Inktober 2018: Week 4 recap
After the disaster that was week three, my enthusiasm for Inktober was, at best, at the bottom of a deep pit. The first drawing of the week started to throw dirt on it so as to make sure it was dead, but then, my enthusiasm, in true Will Smith fashion, gritted it’s teeth, said “Aw Hell naw” and clawed it’s way back to the surface. Which is to say, tortured simile aside, that I generally felt positive about this week’s work.
Inktober or Artober?
I’m mostly following Inktober through Instagram and have seen some absolutely fantastic art come forth. One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of artists are using media aside from ink – pencils, watercolour, charcoal, whatever. This is the pedant in me, but it seems that maybe there should be a generic Artober? If one of the goals is to improve inking skills, using pen and ink would seem to be a prerequisite. That being said, the other goal of Inktober is to grow and improve as an artist, and develop good habits – perhaps that’s the more important point, regardless of medium.
To each their own, I suppose. But for me – just inking, even if it is digital.
Day 22: Expensive
Avert your eyes, children. This week started off really poorly. As much as I disliked last week’s drawings, they are masterpieces compared to this stain. Originally, I was going to do a homage to Lupin The Third’s Fujiko Mine, but I can’t sully the name of one of the few good anime out there by associating it with my crap drawing. Ugh.
Day 24: Chop
Red Sonja chopping some hapless mook’s head off – this is where things started to turn around, as all things do. My usually shakey confidence was shaken (not stirred) from my streak of failures, but I was (and am) generally happy with the way this turned out.
Day 26: Stretch
I love Nextwave. I suppose I could have gone Mr. Fantastic, Elongated Man, or Plastic Man (or something non-comic book related) for “stretch”, but Nextwave doesn’t get enough love, so Machine Man punching the Captain. Part of me thinks I should have done this at a more dynamic angle, but there is something very Wes Anderson, matter-of-fact about the composition that I like. Also:
I am but a single consumer, but: Hey, Marvel Studios. I’m rapidly losing interest. I skipped Ant-Man & the Wasp. I’m probably skipping Captain Marvel (and BTW, Captain Marvel is Billy Batson – not Mar-Vell, not Monica Rambeu 1, not Carol Danvers). Give me a Nextwave movie? I’m all in with a bag of chips. Mini-rant over.
Day 28: Gift
I have drawn more Batman related stuff in the last couple of weeks than I have since I was a kid. To be fair, Bats is fun to draw, and can have a nice, minimalist design. Originally, I was going to go with the Margot Robbie version of Harley, but ultimately went with Amanda Conner’s design, which works a lot easier in black and white.
Fourteen drawings down. One more to go.
1 Yes, complaining about the Captain Marvel naming debacle while simultaneously professing my love of Nextwave, Monica included, is weird, but… shut up. You’re not the boss of me.