Inktober 2019: day 25 - ink and water

She emerged unharmed from a deadly house fire, and now when she touches objects they ignite.

This is the same girl from day 21, somewhat earlier in life. By the time she’s employed as a servant she’s learned to control whatever is happening to her, but at first she would leave charred footprints everywhere she went.

I was tabling at London MCM from the 25th to the 27th, so I tried to keep them simple for those three days.

Inktober 2019: day 24 - ink and water

This isn’t quite as dangerous as it looks.

This one was originally going to have a dramatic background, but I was travelling to London with a suitcase I could barely lift, so this was all I could manage. I think I might re-draw it; it might be interesting to have a true comparison between what I had in my head and what I was actually able to do within the limits of the challenge.

Inktober 2019: day 19 - brush inking and coloured ink

If they fall down without time to prepare, they don’t come out right.

Inktober 2019: day 17 - Pentel pocket brush and felt tips

His whispers blend right in with your own thoughts, until you can’t tell the difference.

Inktober 2019: days 14 & 15 - ink and water

“Those thus blessed shall ye know by a stain of blood that cleareth not, neither by water nor by milk.”

Something very exciting has been happening this Inktober! I’ve had Meilee and Lin since I was a teenager, but I could never get a bead on who they are or what their story is. Now all of a sudden I’m learning a lot about them! I normally try hard not to do the same thing two days in a row, but I didn’t know about their port wine stains until a couple of days ago, so I drew these two back to back so I could post them as a pair.

Inktober 2019: day 12 - brush inking and coloured ink

The way Nettle’s hair waves around when she uses her powers is a sign of poor control.

I wanted to practice using those rigger brushes a bit more, so I drew something pretty simple. They’re so hard to control! You can get more ink in them at once without losing the fine tip though.

Inktober 2019: day 6 - brush inking and coloured ink

One foot in front of the other, repeat as necessary.

I inked this with some rigger brushes that I’ve never been brave enough to use before, they have minds of their own!

Inktober 2018 : Day 23 - fineliners and felt tip pen

I usually try to avoid using the same medium two days in a row, but yesterday’s fineliners were plastic nibs and these are normal fibre nibs, so it’s okay, right?

I think I have one more character I can draw for this set, as long as I can think of another way to ink her.

Inktober 2018 : Day 22 - plastic nib fineliners

May-Lee has spent so long being told to do painful or uncomfortable things, she no longer thinks to stop herself getting wet or cold.

I had a long day at work, so I’m adding another one to my ‘oops I drew another girl looking straight ahead’ set. I wonder how many of these I can do before I run out of appropriate characters or different ways of inking?

Inktober 2018 : Day 12 - fountain pentel and felt tip pen

Given how often I draw it you could be forgiven for thinking that Franz spends most of his life maiming people with his bare hands, but I’m actually drawing the same scene over and over.

I think I’m starting to get the hang of the fountain pentel, which I have affectionately nicknamed ‘the splatter pen’. There’s something nice about the scrappy lines it makes.

Inktober 2018 : Day 7 - ink and water

Spider is a powerful telepath, but his telekinesis is weak and he’d like to develop it, so he spends a lot of time trying to bend spoons. Sometimes he can do it and sometimes he can’t.

I didn’t draw him in his usual woolly jumper because I had a sudden desire to show you all that he’s kind of hairy.

Crows

Here are some crows! The left-hand one was painted for a birthday card, the right-hand one was... well I traced the watercolour one and this is what it wanted to be I suppose. It's watching us all.

Coloured Ink

 Lately I ordered some nice pen accessories, including a cartridge converter for my Rotring pen and some coloured cartridges for my cheapo £5 cartridge pens, so I drew Nettle and Spider while I was messing around testing them. I’ve never done spot colour with ink and water, it looks pretty nice I think.

Having said that, I’m not a fan of this ink. It’s a weird colour called Bilberry that can’t decide if it’s blue, purple or black. (I tweaked it in photoshop to make it more purple.) They do one called Imperial Purple that might have been a better bet. Ah well, next time.

Adventures in Spot Colour

I was once told at a portfolio review that I'm 'afraid of colour', which I think was fair (at least at the time). I wonder if that's why I like spot colour so much? I find it really satisfying to do a mostly black and white drawing and then pick out just a couple of details in colour.

These are my two favourite pro heroes from My Hero Academia, Eraser Head and Present Mic. I'm really enjoying the recent surge of anime about western-style superheroes.

Inktober 2017 - Part 3

Day 21 : fineliners and felt tip pens - Eventually the school agreed that Nettle should just sit out of P.E. lessons.

Day 22 : mapping pen and brush pen - "It followed us home, can we keep it?"

I was hoping for this one to have a more scary feel, but the Mirror Twins seem to be too cute and are taking away from the horror of the black dog. I'm pleased with the composition though.

Day 23 : G-pen - Tree fairies of his type don't usually venture very far from their home tree, so Sweetpea has never seen a sweet chestnut before.

Day 24 : brush inking and coloured ink - I regretted not using coloured ink for the flames on day 1 every time I opened the sketchbook, so I finally relented and did a new version of the same concept, this time with coloured ink.

Day 25 : cartridge pen - Lottie is fairly sure she shouldn't talk to the Crow Boy, but she doesn't really want him to leave either.

Day 26 : mapping pen - Sweetpea's ear frills, like the leaves on his tree, turn brown and fall off in Autumn. Also like the leaves on his tree, they tend not to go at the same time.

Day 27 : fineliners and grey pens - The next three were all done while helping Sammy at MCM! It's very hard to find time to do anything else while at a convention, so I feel quite proud of myself for not falling behind. While we were on a bus Sammy requested some more pictures of Poppet's friends, 'with a musical instrument', so here are the two we didn't see in the teacup picture earlier.

Day 28 : brush pen and ink wash - Louise's house also plays host to a slightly alarming type of house fairy called Lob-Lie-By-The-Fire. He looks a little more frightening than most house fairies, but he just wants to sit by your fire and help with the washing up.

I still can't quite believe I managed to do this one after spending 9 hours selling comics in a packed convention hall, and a further 45 minutes on a bus.

Day 29 : fineliners and felt tip pens - I caught con lurgy so this was one of the hardest ones to do all month, I felt dreadful while I was drawing it! It's also very hard to draw when one has to stop every 5 seconds to blow one's nose. Still, it looks pretty good I think.

Leilus has a lot of features he could choose as his 'I am a demon' warning sign, but the tongue is the obvious best choice because it can be hidden inside his mouth. The stereotypical spaded tail would probably be the worst.

Day 30 : ink and water - Well, it seems I finally ran out of steam and had to settle for one that I really wasn't happy with. I wanted to draw Nat one more time because it was the last day, but I was still ill and didn't have the brain power to get him on model or work out a good composition. I probably should have used a different pen too, but I'd hardly used ink and water at all! I should have been sensible and opted for something with less risk, but these are the lessons we learn in Inktober.

One of the reasons Nat keeps his hair so long is that it's usefully prehensile.

Just a Hallowe'en picture still to come!

Part 1, Bonus Picture, Part 2, Hallowe'en

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 2017 - Bonus Picture!

Day 9.5 : brush pen and coloured ink - I convinced a co-worker to walk home along the canal path with me, and we happened to see a grey heron along the way. She knew I was doing Inktober and asked if I could incorporate the heron and some Autumn leaves into the picture for the day.

I suppose really the answer was 'no', since I always try to draw my own characters during Inktober and I didn't want to break my theme, so I ended up doing an extra picture rather than incorporating the heron into the picture for the day. She was still happy with it though. I scanned it with and without the coloured ink because I was worried I was going to mess it up!

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Hallowe'en

Inktober 2017 - Part 1

It's finally here! Inktober is my favourite art challenge of the year, here's the first 10 days!

Day 1 : brush inking - In the spirit of self-improvement I started with a brush, since I don't usually ink that way. I think it came out quite well, although in hindsight I wish I'd done the fire in coloured ink so it would stand out a bit more. I don't know if Nat needs more practice controlling it or if he wants it to run up his fingers like that.

Day 2 : G-pen - The Mirror Twins have many friends to talk to. So on this day I was out of the house from 6:45am to 10pm because I had a shift at both jobs, AND I had come down with a horrible, horrible cold, so frankly I'm extremely proud of this one just because, despite all of that, it looks okay.

Day 3 : fineliners and grey pen - This was another long day and another day full of cold, so I'm also very happy that Sweetpea looks okay in this one! I've never drawn him dolly-style before.

Day 4 : fineliners and felt tip - Franz's nosebleed is brought to you by the dire state of my nose on this day. I'd had the cold for 3 days at this point and my nose was shredded from all the tissues! I also forgot that I try not to use the same pens two days in a row, I was very tired.

Day 5 : gel pen - I think it hurts Jessie to channel lightning through her body like that, but it's the only combat magic she knows. I can't believe how well this one turned out since I was still trying to get rid of that cold and still at work!

Day 6 : fineliners and felt tip - Finally I had a day off work! It was such a relief! I realised last year I've done a version of this picture every Inktober since 2014 (in a different ink each time), so now I want to keep going and see whether I run out of ideas or ink methods first.

This year Nettle is trying to practice moving only the things she wants to move, but I don't think she'll ever be able to use her powers without some of her hair floating around. Turning the pages for Spider is by far the hardest part of this exercise.

Day 7 : mapping pen - Caspian finds it harder to hold his human shape when he feels threatened. This one was a lesson in paying attention to ALL your materials, I thought my pen nib wasn't cooperating but it turned out to be the ink, not the pen.

Day 8 : ink wash - I wanted to use masking fluid for this one but I turned out not to have any, so instead I just had to be really, really careful painting around Louise.

Later in life she will know better than to follow the forest lights, but when she first moved in with her foster parents she didn't know what they were.

Day 9 : gel pen - If you pick a magical fight with Nat under the assumption that he'll be as unprepared as his sister, you will get yourself seriously hurt. I sort of wish this one had more movement, but at the time I wanted him to look more controlled than Jessie.

Day 10 : ink and water - One of Sweetpea's Autumn jobs is to bless and plant some of the acorns from his tree, to ensure its children grow in good spots.

Bonus Picture, Part 2, Part 3, Hallowe'en