drawing trouble

NaNoWriMo 2019, Negative Day 2

Here it is, the second day of NaNoWriMo and I haven’t written a thing.

It feels great. So much time to do other stuff. I went to Costco today and bought a 20 liter jar of mayonnaise.

I am thinking I should keep up on the drawing now, because it’s fun and relaxing. But what to do? Possibilities:

  • Finish that book on learning how to sketch
  • Go back to one of the earlier Inktobers and do all of its prompts, either one per day or following whatever whimsical order I decide
  • Go back to my 2019 prompts and fix/rework the ones I’m not happy with or just try coloring all of them like Ted Turner
  • Start a gum gum person comic
  • Something else
  • Or maybe write something, just not something for NaNoWriMo

A lot of possibilities. I will choose by…tomorrow.

Inktober 2019 #31: Ripe

My first idea was a laundry hamper full of stinky socks. My second thought was a giant watermelon. Then a bunch of bananas.

Inexorably I ended up drawing a sweaty but athletic gum gum person.

Some personal Inktober Fun Facts™:

  • This is the first regular drawing I’ve done since 1985 or so
  • Every sketch was done using:
    • iPad Pro 10.5 inch (2017 model)
    • ProCreate paint app using the Studio Pen brush
    • Apple Pencil
  • Gum gum people are featured in 9 drawings; drawing them is a kind of meditation
  • My favorite gum gum person sketch is for the prompt SLING
  • The most “fail, start over” drawings I did for a prompt was five, for the prompt TREAD

I often found little mistakes or things I didn’t like in sketches, but never went back to fix them over the course of the month, with one exception–the prompt for INJURED is different on this blog than the original posted to Instagram. I fixed the arms and head because it just ended up bugging me every time I looked at them.

Overall, this was a fun experience. Much like discovering outdoor photography last year thanks to a kidney infection, I chose to do this at the last minute and am pleasantly surprised to have stuck to it.

Now I have to decide if I keep drawing and if so, what do I draw? An endless parade of gum gum people? Possibly!

Inktober 2019 #26: Dark

This one should have been easy, but stumped me so much I was a day late. In the end I started with an entirely black background (dark, get it?) then waited to see what I’d do next. Spooky eyes, as it turns out. If I had come up with this idea right away, it would have been my quickest sketch, by far.