ease of acces, here's my complete Inktober 2021 compiled in one place:
Prompt 1: Crystal
With all the extra time at home I thought it was a good year to try participating in Inktober, where you create and share an ink drawing based on a list of prompts for each day during the month of October.
I successfully completed all the prompts, although there were a few days where I got behind and had to do multiple drawing to catch up, especially once we started raising a new dog. This was a great experience to force me to just push stuff out. Any artist goes through the mental games of not wanting to release something to the world unless they're extremely happy with it it, especially when there are so many better artists in one's social network.
With this challenge I tried to embrace the idea that it doesn't matter if a single drawing didn't turn out great because there's a new one tomorrow. It was nice to get back to sketching and not obsessing over details and erasing and redrawing every line over and over again (which is easy to get stuck doing when working digitally). I tried my best to embrace the medium - smudges, imperfections, and all.
I also didn't want to spend too much time on any individual drawing, and was forcing myself to commit to ideas. I didn't do any pencil under-drawings... so you can see all my mistakes on the page. For some drawings I thumbnailed a bit to plan compositions or character designs, and for a few drawings I screwed up at the end in a way that I couldn't let go and completely redrew them. There are plenty of issues I've noticed after the fact and if I was working digitally would more easily be able to refine things like cluttered compositions, messy silhouettes, or bad perspective, but I was trying to let go of all that and just enjoy the process of drawing. Some definitely turned out better than others. Also of note, there's no fancy techniques or tools here. Just a normal ballpoint pen on a sketchpad.
Anyway, I wanted to post them all in one spot for ease of access, so here you are. It was a good experience and I think I'll try to do it again next year. (Click any image to enlarge it)
Prompt 1: Fish
Prompt 2: Wisp
Prompt 3: Bulky
Prompt 4: Radio
Prompt 5: Blade
Prompt 6: Rodent
Prompt 7: Fancy
Prompt 8: Teeth
Prompt 9: Throw
Prompt 10: Hope
Prompt 11: Disgusting
Prompt 12: Slippery
Prompt 13: Dune
Prompt 14: Armor
Prompt 15: Outpost
Prompt 16: Rocket
Prompt 17: Storm
Prompt 18: Trap
Prompt 19: Dizzy
Prompt 20: Coral
Prompt 21: Sleep
Prompt 22: Chef
Prompt 23: Rip
Prompt 24: Dig
Prompt 25: Buddy
Prompt 26: Hide
Prompt 27: Music
Prompt 28: Float
Prompt 29: Shoes
Prompt 30: Ominous
Prompt 31: Crawl
