Inktober 2024

Inktober 2024:  Why I Decided To Take Part

For many years I have looked at so many artists online and never really had the confidence to put my quick sketches out there online.

For the majority of artists that I have spoken to online, in person we are all a little self conscious of what people think of our art. This is normal. Since the beginning of 2024 I have made a serious effort to "put myself out there". 

This October I have finally taken part in Inktober. So you might wonder what is Inktober, how and what does one take part. 

To join Inktober, simply commit to drawing with ink everyday for the month. You can use any type of ink from traditional fountain pen ink, markers and ink to paint.

There is no specific themes or rules, @Inktober the official sight on Instagram will give daily prompts and you use your creativity and go for it.

Inktober 2024

This is the official list of prompts, now this normally lands a week or so before October, which was kind of good for me as I am a bit of an over thinker. This gave me time to research what I wanted to sketch, and if I wanted to use any inks for colour or just sketch in line work. 

The surface that I used was rag cotton landscape sketchbooks, I finished one sketchbook and began a second, in hindsight I wish I had done the whole month in one sketchbook, but it's alright just a bit disjointed for me (a little OCD here!)

Indigo Rag Cotton Sketchbook

In case you are not aware of what rag cotton paper is, here is a quick info on it. Rag cotton is made from the cotton used for cloth that is shredded down and added to water to make a pulp. 

A screen is made to with a fine net like base so the water can be squeezed out, a cloth is placed over the screen  to separate each new layer. 

When the layers are made the excess water is squeezed out and the clothes are removed from each layer and the paper is hung to dry outside. Once dry the paper is rolled through a press to a smooth out any buckling from the drying process.  

The paper is environmentally friendly and also vegan as so many artists are leaning towards this these days.

I enjoy using rag cotton but one thing that you can not do easily as you can with other 100% cotton paper is to erase a pencil mark as although the paper is quite thick it is very soft to touch. 

It also does not bleed, this can happen with thinner watercolour paper weights and for me this can destroy sketches on the reverse pages and make a sketch book not very economically in its use. 

The inks that I used were Winsor and Newton Inks they come is small jars and there are a wide range of colours. While I was in my last year of University I managed to collect the full collection that I used in one of my project's and I hadn't used them since then so they were just sitting in box gathering dust. this is why I decided to use them in some of the prompts.

                               

    

                                      

 To use these little pots of colour  you can use them straight from the jars or if you would like you can add some water and create more of watercolour effect with them. For the beginning of Inktober I used these to create colour in the sketches. 

To out line the sketches and to do the line work I use micron fine liners from .005 to the brush sizes as these are also waterproof.  Getting in as much details as possible and making the sketches somewhat realistic was my goal as this is my style.

Fine Liners

For my sketches I put a time limit on myself of a max of 3 hours, in that time I needed to have a good sketch but also with my style. Looking back now some worked and some didn't but for me that's okay.  Possibly I took too long deciding or the idea and reference was too complicated for the 3 hours.

So lets start,

Day 1 was Backpack

Backpack

The inspiration for this was my grandson Ben who loves anything dinosaur related and green for a time was a colour that was predominated with the many things he had.

Day 2

Discover

Discover

The magnifying glass was my late mum and dads both used it differently my dad for photo negatives and my mum when looking up words in the dictionary. A fond memory.

Day 3

Boots

Boots

Again my grandson came to mind as he is 16 months and loves like any little boy to splash in puddles. I used pictures that his mom sent me and although he did not at the time have wellies I improvised and added them to the sketch.

Day 4

Exotic

Exotic

The inspiration for this day was from birds that I have not yet painted but I wanted to see if I could sketch it out with the fine liners and see if I could bring the bird to life by adding subtle tones of coloured inks to it. I think it sort of worked but I know I rushed it a bit as some of the ink bled into each other.

Day 5 

Binoculars

Binoculars

This was my take on binoculars as many other artist went for the norm of binoculars that we all know I went for memories of a child, and how we used to beg our dad to use these public binoculars while on holidays around Ireland.

Day 6

Trek

Trek

On this day, I wanted to try and create movement in my sketch and thinking of someone trekking up a hill or mountain came to mind and By using the coloured inks this also allowed me to bring textures into the sketch.

Day 7

Passport

Passport

Rather that going with the norm or a country's passports, I decided to look at what a passport was to many people, in my opinion it is a freedom to explore the world and different cultures.

Day 8

Hike

Hike

On day 8, I played around with shadows against a snowy backdrop. I used a more painterly effect with just black ink as I felt it gave a more dramatic effect to the sketch.

Day 9

Sun

Sun

The inspiration for this painterly effect of the sun was from driving with the low October sun, and how not only can it be blinding but it can create some beautiful shadows.

Day 10

Nomadic

Nomadic

This was such a quick sketch as I first though of a camel in the desert and then the handler. From the many pictures that I saw online the camel was what popped up but I felt I needed to add the human side.

Day 11

Snacks

Snacks

This day I did struggle, although we all like sweets and treats with so much in the shops this month I wanted to think outside the box. If I eat an apple a large one I'm kind of satisfied, so this half eaten apple was my thoughts. Many of the colours bled into each other and it looks more rotten than appetizing!

 

Day12

Remote

Remote

Long winding tumbleweed roads of Arizona came to my mind of remote. 

Day 13

Horizon

Horizon

My though process of this sketch was that the tree was in the horizon line but I feel that what I missed was possibly to make the foreground taller and it may have worked better.

Day 14

Roam

Roam

I actually enjoyed trying to give the impression of a person roaming the shore alone, but as I look back now at the sketch the placement of the rock behind the figure looks like a surf board! that was not my intention.

Day 15

Guidebook

Guidebook

On day 15, I went for a bit of fun, and used a picture of somewhere in Italy and used that for my inspiration of a typical landscape, with far in the distance  terracotta  buildings and popular trees. The play of sunlight was a happy accident. Adding typography was probably the most difficult part having it all even.

Day 16

Grungy

Grungy

By day 16, the majority of the coloured inks were dwindling. I felt for grungy I would use just the micron pens, different sizes, strokes such as stippling, cross hatching and the few squiggles to give and effect of a very old car that has a feel of being grungy. This sketch from start to finish took about 3 hours.

Day 17

Journal

Journal

Journals for me are my sketchbooks and any artist I know always has a few that are well battered and worn. To have a pristine journal is kind of rare. I stacked up some of my journal (sketchbooks) and sketched them out adding a little bit of shadow here and there.

Day 18

Drive

Drive

As I had already sketched a car I felt that when I think of drive I need my keys and I laid my car keys down on my table shown a lamp in their direction to create a shadow as it was a very wet and grey day. This was such a simple still life but effective. 

Day 19

Ridge

Ridge

I am drawn to ridges of snow capped mountains. They are not only beautiful to look at but also give climbers space to view their surrounding and resting spaces.

Day 20

Uncharted

Uncharted

When I saw this prompt, Space came to mind, but I sat and thought for a bit "How do we as humans search the uncharted space?" I thought of radar's, I had a look up on line for some pictures as I had never drawn anything like this before but wanted to try.

By using the fine liners I found it easy enough by just looking at the shape an eclipse, four poles and shadows...

This after I posted it online I was quite proud of it as I don't actually every sketch metal objects.

Day 21

Rhinoceros

Rhinoceros

For quite sometime I have wanted to draw a Rhino but I was not too sure what medium I wanted to use. I was so happy when I saw this prompt, and I knew that using the fine liners I would be able to create a realistic, textured rhino skin. I feel for my style of art it worked but I think later this year I might combine fine liners with watercolours or just acrylics to redo this picture. 

Day 22

Camp

Camp

There are so many images that came to mind for this one prompt, but I thought of a campfire. 

Day 23

Rust

Rust

Drawing an object that has a texture or a reflection is something that I am drawn too. The rusty links in a chain evoke many childhood memories holidaying by the sea. By using only the fine liners and different sketching effects I feel that I brought the image to life.

Day 24

Expedition

Expedition

Kayaking on a river with a weir is always a bit of an expedition as the waters are moving with quite a rush and for many weirs there is not always a lot of water flowing down. Personally I feel that the expedition doesn't have be moving on unknown waters. It can be where you live but noticing the environment around you more closely.

Day 25

Scarecrow

Scarecrow

As inktober was drawing to a close I went off the beaten track and sketched a whimsically version of a scarecrow. I like gardening and looking around all the empty pots I thought of how I could sketch a scarecrow by using them as the inspiration. The chair is a sketch of some in my kitchen, so I combined the idea of using both to come up with my own scarecrow.

Day 26

Camera

Camera

As an avid photographer I wanted to rather than draw a camera I want to show how camera's film has developed over time.  

The first roll the 120mm  (the large tube) which is similar to the old box camera, then 35 mm film although it was very popular from the 1930 for colour right up to the early 2000's before digital photography was available to everyone. 

The 110 mm was introduced in the 1970's, it was made for people who would shoot and snap a memory. The quality was not great. I do remember that my first camera was a 110 mm within a few years I had my first 35mm film camera a Praktica  it was so heavy to hold but the lens could be changed which began my love of photography.

The SD card that we all know today actually came about in 1989 but production did not happen commercially until the early 2000's.

Day 27

Road

Road

This drawing was inspired by the main road between my house and New Ross in county Wexford. The road is flanked by trees on both sides and towards the end of the road they create a natural arc. I tried to redraw this showing shadows of the trees across the road. It was such a simple and quick sketch that I actually enjoyed doing.

Day 28

Jumbo

Jumbo

Rather than drawing an elephant to depict the prompt for the day "Jumbo" I thought of jumbo prawns. One food that I really love. It also reminds me of Christmas...(oops I said that word!).

Within the drawing I used many different techniques to bring the texture of the prawn to life.  It is only when you look at the drawing closely that you can see all the details. The drawing took about 2 hrs to complete.

Day 29

Navigator

Navigator

I do remember that this drawing prompt I was stumped for a bit. Looking online the meaning of the word helped me come up with dial. From looking online at different images which were mainly watch faces, I did a few sketches in a sketchbook and came up with this as I like drawing stones and pavements. 

Day 30

Violin

Violin

For violin I just took a section of one of the violins in our house and using it as reference to draw the details of the wood pattern. The violin has many bumps and scratches on the surface which I felt that I captured with this sketch. Having it near allowed me to see how shadows fell in different areas.

Day 31

Landmark

Landmark

For the final prompt of Inktober I chose to draw the sculpture Sphere within Sphere  which is found in Trinity College Dublin.

As a child I grew up in Dublin and I remember when walking through Trinity College this landmark sculpture I remember fondly. It was sculpted by Arnaldo Pomodoro he donated it to Trinity College in the 1980's. The official name is "Sfera con Sfera".

Along with doing daily sketches of the different prompts, when I uploaded these to Instagram, I added music that would refer back to the prompt. Now, I did not do this every day but for the majority of the month each sketch has music attached. 

What have I learnt from this?

I now know that my style of art is very different to so many other artists and I can stand proud. Many other artists have started to follow me but that's not why I did this, it is a bonus.

My drawing skills and sketching is much faster and there are only a handful of daily prompts that took my time limit. Using just the fine liners I feel that these pieces stand better than those that I added colour. I can now distinguish which sketch will look better with colour and with out. That for me is an achievement as I would have floundered before the month. I honed in on my skill. It has been time consuming but an experience. I can not wait till next year. 

I think over the coming months I will practice more with ink and fine liners and see what else I will sketch.

On a side note, this year has been a year of firsts for me as an artist. I am planning to keep going with doing things that are completely new to me. Next month I will share with you what is in store for 2025 ...

Take care everyone and do leave a comment.

Tips & Tricks for Painting

How do you find Tonal Values in a Photo

In this post I am going to explain in the simplest way how a beginner artist finds tonal values in a scene or picture, that you may have found on-line  or your own personal photo and would like to draw.

One trick that I was taught in art college was to transform the picture into black and white. Even with the basic mobile phone we can convert any image into black and white with filters.

Graiguenamagh- River Barrow

This picture I took with my phone, as I was taking part in a plein air competition over a weekend in late August the year. A few weeks before, I went to  the area the where  the plein air, was being held and  I took  alot of photos to use a preliminary sketches at home.

When I take photos on my phone or camera I will always convert them to black and white as this helps me see where the tonal values. In other words, where is the darkest areas, mid-tones and lightest tonal areas.

The darkest tonal area is the shadows around the trees, the reflection in the middle of the water, the shadow side of the pebbles of the shore line and just under the bush to the right hand side.

Looking at the colour picture, the sunlight is falling onto the river, it was not an overly sunny day but as it was an evening sun the shadows were quite low.

The mid tones are the tree line in the far distance as the sun is shining down on them, the tops of the pebbles at the shore line, the wall at the top of the weir, the bushes on the weir edge,  along with some of the trees on the shore line going down river on the left hand side.

The lightest tones are if you like the highlights, or what is white. 

First of all the sky it is very light tonally compared to the rest of the tones with in the photo.

The stream of water coming down the weir and the refection of the sky in the water close to shoreline.

Some of the tops of the pebbles and the boats on top of the weir. Even barge's windows are very light in tone, they actually have the sun reflecting off them.

To get better at figuring this out, I would suggest to look at a few photos on line and make a pencil sketch a HB pencil is fine to use. By practicing, squinting at the shapes of the picture (I suggest a landscape) these are the easiest to sketch even looking out into your garden. Its good practice. 

Another tip would be to use the blur tool on your phone filters to blur the photo so you just have shapes. 

Now as you look at the picture all the details have disappeared making it easier to see where it is dark, mid and lightest tones. The shapes are easier to focus on when just starting out.

Unfortunately,  in art there is no quick way to master sketching, it is practice, practice. If you can every day, it does not have to be long, 15-30 mins a day is perfect when starting out. It will take all the stresses of the day away for that short time!

Be prepared for fails and lots of them, thankfully erasers/ putty rubbers were invented to remove any slip ups!

Paper wise, when starting out keep it simple, a nice cartridge paper form any good stationary shop or on line. You are starting out on a new adventure, so keep it simple. 

As I said before, I want to help make this simple, so I've done a step by step approach to sketching this and I will also add watercolours to the second sketch which I will share here with you.

Have a go, its fun!

Here is the tools that I used;

HB pencil, and a putty rubber, the putty rubber are about here in Ireland €2, but they are invaluable, as you can pull them apart and twist them into a fine point to just take small bits a lead away from the paper. This works on most papers.

The only paper that I have found they can tear, is rag watercolour paper as it is quite soft and not very resilient compared to other paper out there. 

Simple sketch of the shapes only.  Think of it as you are mapping out the scene. You are just looking at the shapes of the trees, where the river bank is and if there are any other pieces of information needed in the drawing. for example the stones in the foreground and some in the water. Keep your pencil markings light.

Here I have added the dark tones. I used a 12B pencil, as it is quite a soft leaded pencil, be aware when you are sharpening these the lead breaks alot and it doesn't really matter what brand you have. As the lead is the softest its going to break.

Adding the mid-tones to the sketch, these tones normally fall just behind the darkest tones, as you can see from my sketch notes the pencils I used are soft lead pencils as these can blend very well together. 

The HB that you sketched with initially is relatively considered a hard pencil, but by adding the soft 3B and 4B pencils you get soft muted tones. This reduces the harshness of the dark tones of the 12B pencil.

The next step in making this sketch more pleasing to the eye is to blend the tones together. For this I used a cotton bud (Q-tip). I use a gentle circular motion when blending, you will notice that some of the lead will collect on the cotton bud and this then can be used for the water and areas that you have not used any pencil. 

This is a simple sketch I would suggest that you try it with many different landscapes, not necessarily with water, mountains, meadows and even cities with buildings are easy enough to do. In some ways building for they lines and boxy shapes some may find easier as the darkest tones are much easier to spot. The mid tones can be the tricky tones to find, but look for the tone that is not as light as say the sky where the sun is shining on as these will be quite bright, and remember your mid-tones are not too dark or light.

So, As I mentioned above I am going to share a step by step process that I use when doing a quick watercolour sketch of a landscape. I always do the initial first sketch in pencil and then move into watercolours or any medium that I feel will work for the piece. 

Many artists who paint with watercolour will use the wet in wet method. I do not use this style for the majority of my watercolour paintings. I much prefer to build up the layers of colour with the dry brush technique. My paper remains dry and my brush contains the water and colour.

My sketch book is A5 its not very big so very handy to bring with you out and about if you want to sketch on the go. The paper is 100% cotton  which I have found to be essential when working with watercolours. These can be expensive but I have found that I have become less frustrated by being able to lift off paint with plain water and less buckling compared to wood pulp paper.

Like many artists, I will always say spend within you means, do not go spending huge amounts of money on paper if this is only a hobby, but do buy the best quality that you can afford.

Using the same photo, I will start with watercolour pencils, I actually don't have many just a few in the tones that I will work with. I also have a fine liner pen in this assortment as I wanted to introduce some line work into the painting. It is essential that you use a fine liner pen that is waterproof. Otherwise you will have an inky mess. 

Here I shaded on the watercolour pencils on the opposite page in my sketchbook as I wanted to see colours of each pencil and how I can get a gradient of colour and by mixing the pencils dry to see what colours I would get.

My sketch with the watercolour pencils suggesting a blue cloudy sky and the outline of the boats with the fine liner.

Here I have added the green pencils tons from dark to light and blended the picture with water. I have left gaps and I will be using watercolours from now on. I use a very light wash and build up the tonal values.

      

Above are Half pans, I normally buy the half pans empty and then fill them with my watercolours tubes. The reason for this is that I have found that I can premix colours that I know that will work for tonal shades that I have come up with over time. Also, I have gouache in my half pans too. You can actually intermix these mediums together. 

The brush is one of my favourites a No.6 synthetic. It has a lovely fine point, and the belly of it is big enough to hold enough water and colour for my style of art.

In the above image you can see how the painting has developed by adding the darker tones and mid tones. I will build up on each layer slowly allowing each layer to dry. This style may be slower, but you can define areas of interest with in each layer.

As the painting comes to the finishing point, I always take a picture of it and turn it in to black and white. This allows me to see when I compare it to the original image that I have already turned into black and white, to check that I have the tonal values correct.  Only then will I stop painting, otherwise you can end up either over working the painting, or not adding enough tonal values.

In my next post, which will be around the end of October, I will share my Inktober art and describe some of the techniques and mediums that I used to create the art works. This is my first year taking part, so for me its kind of exciting, plus you can see inside my sketchbook!

If you found this helpful, please leave me a comment to let me know and if there are things you would like me to cover in the future, drop me an email or comment.