This morning, I posted my first Inktober artwork on Instagram. If you haven’t heard of Inktober, it was started by Jake Parker in 2009 as a challenge to himself to improve his own inking skills. There’s a website, and they have an official prompt list here. But you don’t have to follow it.
The rules for Inktober are really simple.
1. Make a drawing using ink. It can be traced over a light pencil drawing if you want.
2. Post it on any of your social media accounts, or just tacked up for your family to see on the fridge.
3. Use these hashtags: #inktober and #inktober2020
4. Repeat as often as you like throughout the month.
So am I following the official #inktober promt list. No, not really. That’s the beauty of Inktober! No one says you have to.
You can follow the #inktober prompt list, a list from a previous #inktober year, or make up your own list. For my own challenge, I’m making a story about a character who I plan to draw throughout the month, and maybe even into November.
My First #Inktober Drawing is a Leftover from September
I’ve been a little behind on both my artwork, posting on my blog, and on social media this past month. Instead, I’ve been busy creating polymer clay items for my dolls, and to share the tutorials here on my blog.
If you are interested in polymer clay, check the blog again soon, or go ahead and join my list, and you’ll always be the first to know when a new tutorial is out.
However, I was working on this little painting for a Instagram challenge. I usually don’t outline my watercolors, because I don’t like everything outlined in black, but recently I discovered that Copic multi-liners come in other colors too like grey, brown, green, pink, blue, and my current favorite, sepia!
This watercolor is from an Instagram draw this in your style challenge from an artist I recently discovered, and really like her work, Anna Speshilova. She calls it her wanderer girl. I liked it because I have Scot’s Irish, Scottish Highland, and Lowland ancestry.
One of my personal goals of my artwork is to honor and remember my ancestors. I changed the deer in her painting to a wolf in mine, because wolves are renowned for their loyalty to their pack, just as the Scottish were remembered for their loyalty to their clan.
Another change I made is that the mountains in the background don’t look like the Highlands of Scotland. I painted the Olympic Mountains instead, because after centuries of being uprooted from our homelands in Europe, traveling West, and farther West, the Pacific Northwest is where my family resides. For now.
Inktober Forces Us to Face the Challenges Working With Ink
I think working with ink is less of of challenge for those of us who work in watercolor because neither can be erased or painted over. I like this challenge, because it is analogous to life. Mistakes might be covered up or hidden, but they can’t be erased.
We have to live with them.
And unless we can undo them, we have to make future decisions based on our mistakes of the past. Whether it’s something like not going to university, going to university and ending up with loads of debt, taking the wrong job, moving to the wrong location, dating the wrong person, etc.
I guess this isn’t really a good analogy, but what I’m trying to say is, when you make a mistake working with ink or watercolor, then you have to say to yourself, “Okay, what do I do now?”
For example, in my painting, I was going to have my character wearing a plaid skirt. I even looked up Scottish clan plaids to find one of one of my ancestor’s surnames.
As a result, I didn’t pay attention to the other colors I was using in my watercolor. When I started painting the blue and green plaid, the shades didn’t match well. I probably could have come up with a better solution, but I just painted over it with Payne’s Grey. There were a couple of little ink boo boo’s too, but those were easier to fix.
So don’t be afraid to make mistakes, whether it’s in your painting, or your life. The experiences help us to make better decisions next time.
What’s Next for my Inktober Plans, You Ask?
While I was on vacation on the Oregon coast, I started working on some witch paintings, unaware that this is also #witchtober .
These drawings tell a story. It starts with buying a hat. I hope you’ll like it. I’m having fun drawing it, but the drawings are taking me a lot longer than I planned. Even though I came up with 31 ideas, there won’t be 31 paintings. I’ll just have to see how fast I can work, and still have time to complete all my other projects as well.
If you want to learn more about Inktober, head on over to the website, or type in #inktober on any social media, and check out the artwork.
I think I might treat myself to a Koh-i-Noor pen before the month runs out. The DickBlick website describes them as follows: “Technical pens were the mainstay of the designer and illustrator’s craft before the development of computer graphics. Now, many artists and design professionals are rediscovering the technical pen because its handiwork, in expert hands, stands out almost magically against the bland precision of computer rendered graphics.”
Keeping Up With the Wolves
Wolves are endangered in every part of the world. These beautiful and mysterious animals are often misunderstood, misjudged, and their numbers annually culled to a genetically unhealthy level in many areas.
They deserve protection, and the freedom to repopulate the regions where they once thrived. These are two Twitter sites I discovered dedicated to wolf conservation — Wolf Haven and Wolf Conservation Center. Also, here’s great news I found when looking up these sites. Nordstrom has banned the sale of fur coats as of September 30, 2020. Finally!