Inktober 2019: day 30 - gel pens

There was also just time enough for one more Sweetpea! He really wants to show you how lovely he tree’s Autumn leaves and acorns are.

Inktober 2019: day 22 - gel pen

Sweetpea and some of his friends are comparing the Autumn fruits of their trees.

I was trying to keep this one simple because I was starting to get very tired, but I put in too many characters and props! It wasn't hard exactly, but it was time consuming.

Inktober 2019: day 16 - gel pens

Spider starts to feel a bit sick if Nettle spins him around too much.

I don’t think I’ve done this picture in gel pens before? I’ve drawn it every Inktober so far, but I was at work and couldn’t check which inks I had and hadn’t used.

Inktober 2019: day 2 - gel pens (and a brush pen)

Louise and her foster parents are not the only creatures that live in her house.

My 90-minute time limit fell apart already! I could only get the lineart and the spot black done in that time, so I've been frantically crosshatching in odd moments throughout the day. I'm very pleased with it though!

Inktober 2018 : Day 21 - gel pen

The Crow Boy appears in dark corners, by means best known to himself.

I had the idea for this one days ago, but I didn't have enough time to draw it until now. I think it took about 4 hours from start to finish, which I'm quite pleased with considering all the layers of cross-hatching.

Inktober 2018 : Day 15 - gel pen

Violet has cold hands and she's not afraid to use them.

Inktober 2018 : Day 8 - gel pens

Violet lives with the Vrega because she was accidentally exposed to a terrible Vrega disease called Black Rot. It doesn’t affect her the same way as them, so she’s not in immediate danger of dying and isn’t contagious, but it does have symptoms. A common one is sudden attacks of nausea and stomach pain, there’s nothing to do except wait for it to stop.

Inktober 2017 - Part 2

Day 11 : fineliners and grey pen - If you didn't want to share your fancy tea with the house hobs, you shouldn't have left it unattended.

Day 12 : brush pen and coloured ink - Demons aren't allowed to walk around in human shape without at least one tell-tale feature.

Day 13 : ink and water - If only it really were just sleep paralysis

Day 14 : G-pen (and a brush for the black) - Shasta's face is not the most comforting sight to see looming over you when you wake up in a strange, dark world.

Day 15 : mapping pen (and others) - This one is a bit of a hodge-podge, it's mostly mapping pen, but I used a brush pen for the black and the effects on the ribbons, and a fineliner for the string.

A bundle of oak, ash and thorn twigs tied with red string will ward off fairies, both good and bad.

Day 16 : gel pens - Wipe that glamour off your face Trispin, Ely isn't impressed. I have a super-fine gel pen (0.25) that I rarely use, so I gave it a try for the hatching on this one. I like it but it's just so scratchy! I had to keep stopping to pick paper fibres out of the nib.

Day 17 : fineliners and grey pen - Lottie's 'friends' snuck up on her while she was reading. Partly inked on a moving train!

Day 18 : brush pen and ink wash - Isaac knows a lot of sung prayers, but he doesn't remember where he learned them. This one was partly inspired by Heikala's lovely process videos, I'd never seen someone get such a fine line out of a Pentel Pocket Brush and I wanted to try it myself. I also found a spare waterbrush pen so I've filled it with diluted ink, which means I can use ink wash when I'm out of the house as well.

Accurate skeletal hand brought to you by A Colour Atlas of Clinical Anatomy, since I was drawing this one at work at the medical library.

Day 19 : cartridge pen - I draw Lena in shiro-lolita a lot because it looks cute, but in reality she and Lucas don't have a lot of money and this old, eyelet lace dress is the only party frock she owns. This is another one finished on the train because I was determined to go to bed when I got home.

Day 20 : gel pen - Oof. This one is definitely in the 'why have I done this to myself' category. I sketched it in the morning, but didn't have time to ink it until late in the evening, and it took until 1:30am! What's worse, this sort of cross-hatching looks like absolute arse until it's nearly finished, so for most of that time I didn't even know how it was going to turn out. Thank goodness it looks okay.

Someone walking past might not see the shadow, but it's there.

Part 1, Bonus Picture, Part 3, Hallowe'en

Inktober 2016 - Part 2

Here's the second batch of Inktober pictures for this year! I'm still finding it a bit harder this year than I did last year because my schedule has become very irregular, some days I barely have any time to draw anything (more than one of these was finished on a moving train), but I'm determined to keep going!

Day 11 - cartridge pen : Lena insists the fortune-telling works better if you use Nan's good tea set.

Day 12 - gel pen : The Crow Boy doesn't mean to be creepy, but he usually is anyway.

Day 13 - brush pen and coloured ink : I was out with a friend and she said "draw Poppet with a pumpkin", so here we are!

Day 14 - g-pen : Lena would probably have a whole wardrobe of dresses like that if she had the money.

Day 15 - gel pen : Tempting with fruit isn't the only way for a changeling to entrap unsuspecting humans. (Ely is also wearing her glamour like a sensible fairy.)

Day 16 - ink and water : Lena is able to use all sorts of tools for divination. She can get much the same results by scrying in a bowl of water, but a crystal ball looks spookier.

Day 17 - g-pen and grey pen : The Mirror Twins have an endless supply of creepy artifacts somewhere. That's probably some variant of a Hand of Glory, but let's not ask where they got it.

Day 18 - brush pen : I made a mistake with this one! I sketched it in the morning and did a first pass in mapping pen, then realised I wouldn't have time to cross-hatch it before work and also couldn't get away with bringing wet media to the library counter, so I had to re-do it in brush pen. Spider matches Nettle on day 4 now though, which is nice.

Day 19 - ink and water : Things look very different when Lucas looks through his bad eye. This is one of the ones inked on a moving train, I was at work from 10am to 9pm and I was determined I was NOT going to keep working on this at home when I really wanted to go to bed!

Day 20 - g-pen and markers : A companion piece for day 6. Child psychics can be a danger to themselves as well as others.

Part 1, Part 3, Hallowe'en

Inktober 2016 - Part 1

It's Inktober again! Here are my first 10 pictures from this year. I'm often tired from work so we're a little short on backgrounds so far, maybe I can make up the gap later in the month.

Day 1 - mapping pen : It's still not a good idea to take fruit from fairies, even ones who go to your school.

Day 2 - brush inking and ink wash : Spider's parents didn't do a great job of dealing with his seemingly ever-increasing psychic powers, but in their defence I don't think I'd handle this very well either.

Day 3 - cartridge pen : Vekh, if you keep saying things like "Oh Meruch, you're... so strong" he's going to start refusing to carry you. I made a bad choice of pen for this one, my cartridge pen ink looks very different to my other pens so I have to use it for the whole picture, and it took forever to fill in the black areas with such a fine nib!

Day 4 - brush pen : It's not a good day for Nettle. (This is probably the pen I should have used for the previous one.)

Day 5 - gel pen : Lena is dowsing for a lost object, probably her brother's house keys.

Day 6 - g-pen and markers : Psychics are generally more dangerous as children than as adults.

Day 7 - fineliners and grey pen : Isaac would make a good guardian angel for a goth child who likes things creepy, always assuming he is an angel.

Day 8 - g-pen : It says something about Spider's personality that he can be so happy about bending that one spoon when Nettle is levitating him, herself and probably half the house without even really trying. I think I've drawn a variation of this picture for the last 3 Inktobers in a row, it's probably fine as long as I keep using different pens, right?

Day 9 - ink and water : I've used surprisingly little ink and water so far this year. Louise likes the rain, but I've never tried to get a rain effect in this technique before so I don't know how happy she'll be with that view.

Day 10 - mapping pen : Lottie lives in a cold place, but her adoptive parents buy her lots of fashionable fur-trimmed coats.

Part 2, Part 3, Hallowe'en

Inktober 2015 - Part 3

All but the last one!

Day 21 - mapping pen and grey pen. My hand was still hurting, so I went with something simple again. Although having said that, those crows were an absolute pig to fill in. Lottie isn't sure how to feel about all these new friends.

Day 22 - ink and water. I went blackberry picking, so Sweetpea and Coriander did too.

Day 23 - mapping pen. This is the only one I drew all month where I just started doodling without planning it. I was pleased with it in the end because this is the most on-model Nat has been in years. He may be a bad influence on his sister.

Day 24 - mapping pen. Oh no! Jessie looks like him already! At least she's still got her clothes on. I was trying to avoid using the same type of inking two days in a row, but I thought day 23 could use a companion piece.

Day 25 - fineliners and markers. This one was hobbled by the sudden and unexpected death of my favourite purple marker. Spider is trying to learn how to bend a spoon, but he's about to be distracted.

Day 26 - ink and water. I'm still working on my backgrounds for the ink and water method, but I may have been too ambitious. Shasta's environment is hard to draw at the best of times.

Day 27 - gel pen. Just in case anyone was unclear on where Lottie's new friends come from.

Day 28 - g-pen and grey pens. Isaac is just floating around, doing dead person stuff.

Day 29 - cartridge pen. This is the same pen I use for ink and water pictures, just without the water. Lena is showing Lucas how to tell fortunes with playing cards. That's a real divination system, so bonus points if you can read what the spread means. (It's ace of spades reversed/10 of hearts/4 of clubs.)

Day 30 - gel pen. This is pleasingly symmetrical, both the second and second-to-last pictures are slightly disappointing pictures of Nat hobbled by a misbehaving gel pen. It must not like him.

Part 1, Part 2, Hallowe'en

Inktober 2015 - Part 2

Here's the next few pictures from this year's Inktober challenge.

Day 11 - G-pen and brush pen. I was short of time so I went with a dolly-style picture again, this time Louise with a bonus Sweetpea.

Day 12 - mapping pen and markers. I hope coloured markers count as 'ink'. Visuk suffers from a skin condition that's a little like eczema and a little like herpes. Flare-ups last about two weeks. Meruch is there to make sure he doesn't scratch.

Day 13 - gel pen. I wanted to check I could still use gel pen reliably after such a long break. Nettle's effect radius for this sort of thing is more than a mile, but you'll be safe as long as she can see you're running away.

Day 14 - brush pen and grey markers. The process for this one went something like this: Brain: Okay, we're going to do something different, something subtle, with a proper background and- Hands: Re-hash a theme we already used with the heaviest pen we have and no background at all, got it!

Day 15 - ink and water. I don't think I've ever drawn the mirror twins in ink and water before, so it seemed a good time to give it a try. It's nice to make new friends. At the graveyard.

Day 16 - mapping pen. Sometimes you're tired and you just want to draw a big pile of hair. Andersen has the biggest hair among my characters so here he is.

Day 17 - ink and water. They're lost. I'm trying to develop a technique for doing decent backgrounds in this style, but it still needs a bit of work. The sky isn't bad I think.

Day 18 - brush inking and ink wash. Fun fact, that roof is the roof of my local church (from memory though). Rooftops and windowsills are the Crow Boy's natural habitat.

Day 19 - G-pen. I wondered what Ely and Trispin would look like in dolly-style, the answer is apparently 'like a much creepier Poppet'.

Day 20 - brush pen. I accidentally crippled my hand copying up notes and could only manage a line drawing. Violet has taught Khet and Vekh anime poses, but they're not as cute when you have terrifying goat eyes. Adorable vampire teeth are okay. These two are perfect for my poor, crippled fingers because as devout Khukh-worshippers (the vrega nature deity) they are forbidden from cutting their hair, wearing piercings, ritual scarification or any of the other fiddly details my vrega usually have. Violet likes it too, since they opted out of the Trial due to the ritual mutilation aspect, and therefore have no back-spikes and can give a decent piggy-back ride. At a relatively short 6', Khet also doesn't loom over her quite as badly as most of them do.


Part 1, Part 3, Hallowe'en