I skipped last year’s Inktober for the first time since 2016, but not this year! Although it was a busy month, I was happy to make time for it every evening 🤗 Even more so that this time I chose to put cats in all of my drawings. I like most of them. I love some of them. My cat and former cat (who now lives at my neighbors’) are featured in a few places. For the rest I combined from many reference pictures.
I drew again in my small sketchbook Canson art book universal (14×21 cm / 4×6 in), using individually or together a black Pentel brushpen, a grey Pentel Brushpen, Sakura Pigma Micron 003 black fine liner, Kuretake light grey Brush Writer, and a Staedtler 0.3-2.0 black pigment liner, and a few times a Posca acrylic marker for white lines.
I would like to draw big! If only because of the person this will go to, but also because it’s a challenge in a good way, relative to my usual practice. I am still not there yet 😅
A combination of things that go in the way (procrastination maybe? fear of failure certainly) and there’s a lot going on too, and the pens I got aren’t right. So I got new pens which are good for coverage but not great for colors, though!
Reminder: This will be for my friend Amy who has a frame to fill and wanted a red Torii in a forest.
Loose pencil sketch on A3 paper (11×17 inches).
I found new acrylic markers in the shades of orange, red, greens which are the type I am used to: they have a sealed barrel full of paint that you have to shake before use and then press the nib a few times to pump the paint downward. I set again to make a small scale version prototype on a card in size 4.6×6.2 cm (about 6 times smaller than what I intend to paint).
The coverage is perfect: this is paint rather than the semitransparent inkwash that fills (presumably) some foam within the other markers, since there is nothing to shake and no nib to pump.
But the colors aren’t as nice.
For comparison, this is another prototype on the same kind of card, where I used the not-quite-paint markers. In small scale (4.6×6.2 cm) there is very little visible defects but in large scale, any pencil marks will be visible.
I think my next step will be to use another sheet of large paper, mark the sketch outline in thick black ink using my large light table (a large led-lit ceiling lamp that I use as light table), use it as a guide underneath a third large sheet of paper and paint the glorious Torii with my great-colors markers! That will hopefully yield the right tones without any pencil mark showing.
This will be for my friend Amy who has a frame to fill and wanted a red Torii in a forest.
Loose pencil sketch on A3 paper (11×17 inches).
Trying the various reds and greens I have on a folded printing paper, and making a small scale version prototype at the top left.
A few hours later (I’m rather slow) I narrowed down 3 red-orange-brownish red pens, 6 kinds of green, a couple of light blueish greys, black (and white, just in case) all from the same set of 36 acrylic markers with thick felt tips, and one beige with a very thin pointed nib from my other set which all have to be shaken and pumped, unlike the felt-tip set.
Finished prototype and color palette on printing paper. The small-scale version is 4.6×6.2 cm, or about 6 times smaller than what I intend to paint.
