inktober 2017 part 1

It is October. It is cold. I really want to just hide in bed with my electric tea kettle and weep softly to myself. But for some reason I am doing inktober and just keep showing up. Here's my first eleven drawings. 

Day one. I never use the prompts for things like this. Prompts are hard enough for me to work from anyway, but I just generally don't like restrictions. So I started off perched in the corner of the bathtub watching over the beardie I've been babysitting. Trust me, it was nerve-wracking since I am using  the backs of the pages in the full sketchbook from last post.

Day two. A hand. Really my go to now, as you all know. I've been struggling a bit with inspiration, so I keep just falling back to hands.

Day three. One drawing exercise I like is drawing a self portrait, looking down. It's good practice in perspective and also makes for a pretty interesting drawing. 

Day four. I tend to over do shading when I draw because I always bee line towards realism, which is weird because I don't actually follow through with the time it takes to achieve realism, so I end up with a lot of shading stylized. Anyway, I tried not to do that and really liked the results. I've been trying in the other art I have been doing to put in more bold colors and interpretation instead of beelining for the comfort zone of crappy inefficient photocopier.

Day five. I just was not feeling it. I started in for a super detailed lizard hand (because I almost started another me hand) and just lost interest. The result is a sketch I really enjoy because it gets the gist across fine without a ton of extra. 

Day 6. Back to hands and messy shading again. Although I do still like the hands and I enjoy doing them, and enjoy doing art I enjoy...

Day 7. ...I really really want to not let this be my new rut. At least today has some color, although I still went right back to that sloppy ass ugly cross hatching. I need someone to come 'round with a spray bottle and watch me while I draw.

Day eight. I actually missed a day and made this up the next. It might be yet another hand, but the bold lines and minimal shading please me greatly. This style feels so much cleaner while still looking like "my" style. Well, kinda. My sloppy crosshatching and over shading make everything I draw look kinda filthy, really.

Day nine. Just wanting to goof around a bit, I started with drawing some ceramic teeth I had lying around and then decided to give them a mouth and a monster. The kinda realish and gory look of the mouth teamed with the derpy ass monster cracks me up, even though I wish I had taken the rest of the drawing to the same level as the mouth.

Day ten. Oh gee. another fucking hand. Started painting with the inks a bit though, which is divine.

Day eleven. Almost blew it off. Almost did a hand. Almost did a cliche' mermaid. Ended up doing a little conceptual deal of how I have been feeling especially the last few weeks. No matter how much light I sprinkle on, how much I create, how much I get my exercise and sleep and three meals a day and blah blah blah, I still feel like I am being consumed by a black mass. But I keep showing up and sprinkling the light on and hoping it will feel less that way tomorrow.

That's all I got this week. Keep sprinkling on the light and I'll show up again next week. 

Pie Journaling

I see a lot of hashtag challenges floating around on instagram and I think they are all super dumb.

Ok, not really. I think anything that gives people the extra motivation they need to be creative is awesome, but I, personally, have never been a huge fan of oddly specific daily commitments. I already made a post babbling about doing things every day earlier this month, so I'll cut to the chase.

Things are dumb and hectic and stressful here in my little corner of the world, so I need something silly and something to look forward to doing daily. Some ding dang ME time. Which is why for the next 30 days I am committing to eating pie and journaling every day. I already journal every day, so really the commitment is to eating pie.

I'm inviting people to join me in this venture by using #30daysofpieandjournaling to tag your pies and pages on instagram (or wherever else you can tag shit, let's make this a thing!)

Literal pie is preferred, but any sort of self care works. A nice cup of coffee, sushi shaped into the form of a pie. Hell, go ahead and take your journal into a bubble bath (and bring your pie and coffee with).

I have a blueberry/raspberry pie to get through before I make another, but next on my pie list is either a shoo-fly pie or a meat and fenberry pie (or both at once). I also have intentions to make quiche, chocolate silk pie, perhaps a frittata or two, maybe even one of those hamburger tater-tot pies (if I can think of a non dairy substitute for cream of mushroom soup...). 

Anyway, this is my official announcement and fair warning that I'll be talking a lot about pie for the next month. It's really amazing we got this many blog posts in before something dumb like this happened...