koalie

Inktober 2020 days 26-31

Day 26: “Hide”

Black and grey ink drawing of a tabby cat partially hiding in a basket

Having drawn Gizmo the day before, it was only fair to draw Jedi 🙂 She hides in the new old basket that I got from my friend Nico’s mum.

I used a 0.05 mm black Graphik line maker from Derwent (still almost out of ink), a black ink Brushpen by Pentel, light grey ink Brush Writer by Kuretake, and white acrylic 0.7 mm Posca pen for the whiskers.

Day 27: “Music”

Black and grey ink drawing of an Indian young woman holding a sitar, and their reflection on a shiny floor.

An abstract-ish theme with ample choices to draw from. Perhaps too ample! I spent a lot of time researching the best subject for me since none was obvious.

This is a sitar. I drew an Indian woman holding it. I found it crooked and too small, so I added a reflection underneath.

I used a 0.05 mm black Graphik line maker from Derwent and a light grey ink Brush Writer from Kuretake.

Day 28: “Float”

Black ink drawing of a group of people on a boat approaching a giant woman asleep in shallow water. This is in Venice. There are a couple of sea gulls.

Ah, another favourite! This is after a drawing by Moebius. The original is in colour and the woman floats in lilac water. She has a longer nose and her head is tilted slightly more upwards in the original. But I am not after “identical”, I am after “proportionate”.

I only used a 0.05 mm black Graphik line maker from Derwent.

Day 29: “Shoes”

Black and grey ink drawing of the feet, legs and dress of tango dancers.

Midway into the month I saved a photograph of a woman trail running and her gorgeous running shoes, taken from close to the ground. But on the day “shoes” came up, I had lost interest. Or I grew more ambitious with my drawings. In any case, I put my love of running shoes on the side and looked for tango shoes and the legs of the dancers.

I used a 0.05 mm black Graphik line maker from Derwent, a black ink Brushpen by Pentel, and my light grey ink Brush Writer by Kuretake.

Day 30: “Ominous”

Black and grey ink drawing of a desert scene where a levitating object looking like a giant egg or thick immense petal, being approached by a tiny-looking helicopter.

I suppose I was still under the influence of the “float” prompt! My options ranged from drawing ominous clouds, to ominous things. And having tried clouds without much satisfaction on the kind of paper my artbook is made of, I recalled a movie, “Arrival” that featured ominous alien objects hovering in various places of the world, that looked like giant eggs or thick immense petals depending on the angle.

I used a 0.05 mm black Graphik line maker from Derwent, a black ink Brushpen by Pentel, the light grey ink Brush Writer by Kuretake, and a water brush pen in places.

Day 31: “Crawl”

Black and grey ink drawing of a leopard climbing up a tree trunk.

Leopard crawling up a tree. Love this!

I had saved a few reference photographs of big cats but had thought it was too difficult, because of the spots in particular, or the stripes, or the mane. But today’s prompt reminded me of those, and I thought I should at least try.

Oddly, today I felt confident enough to forego any pencil sketch and draw directly with the Pentel black ink Brushpen, and it went all right! I then used the light grey ink Brush Writer from Kuretake for shadows.

(Watch the 40-second time-lapse)

That concludes Inktober 2020! I am thankful to Virginie G. for nudging me and a friend of hers, the day before October 1: that coaxed me into action. I had almost decided I was not going to, but I was immediately glad she made me change my mind 🙂

And now that November is upon us, I am hanging on to my drawing tools for… another go at Drawvember!

Inktober 2020 days 21-25

Day 21: “Sleep”

Black ink drawing of a smiling young man propped against a pillow, looking tired, with a newborn asleep on him.

This is Ilya, born a day or two prior, sleeping next to Yves.

My brother was hanging out with me when I drew this. He looked at the reference photo and doubted I could draw this. I wasn’t sure either because I’m not very good at drawing people but I said that I’d try a few more minutes before giving up. But I did, and when I was done he said “what, already?!” 🙂

Done with my black 0.05 mm Graphik line maker from Derwent, which still has enough ink in it.

Day 22: “Chef”

Black and grey ink drawing in cartoon style of a chef with a long thin curly moustache and a huge chef hat that looks like a cloud and covers his eyes, holding a small platter with a tiny pastry on it.

I love this one! ❤️

I had a few ideas of what I wanted to draw: I remembered taking a few photographs of cooks in Japan but none of them were lending themselves to the medium. I searched for images of Italian chefs one would find on vintage advertisements and this one really appealed to me!

I used mainly the grey ink brush pen by Kuretake and black ink Pentel Brushpen for shading.

Day 23: “Rip”

Black and grey ink drawing of superman tearing open his shirt and revealing the capital S of his superhero costume.

A very angular and muscular looking Superman!

Black 0.05 mm Graphik line maker from Derwent, and grey ink brush pen by Kuretake.

Day 24: “Dig”

Black and grey ink drawing of a goofy t-rex holding a spade and digging a hole.

A twist on dino digging! I wanted to draw a cartoon-sized t-rex holding a small shovel and digging a hole. I had fun imagining it excavating human bones. It looks more like a turkey with a t-Rex front body, but I still like it.

Black 0.05 mm Graphik line maker from Derwent and shading with the Kuretake light grey ink Brush Writer.

Day 25: “Buddy”

Black and grey ink drawing of my dog Gizmo, a labrador, munching on a bone on his cushion.

I’m pretty sure every dog owner who does Inktober drew their buddy today.

I used as reference the photo I took of Gizmo working on the bone I gave him for his 7th birthday last month.

Again, I used a black 0.05 mm Graphik line maker from Derwent and light grey ink Brush Writer from Kuretake.

The weirdest first day of vacation

“Yes, I’ll be working a bit on the project while I’m off because I really dig it!”
Me, massively underestimating “a bit”

In this write-up, I’m attempting the epistolary narrative style that I remember enjoying from Stephen Chbosky’s excellent novel “The perks of being a wallflower”

Dear diary, I slept in this morning \o/, got up and drank two or three cups of espresso while I lazily browsed social media and played a few games on my smartphone. I did yoga a bit before noon, showered, and got ready for the rest of my first day of vacation.

I ate a light lunch standing up in the kitchen as I was transplanting the ferns I collected last Sunday near the lake.

As I pondered which subject I was going to draw later in the day as part of Inktober, I also pondered the oddity of my Apple Watch not recongnising as “stood” the good chunk of the previous hour that I had spent, well… standing. I certainly had been “moving a little” on the account of transplanting ferns not being the kind of activity you can engage in by being immobile.

A quick time-check led me to my desk. I had just enough time to publish a press release.

I drank more espresso, took the dog out for a walk and by then I had a pretty good idea what I was going to draw. I returned to my desk again for a one-hour meeting that lasted three hours /o\ That’s the first massive underestimation of how much time to block for that project (the W3C website redesign).

My brother showed up during my call (much earlier than I anticipated) and as he didn’t have his keys he tried to FaceTime me. I rejected the call, texted him that I was in a meeting, but he responded by texting me that he was outside. So I ran downstairs to let him in, ran back up and continued with my colleagues.

The doorbell rang not too long after. I apologised to my colleagues and ran downstairs and outside to pick up a delivery that I expected tomorrow. I dropped the unopened package on the dining table and as I headed back upstairs to my computer, I smiled at my brother. By then he was taking all the space on the sofa, which was fine because the cat doesn’t like the sofa that much.

My valiant colleagues and I had been at it for what seemed like days, and I was aware that each of them had other fish to fry, and yet nobody else was better positioned than them/us to do what we needed to do. Time was passing and it was food o’clock in all of our time zones.

We were done. Rather suddenly —It was the strangest thing! It seemed only moments before that we had gone through two thirds of the exercise and I was agonising (out of shame because I was getting way more of their time than was bargained for, and because my brother was waiting downstairs.)

The completion of our task took us all by surprise! As I quickly thankologised profusely to them, one of my colleagues quipped that he was almost late for second breakfast, another enquired how many breakfasts there were and whether several lunches followed and how many, and the third colleague really looked like he wanted us all to put on more work! So my finger smashed the Zoom button that ended the meeting for all.

It was 8 o’clock. I was thinking that working the equivalent of a half-day during my vacation wasn’t too bad from the point of view of my employer, and I wondered if I had missed the time before which I could still go back on how many days I was really taking.

My brother wanted me to try a particular wine that he likes very much. Opening my package made me happy: my favourite fragrance arrived in two versions: regular and “body mist.” My brother’s wine was very good, he’s right. We sipped it and ate guacamole and chips while the oven heated. I made a nice dinner that didn’t take long to prepare, and we both enjoyed it.

Soon enough we were on the sofa, me drinking espresso and him drinking tea; each talking to each other with interest, him about why some stuff changed at his workplace and me suggesting further areas of optimisation (he will at least explore one idea.) I stood up a few times and “moved a little”, as commanded by my smart watch. He doesn’t mind, he doesn’t think I’m weird.

I grabbed my art book, pencil and ink pen a bit before 11 o’clock. Today’s Inktober prompt is “sleep” and I was going to draw a newborn sleeping next to his daddy’s chest. My brother commented that the photo I used as reference was too detailed, and he may be right, but I had a good feeling about it and told him I was trying a minute or two before giving up. My feeling was indeed right, and my brother was surprised when I was finished, because I finished earlier than he anticipated, and the drawing was pretty good.

Eventually, my brother left. It was 2 am. We had spent a lovely evening together. It had been a nice break from work but I was keen on finishing where I left off, out of duty because of the timeline that was agreed on.

The time tracker on my computer started logging a new day at 5 am. I was done right after 6. Whew! This was the second massive underestimation of how much time to block for that project. But now the people we work with can do their part and hopefully we will all meet the deadline in two days.

As I stood at my window, sipping espresso and watching the sky going from really dark to some sort of hesitant but unmistakable glow, I observed that it’s a whole day of vacation I could have written off.

Video: making of Inktober day 19 “Dizzy”

This is trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie which I drew on the day 19 of Inktober 2020 to illustrate the prompt “dizzy”.

I chose a very dark photo as reference, so I could leave only a few blank spots on the paper for the highlights and plaster the rest with my black ink Pentel Brushpen, which ran out of ink right near the end!

24-second timelapse of my hands inking the dark partches and forming the trumpet player seen from behind.