INKtober 2014

For the first time, I'm doing thissss: http://mrjakeparker.com/inktober

"Every October, artists all over the world take on the InkTober drawing challenge by doing one ink drawing a day the entire month. I created InkTober in 2009 as a challenge to improve my inking skills and develop positive drawing habits. It has since grown into a worldwide endeavor with thousands of artists taking on the challenge every year.

Anyone can do InkTober, just pick up a pen and start drawing."

Simple! But drawing with ink is difficult for me (actually, all forms of drawing/painting are, huehuehue), so I'm trying to improve with this challenge. I'm also gonna draw each day, even though you don't have to; you can do a "half-marathon" and draw only every second day.
I learned about this challenge today :D

So, expect a drawing from me every day this month. Please scream at me if I fail to post.

Day 1: a fat baby dragon :3


If anyone wants to do this as well, feel free to post your pics in this thread, or create a new one just for yourself ;)

Wow, this sounds like so much fun. I probably won't be able to participate though because I already have a few art projects this month. I love your chubby dragon, so cute <3 You have a great inking style. Can't wait to see more.

What a cool challenge! Your dragon is adorable :3

Thank you both ^_^
Cross-hatching FTW! I might try some kind of more dramatic shading at some point, we'll see if I can come up with an appropriate theme...

Day 2: Sora from Kingdom Hearts. The hand above him belongs to Kairi.
The pose is slightly awkward, I think... And his hand is too small, but whatever ^^ I'm not gonna worry about little mistakes, I want to have fun while drawing.

I love your Sora <3 The details in his outfit look awesome. I wish you had drawn his whole body though because I love his shoes :p

I ran out of space on the paper, so I couldn't draw his whole body :3 Thank you, I think he turned out quite cute ^^

Unlike this next guy.

Day 3: Necro neko Namtar (the drummer of Carach Angren) :D The band updated their profile picture on their page on FB, and Namtar happens to be standing right in front a drawing that is behind him on the wall, so that it looks like he has cat ears. So I drew this :D
Not my best work, but definitely not my worst, either!

Day 4: fairy dragon!

Day 5: an octopus. Never drawn one before! That shading style has killed people. Most only have gone insane.

I'm doing pretty good so far ^^

These are seriously cool. I don't see ink artwork very often!

Inking is mostly used by comic artists, and people who color their linearts (they usually just show the colored version), so it's probably not that "visible" compared to, say, paintings. I'm happy you're liking these ^^

Day 6, a random character that just happened to come into my mind... The next pic should be better, since it inspired me to write a whole story.

Day 7: a diseased raven. This is the character that inspired me to write a story ^^ Drawn with a ballpoint pen; I washed the blue away in Photoshop.

Day 8. Didn't have much time or energy to draw yesterday, because I spent the day cleaning and cooking, so I had to be a bit lazy with the drawing :3

The octopus is my favorite so far ^^

Mine, too ^^ That and the raven. This next one's pretty cool as well.

Day 9: LIGHTS, for Moonchild Justin's birthday :3 From the album cover of Little Machines.



I also colored it! With soft pastels, now my desk is all dusty with color powder, haha.

Day 10. This is a rather pointless doodle :D But I slept badly yesterday, so... meh. I started drawing a tree, but I turned the paper and continued and it started to look like a dragon, so this is the result. A rock dragon :D I shall call him Pebbles.
This is the first drawing that doesn't have a pencil sketch, so it's just ballpoint pen. I did go over the lineart with a black pen to make it stand out more.



Btw, my Lights-drawing got featured in her fanart gallery: http://www.littlemachinestour.com/a/ig-827739803753471726_1375842902?utm_content=ig-827739803753471726_1375842902&utm_source=Instagram&utm_medium=instagramcomment&utm_campaign=Instagram%20Notifications

Day 11. I saw some dudes installing a roof across the street the other day, and they had these little flamethrowers/blowtorches so they reminded me of the plane boarding scene from the Fifth Element, the one with pest control :D

Oops, I forgot to add day 12 yesterday :v Well, here it is. It looked better and better the more black I added.



*****

Day 13, another ballpoint pen drawing without pencil sketches. I also shot a video while drawing this, so I'll post that as well after I edit it!
I just drew whatever came to mind as I worked on it; started with the third eye, decided I wanted to draw curly hair, then came the tiara and then I thought the back looked empty, so... butterfly wings :3 I thought I'd make the wings "bleed", and well as her eyes, but I thought it would look too sad or morbid, so I stopped here...

I finished the video and managed to upload it, damn that was difficult! It wouldn't show the thumbnail at first, so I had to upload it twice ;_;

Day 14. I've fallen behind with these a bit :D But I've been... "busy". And sleeping.
Here's an armored baby zombie riding a chicken! (Minecraft)

Day 15. Aren't I experimental :v Drawn with one line.

I love day 13, it's absolutely gorgeous!

That's one of my favorites as well ^^ Drawing with ballpoint is so easy, usually I don't even need pencil sketches.

//Day 16 (almost skipped this one here! D:) It's a self-portrait, since it was inspired by the pet name my fiancé has given me :3 It's a made up Finnish-gibberish word, so no one can guess what it is, bwahaha. It's eating chocolate.



*****

Day 17. I wanted to draw something with movement and angle to practice foreshortening, which I've never been good at, so I used an old 3D-model I've made of this character as a reference for the pose. It's Cammy from the game series called Street Fighter ^^ She's my favorite character. This move is called Cannon Strike, in which she jumps pretty high and makes this flying kick towards the opponent :D

Day 18. I asked my fiancé what I should draw since I'm running out of ideas. "Draw a marmuski". So here's a marmuski :B
Plump creatures seem to be my thing.

OMG, so cool how many different styles/ techniques you've done. I do agree that your plump creatures are adorable xD <3

Yeah, I do many different styles, since I don't really have a style of my own... I mean, you can see that all of these are by me, there's something that gives it away, but they're still not the same. If that makes sense? :D

I've failed to upload the newest ones here ;_; LET'S FIX IT

19. Quiet from Metal Gear Solid V. I tried to go for the style Yoji Shinkawa has, but it's quite hard to replicate it with fineliners instead of brushes and real ink.



20. Everyone knows these guys :D



21. A whimsical feather tattoo design.



22. Lost your keys? Misplaced the remote control? Blame it on the hairless, droopy eared jerk fairies who think it's funny to move around other people's possessions. Initially I had a basic long-haired fairy in mind, but something happened as I drew and it got darker and mischievous O.o So I made up this creature.



23. Hihi ^_^



24. A skull.



25. I'm not good at drawing anything mechanical/technical/scifi, but I tried anyway. I think she's drowning/suffocating; I'm not sure whether she's in some liquid or just floating in space.



26. A gecko dragon thing :D



27. A mouse adventurer ^^



JUST FOUR MORE TO GO

Everything you draw is so amazing! You're very talented.

I don't see that as a compliment anymore: everyone can draw in my opinion, but what makes you good at it is years of practice and understanding of form and color. Though abstract is an art form as well ;) So when you say "you're talented" it sounds like the artist can just fart masterpieces, belittling all the work they have done to get to that point...
It's like, no one would say to me "you're talented at English". Everyone knows I've studied it for years :D It has taken a lot of mistakes, checking from the teacher what would be correct, practicing writing, reading dictionaries... Though English has always been easy for me; I've never really studied the grammar and I was always the top of my class... I enjoyed watching my classmates struggle with it xD

But I'll take it as a compliment anyway, thank you :) I guess it means that whatever I show you, it meets certain standards, and I have done something right.

You can see what I mean when you look at my drawings. For example, the skull is pretty realistic, while the mouse is cartoonish and his toes are all wrong! I've studied the human skull from ALL angles, inside and out, with different features and different stages of decay when I made a 3D-model of it. For the mouse, I wasn't even going for a cartoonish look... I've never drawn a mouse before, and even though I looked at reference pictures (especially for the toes), I couldn't draw him properly. I'd have to draw more of them to nail it :)

Behind every masterpiece are piles of sketches, anatomy studies and tests for poses, clothes, accessories... that the audience never gets to see.

ANYWAYS, the final batch of drawings!

28. The World Turtle, with a twist :) He's usually portrayed with beautiful forests, rivers and mountains. But I figure the world isn't exactly like that anymore... More things I can't draw: cities and rotting turtles :D



29. Simple cat silhouettes =^.^=



30. An elderly woman. Another drawing I made with just ballpoint pen. So no pencil sketches or references. And it shows :D Her features are a bit off, but I think it's still believable enough. Her nose should be way bigger, because everything starts to sag as you age. That's why the elderly seem to have big noses and ears. Little details like that make your art better. You don't get them with "talent" ;)



31. The fat baby dragon from day 1 revisited :3 Something for Halloween!



AND IT IS DONE. This was an interesting challenge: I've never drawn every day for such a long period of time, I got better at some techniques, I drew things I've never drawn before, and I've never made my art open for public before (I posted on Instagram and my FB album is public). I might do this again next year :)
On to my next challenge: 21 days of push-ups D:

I think of talent as also having the patience to work that hard at something, putting passion into it without giving up. I certainly didn't mean it was easy. I've studied a lot of techniques and try to practice, but I give in to my frustration and stop for long periods of time, so it's impressive to me when I see people excel past something that I know can be difficult. It's also great to see people who able to grow in their art, which is also part of what I think of as "talent." I've seen some artists who practice for years and take every class possible, yet when an opportunity to improve comes up they pretend it never happened and leave mistakes un-corrected. There are also times when a piece looks technically perfect, but it's clear that the artist lacked passion or effort.