Another InkTober Begins!

 

9/13/23 Who nose where this will take me?
(Earthsworld reference photo)

It’s October, and we all know what that means: It’s InkTober time! For my ninth consecutive year of participation, it was hard to come up with a theme or goal that would beat or even match last year’s, which was to work on crosshatched portraiture. When I combined the daily challenge of InkTober with France Van Stone’s excellent online tutorials, I learned more in that month than during any other InkTober.

By the end of the month, I had gotten over my general skittishness about portraiture – so much so that a year later, I’m still practicing with all kinds of media, not just ink (though certainly not daily). To me, that’s an ideal outcome of a challenge like InkTober: The original simple impetus – make one drawing a day in ink – gave me the structure to work solidly on a single subject and technique that I might not otherwise have done.

I couldn’t think of a goal quite like that for this year, but maybe it’s a spin-off: I’ve found that one of the most interesting parts of the face to draw is the nose. Although the eyes and mouth are generally seen as the most expressive parts of the face, the nose is the feature that has the most form. When I was making the two portraits of my grand-niece Kaila (first with graphite and the second with colored pencils), I suddenly became aware of how babies have such tiny, almost formless noses that are therefore much harder to draw than the strong, geometrical shapes of adult noses.

9/6/23 Jetstream multi-ballpoint pen in Field Notes.
I prefer a Bic for ballpoint sketches, but I wanted to try
this Jetstream. Nice for writing but not for drawing.

When I drew the nose above from an Earthsworld reference photo a few weeks ago, I was fascinated with how abstract the nose becomes when taken out of the context of the rest of the face. Maybe if I focus on noses, it will turn into an interesting study of abstraction or even composition. I’m open to letting the series evolve (or not).

I’m not committing to sticking with noses all month, but to begin, I’m going to draw a nose a day. It meets my personal requirements for participating in a daily challenge: I can easily draw a single nose in less than 15 minutes (or take more time if I want to).

I briefly considered choosing only one pen for the whole month without a subject-matter theme, like a multi-ballpoint pen, so I made an urban sketch with one to see how I would like that (at left). But I decided one pen is too limiting, especially when I have so many pens I enjoy using, so the ink choice will be wide open.

Who nose where this will end up taking me?

(As usual, I’ll be consolidating InkTober drawings periodically on the blog, but if you follow me on Instagram, you’ll see my daily sketches.)