Inktober Half Marathon

I had eight sketches to draw in my planed marathon for #Inktober yesterday, but instead I could only manage four - hence the title.

I found a wonderful little café down the road with calm music and a great creative ambiance, ordered my coffee and settled down to draw. It was only a couple of minutes when the next song started to play that I decided to listen to my own music. I can only listen to soft Jazz or Gregorian chants when trying to be creative. Anything else is distracting - even classical music.

It'd been a while since I had drawn. Even putting pen to paper seemed a little odd, since I type everything now.

1 Ring.

This was the simplest theme of all, yet the most difficult to draw. I'm so out of practice that my lines are not as clean as they should be. I used to have really clean, precise lines in my time.

The ring is also a little wonky, but let's agree it was forged by hand by an apprentice. One of a kind type stuff.

2 Mindless.

This theme is the one I found most difficult to interpret. It took me a while to even decide what to draw.

I had some dark parts of the image to shade, or "colour in" as I put it in my previous post, but I decided to use the fineliner pen. Bad idea. I quickly ran out of ink in that pen, even though it was new. It turns out you get what you pay for. The ultra cheap pen I bought from Wilko in a pack of 5, apparently was basically dry.

I promptly switched to the marker to cover the larger areas, but finished it off on the edges with the ball point pen. The rest of the drawings were also done with the Hilton ball point pen.

3 Bait.

At this point I think my hand was starting to get used to holding a pen again. I reverted to an old shading technique I used to do with a pencil, and I think it worked.

Ball point pens can be used like pencils because they are pressure sensitive. The harder you press, the darker the impression created. This is useful for shading with a pen.

My straight lines had also started to improve. The bait itself, which is some kind of worm I guess, is a little larger than intended. That's another thing I have to improve - relative sizes of things.

4 Freeze

Ah! This took me to my early days of comic book illustration. This is what I spent my childhood doing when I was supposed to be listening to the teacher.

Illustration is very good practice. It's similar to street photography. You are trying to fill a rectangle with a story. I always say this is probably why I got into photography - especially street photography. They are very similar.

I was going to embark on the fifth drawing, the theme of which is "Build", but I ran out of time. The café kicked us out, and I was tired anyway. It's been a half-marathon. The catchup continues on another day.

Thank you for reading.
A Palnet original