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| 10/22/17 |
Happy Halloween and happy end of InkTober! Are you sad that it’s over – or relieved?
As I mentioned in my second trimester review, I began
InkTober this year with a bit of trepidation about being able to keep up with
daily ink sketches while also working on my time-consuming graphite class exercises. But on most days it was a relief to go
out and do small, quick sketches from life for InkTober instead of labor-intensive
graphite drawings from photos.
On some busy days, though, I admit that I wanted to skip
it (and once I almost forgot until fairly late in the day) – but I didn’t. I
have often told people who say they don’t have time to sketch that it doesn’t
have to be a huge time commitment, so I decided I would simply practice what I
preach. Except for one I did at the Funko sketch outing, none of my InkTober sketches took more than 15 minutes
to make.
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| 10/24/17 |
While it’s not part of Jake Parker’s original InkTober initiative, as long as I’m
participating in the project, I like to give myself a personal goal. I didn’t stick
with ballpoint pen for the whole month as I had originally planned, but I did stay with the second part of my goal:
to practice my hatching skills. That, too, was tempting to skip. Without
InkTober, I regularly make small brush pen sketches in Field Notes notebooks, so it would have been easy to fall back on a
familiar tool and habit. But except for a couple of sketches, I managed to
include at least some hatching. As the month went on, hatching became easier. I
started to really appreciate how effective hatching can be in economically showing
the direction of a curved surface.
The most surprising outcome of InkTober 2017 is that I unintentionally
developed a bit of a theme: cars! Although they are no longer the sketching nemesis they used to be,
and they appear frequently enough in my day-to-day urban sketches even without
InkTober, cars and I have never been on friendly terms. On busy days, though, I
often found myself squeezing in a quick sketch between errands or appointments,
so it was easiest to draw whatever car was parked nearby. Interestingly, cars
turned out to be ideal for hatching practice: They’re made of curving, hard
surfaces with lots of challenging, irregular shadows! Since I typically would
not choose to sketch ordinary cars on the street as primary sketching subjects,
I got some much-needed practice.
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| 10/25/17 |
Overall, despite the challenges, I had a great InkTober
(see all my sketches from the month in this Flickr album)! How about you?
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| 10/23/17 |
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| 10/31/17 |
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| 10/26/17 |
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| 10/21/17 |
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| 10/27/17 |
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| 10/29/17 |
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| 10/28/17 |
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| 10/30/17 |
Yes, I can see that cars are no longer your nemesis. Congratulations on finished Inktober!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kate! Cars and I are not exactly BFFs, but we're cordial. ;-)
DeleteI managed the whole month, and the likes on Instagram I received from kind strangers as well as you really inspired me to carry on. I naturally would use pencil, so using pen has been very different. I bought some Derwent Graphix ink pens and have really enjoyed using them too. And my Copix pens I think will be deffo used in future. I've really enjoyed thinking of an angle to the prompts. My sketches have never taken more than 15 mins - and I think it shows as they are very naive, but the fun has been to get something recognisable that quick. And now I have a little notebook of sketches. And I've enjoyed your cars very much.
ReplyDeleteI hope you carry on long past Inktober! That's one of the biggest benefits of doing something like Inktober -- it creates a habit for doing it indefinitely.
DeleteCongrats on a great Inktober! I'm glad you were able to practice something you had wanted to try, your hatching. This was the perfect opportunity to get that done. I hadn't realized you had done a car theme, but did notice a lot of cars appearing. lol That's something I need to practice too and I look for excuses to include them in my sketches. Great job and final review!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Joan! It was a lot of fun as well as rewarding.
DeleteHi Tina: I really like your idea of focusing on something. I ink so much that inking something every day was hardly a challenge. I really wanted to feel as though I had grown. So if I do it next year I think I'll pick a focus like you did .... Maybe a whole month of using brush and ink .... or doing people. I hardly ever tackle people. ... or mammals. I do a lot of birds,but not so many mammals. .... or bugs! ...or? ... or?
ReplyDeleteExactly -- that's how I felt! I use ink all the time, so I wanted to have an additional challenge. Will look forward to seeing what you do next year!
ReplyDelete