Somehow it's November already. I was going to post some Inktober drawings on the site throughout the month, but didn't, on account of...not doing it... and it not being October anymore, I guess...and suddenly the month is over with nothing else to draw. Where does the time go?
At least in hindsight though, it was a nice time of experimenting. I've always felt that these periods of personal growth and artistic challenges, like Inktober, are meant as a conduit for greater exploration and an advancement of understanding, even in some small way, to wherever the individual is at in his or her respective abilities. It's not necessarily a time to just create good drawings, feel good about yourself, and revel in a masterpiece. The drawings should be risky, messy, sloppy, rough, raw, experimental, and full of mistakes - because that suggests struggle, and struggle means growth. Or maybe I'm just saying all of this to justify all the mistakes in my own drawings!
Nevertheless, I happily embarked on this journey with some newly acquainted mediums. Here, I created some pieces using only Prismacolor brush tip marker:
I used only grey scales, ranging between 4 to 6 different values. In doing so, I tried to focus on light and tone, and how to use these to describe form - not just a copied surface, but also the subject in three dimensional space. I also didn't draw any lines or safe pencil strokes to get started - just permanent marker on paper. So I sort of had to break down the forms I was recognizing, and hope I didn't mess up (which I did several times!)
Nevertheless, it's a good space to be in. Making bold, permanent choices on paper without hesitation, and without judging yourself is indeed difficult, but a necessary step to practice for any artist.
I continued this practice with a few more brush tip marker pieces, this time adding pencil and brush stroke lines to maintain the dynamic statement of the overall gesture, but using only two values for greater limitation and exploration:
All in all, it's definitely an approach I hope to explore further as I go down this road - we'll see where it takes me. And that's just one area of Inkober fun! You can head over to my Instagram page for the full collection, and judge all you like! Coming up later this month: more festival news, an update on my next short 'Dog Meets Cow,' and a few other regular additions I hope to make to this blog in the near future. Enjoy your November!
-Brian