Inktober 2019: day 1 - ink and water

Spider often 'falls asleep' in lessons, but he isn't always sleeping.

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It's finally time for my favourite art challenge of the year, Inktober! I've started doing cover pages in my sketchbooks since last year, so I did one in preparation yesterday. I also go a full-time job since last Inktober, so this year will be a real test of my skills. I'll have to do each piece in the 90 minutes I can squeeze in before work, how is this going to turn out?

I'm never sure if people know what I mean by 'ink and water' - it's a drawing in water-soluble ink which I then move around with water. I've never tried to do it on only part of the picture before, how does it look?

Mermay 2019

If you follow me on twitter or instagram you'll know I attempted the Mermay challenge this year! The idea is to draw a mermaid every day during the month of May, not unlike Inktober but with the subject chosen for you instead of the medium. Here are all 31 of my completed mermaids!

I tried my best, but I wasn't quite able to finish these inside May. I fell behind a couple of times and had 3 mermaids left to do in June. I also spent more than one day on the last one, since it was already late.

Since the medium isn't restricted in this challenge I did a lot of experimenting with techniques I might not normally use, mostly colouring with a set of cheap novelty pencils (2, 19, 21, 24 and 27) and trying to paint with water-soluble felt tips (8, 13, 14, 23 and 25). I don't know if the felt tips are ever going to look quite the way I want them to, but I was pleasantly surprised by the kind of results I could get out of the cheap pencils with a little patience. (They don't scan very well though, there isn't enough pigment.)

I'll be printing these in a little zine now that they're all done, so please look out for that!

Festive Plants

A little out of season, here are my Christmas cards from last year! I went with simple botanical paintings, and I honestly wasn't sure how they were going to turn out as I hadn't done any botanical art in a while. In the end I was really pleased with them! The originals all went out to friends and family members as usual, but I'd like to try some different plants and flowers in this style now that I know how to do it.

The four at the bottom are my favourites from the set, I think if I had to pick one favourite it would be the Hellebore. I was so pleased with that one when I finished it!

Sketchbook Flipthrough

A friend of mine gave me this little sketchbook for Christmas last year, and I decided on a whim to try to fill the whole thing before the end of February! Unfortunately the whim hit me on the 12th of February, so I didn't quite make it, but I did finish it in only just over a month.

I'm still feeling inspired to see what I can do with cheaper pens and normal office supplies, so a lot of these are done with biros, gel pens, mini colouring pencils and so on.

(This is the best quality my poor old phone could process, please be nice to it.)