Inktober 2019 has come and gone, and I'm happy to say I was able to participate for the second year in a row. Showcased here is the project I was working on throughout the whole month - a series of animal illustrations I've dubbed "Sermonibus Animalis."
The process was simple, and maybe somewhat ridiculous: take any extant species, write out the scientific name - the genus and species, but twist the species name into a delightful pun, and enhance the drawing with said pun.
Not quite sure how it started - I think I started day one with the idea on a whim, not really sure where I was going to go with it. But the idea and the overall process grew on me, and so I carried it through all 31 days.
Not having much experience drawing realistic animals, it was both a fun challenge and a learning exercise to draw subject matter I was unfamiliar with, while adding puns that I think grew progressively dumber as I went along. And I learned quite a bit about our animal kingdom in the process!
Each drawing was done on parchment paper, and inked and colored using brush tip markers, which may or may not add a certain legitimacy to these colorful creatures - as though they were pulled straight from any leading scientific catalogue... you decide!
Anyway, go ahead and check them all out. They were also posted to my Instagram throughout the month, and may also get their own section in my gallery page... we shall see.
I'll also be putting each original drawing up for sale in the near future - more on that later!
I may also take this idea further and keep drawing more animal puns and make a whole dang book out of all of them... who knows?! I certainly had fun doing it, and honestly, why stop the fun now?
Enjoy!
-Brian