inktober

In keeping with the season, a pumpkin throwing up its guts:

I have suddenly started to really struggle with the prompts and I’m not sure why, so I’m blaming 2020 in total. I was about to give up on Hope, today’s prompt, and tried just putting down the word to see what would happen. Gum Gum People followed, and so it is that they are attaching balloons to hope, to try to lift it out of the mire (which is probably 2020). There are a few things off on the drawing that I may go back and fix–I don’t like how the balloons don’t really look attached, for one, and the leftmost balloon has its reflective part out of line with the others, but we’ll see. At this point I’m just satisfied to get anything out.

I used three ink brushes in Procreate for this, continuing to expand my repertoire:

• Studio pen (my go to, used for the Gum Gum People and balloons)
• Brush pen (used for the letters)
• Dry ink (used for the mire the letters are sinking into and the shading on the letters)

After struggling for so long last night, today I made two decisions before starting:

• Keep it quick–no more than 15 minutes from start to finish, if possible
• Use a new (ink) brush

I chose to use the ink bleed brush, which gives the lines a fuzzy look. And I finished in around 15 minutes, making only minor modifications to the sketch. I present TEETH on this…whatever it is:

I went through three sketches before finally ending up with the one below. The iPad was going bonkers with the palm rejection and Procreate keep doing things like switching to the erase or a different color randomly. By the end I was just glad to be done.

I started late, so this is a fairly quick sketch, using a mix of studio and brush pens in Procreate. It is a RODENT, specifically a rat. Sorry, no Gum Gum People this time.

A razor blade, to be exact. I am now three four four on Gum Gum People (hee hee).

I used reference for the radio, which took a long time to get looking “right” because I didn’t want to cheat with real straight lines. I now understand why the Draw a Box tutorials have you start by drawing pages of lines. Drawing lines is hard!

I also had trouble with the gum gum person’s legs, of all things. He’s sitting on a beanbag chair, for which I used no reference. The shading makes it look like it might be a lump of coal instead. I can live with that.

And yes, Prompt #3 is currently missing. I hope to get it done tomorrow(ish).

I tried a few things here, the first being a campfire with a wisp of smoke floating up from it. It wasn’t very good. I tried a cigarette on the ground, with smoke wisping up from it. This was even worse. I started to think I might have to come back to the prompt late. This isn’t what I wanted for the second day, so I began thinking about how I could somehow incorporate a gum gum person and that’s how I ended up with a gum gum person conjuring fire. Kind of weird, but sometimes you just roll with these things.

It’s time for Inktober again, woo.

The first prompt is FISH and I cleverly drew a fish:

This year I am using:

• iPad Pro 12.9 inch
• 2nd generation Apple Pencil
• Procreate

Today’s prompt was done using the brush pen and eraser. A lot of eraser. The brush pen allows for great control of stroke thickness and opacity, which are two things I am good at bumbling around with, hence the eraser. The drawing is a combination of careful construction and winging it. A flying fish, if you will.

I am officially ready for Inktober 2020. Well, I still need to get the screen protector on my iPad Pro, but I’ll do that tomorrow–two whole days before!