Inktober 2019 Final Roundup & Farewell for November

Hello, and Happy Halloween, one and all! ❤ Even though it feels like I’ve spent half of October being sick, it’s been a really good month overall. I’m pleased to report that I have now officially completed October’s annual art challenge INKTOBER! Each day of the month I have unleashed a new ink creation to plague humanity, and it’s been quite the fun teaching experience. Along the way I’ve learned new techniques, pushed myself to think outside the box to meet the daily prompts, and I’ve shown myself that I can in fact make more time for the things I love despite all the constant business of adulting. 🙂 So, before I take my previously mentioned writing hiatus for November, allow me to present my final roundup of Inktober drawings. Thank you all for all of the amazing feedback and support during this month’s challenge. ❤ It truly means a lot, and hopefully November will see me through completing a second challenge for NaNoWriMo.

Day 22: The daily prompt was “GHOST” and my immediate thought was Boo, probably my favorite fictional ghost of all time.

Day 23: The daily prompt was “ANCIENT” so I went with an elderly Joker-esque batshit crazy granny because why not? 😛

Day 24: The daily prompt was “DIZZY” and maybe I was feeling inspired by my recent trip to Theatre Bizarre, but I wanted to draw a trippy clown girl for some reason. Hey, I just go where the inspiration takes me. 🙂

Day 25: The daily prompt was “TASTY” so I made a big shadowy werewolf looking forward to his next meal. Don’t mind all the doodles in the background, it was a sketchbook scribble session before I decided to slap some ink on it and call it a day. 😛

Day 26: The daily prompt was “DARK” and I figured since I’ve been drawing sooo many people throughout the month, I wanted to draw a piece without anyone or anything with a face. There are some moths, sure, but they’re too little to see their faces, so whatever.

Day 27: The daily prompt was “COAT” and due to how cold it has been lately, I guess I was feeling inspired to draw a cute girl in a cute coat on a cold, chilly autumn day with wind and leaves blowing about.

Day 28: The daily prompt was “RIDE” and what cooler ride is there than the Cat Bus from Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbor Totoro? 😀 This one was a lot of fun to work on.

Day 29: The daily prompt was “INJURED” and initially I figured I’d draw a couple roller derby girls post-derby, with busted lips, bloody noses, etc. but then I was having an off day and couldn’t quite come up with the look I was going for, so onto Plan B. That’s when I decided to pay homage to Monty Python and the Holy Grail‘s Black Knight.

Day 30: The daily prompt was “CATCH” so I went with an arcade staple, the crane game.

Aaaaand FINALLY, we come to Day 31: And the daily prompt is “RIPE”. With it being Halloween, of course I had to go with a rotting pumpkin, past its prime and overly-ripe, with bugs crawing in and out of its face.

I hope you guys have enjoyed the various pieces I’ve worked on over the course of Inktober, and, again, thank you SO MUCH for all the kind words and encouragement along the way. ❤ It means so much, and I’m feeling inspired and enjoying drawing more like I used to again and that feels really great. 🙂

While I’m away for November participating in NaNoWriMo I hope you guys all have a very Happy Halloween, a fantastic November, and I look forward to catching up with everyone when I return to my blog in December, hopefully with good news of a completed NaNoWriMo challenge. I’ll still be doing quick posts and updates on Instagram and the NaNoWriMo website in the mean time. Until December, take care and have fun!! ❤ ❤ ❤

Inktober 2019: Week 2 Roundup

Bailey rocking her new Halloween bandana.

Hello, it’s your resident sick girl here, living her best couch potato life with her trusted fuzzy minion cohort by her side, and we’ve got lots of new Inktober pieces for ya. A whole week’s worth, in fact!

Day 8: The daily prompt was “FRAIL” and I took my inspiration from old desiccated mummy faces. I then kind of took it into a more living dead sort of direction and ended up with this:

Day 9: The daily prompt was “SWING” and chose to do a little sketchbook quickie of my girl, Batwoman (Bombshells batter style, of course!) 😉

Day 10: The daily prompt was “PATTERN” and I was completely and utterly stumped on this one. I decided to just draw some quick little jack o’lanterns in a pattern of sizes (tall-short-tall-short). Hey, they can’t all be winners, right? 😛

Day 11: The daily prompt was “SNOW” and at this point I really wanted to up my Inktober game. I took inspiration from the legends of the wendigo since they’re associated with winter/snow.

Day 12: The daily prompt was “DRAGON” and I was feeling sick as a dog at this point, so I *technically* posted this the morning of Day 13, but oh, well. I did start it on the 12th, but NyQuil landed me in bed earlier than I would have intended.

Day 13: The daily prompt was “ASH” and I embraced my sickly current state and drew a sickly woman covered in ash.

Day 14: The daily prompt was “OVERGROWN” and I went with a wild forest nymph with overgrown, wild red hair and branches growing out of her head because why the hell not?? 😉

Well, that’s this week’s Inktober installment from yours truly. I hope you guys have been enjoying your October so far. There’s plenty of Halloween fun still to be had this month. What fun autumn hijinks have you been up to? What creative stuff are you working on? 🙂

Sketchbook Update: Joker Toxin Edition

Sketchbook Update! This fan art quickie was from a couple weeks ago, so some of you may have already seen it over on my Instagram account, but I figured I should go ahead and post it here anyway. 🙂

There’s something so fun about drawing twisted creepy grins like these. This unfortunate duo are just my interpretation of some poor unfortunate souls who crossed paths with everyone’s favorite Clown Prince of Crime.

Done with watercolor markers and sharpies.

What creative shenanigans have you guys been up to? 😀 August is shaping up to be incredibly busy but I’m hoping to continue my effort to make more time for drawing. Life’s too short not to make time for what makes you happy. ❤

Shark Week Drawings: 2019

❤ Ahoy! Happy Shark Week! ❤

Fan art for the game Hungry Shark World by yours truly.

This has truly been a Jawsome Shark Week so far, but it has also been a VERY busy one! I was beginning to fear that I would run out of time to do some Shark Week art this year, but I managed to squeeze in the time for at least 2! (Which is one more than last year! Haha) 😛

I recently learned about the game Hungry Shark World (and totally want to play it) which resulted in the fan art you see above. All the sharks in the game have attitude and some are really outlandish and cool looking. It even has zombie sharks and prehistoric sharks you can play as, along with a few other non-shark species. I guess the premise of just eat all the things is pretty simple, but it looks fun to me, so, why not? 😀

The other drawing I did is definitely more in the “doodle” category, but I did it more for fun anyway. 😛 Every single time I see a photo of a basking shark gliding through the water with its mouth gaping open as it feeds, all I can imagine is it saying “Hey, you guys!” in the voice of Sloth from The Goonies. Don’t ask why my brain works the way it does, because even I couldn’t tell you sometimes. Haha

If you don’t know about basking sharks, here’s a quick little Basking Shark 101 for ya:

Basking Sharks are the second largest shark in the entire world, dwarfed only by the whale shark.

Luckily, like the whale shark, basking sharks are one of three gentle giants of the sea, using filter-feeding as their method of consumption. That means, despite the intimidating size and wide, gaping mouths, they’re really just cruising around for plankton and other itty bitty prey.

They are surprisingly capable of breaching the surface and launching themselves out of the water, which, when you consider their size, is pretty cool and terrifying all at once if you just so happen to be in a boat beside one. 😛 The reason they do this isn’t really known since they aren’t doing it for hunting purposes like great whites do. Some theories are that it could be a move to impress the ladies during mating season, or that it is in an effort to rid themselves of parasites and lamprey eels that hitch along on them for a ride. No one knows for certain, though. Apparently one is reported to have unintentionally capsize a boat off the coast of Scotland while breaching, resulting in the drowning of 3 people. 😦

Anyway, hope you guys enjoyed the Shark Week drawings this year! 🙂 I wish I’d had the time to do more, but even though it’s still technically shark week, I am going to be too busy having fun and hanging out with Mr. and Mrs. Cupcakes and Machetes this weekend as we enjoy shark week, our body weight in rum, and celebrating Mr. C&M’s birthday! Have a great weekend, everyone!! ❤ ❤ ❤

SPECIAL SHARK WEEK SPOTLIGHT: Sharktopia

I love art and I love wildlife conservation. Combine the two and you have such an utterly amazing win-win situation on your hands. 🙂 I recently discovered the site sharktopia.org through their Instagram account and I am absolutely over the moon about it! ❤

Sharktopia is run by the friendly and talented Caiti Rose, a self-described “coffee-loving, shark-obsessed, happy vegan artist with the goal of altering the misconceptions surrounding sharks and other Ocean life”.

Stickers!

She uses her creative and amazing art to help spread awareness about a variety of topics regarding sharks and other ocean life. Her work ranges from absolutely adorable and lighthearted to impactful and eyeopening, and all of it is for the benefit and love of sharks.

The line work and coloring and cuteness, I just absolutely adore it. ❤

I’ve already purchased and received my own shark goodies and can honestly say that they were absolutely worth the money. 🙂 I love what I ordered. ❤ I also printed some of the free coloring pages available on the site for my participants at work to color and learn more about different types of sharks as they do so. The coloring pages are awesome and so informative!

 

Be sure to check out the Sharktopia website and enjoy some great artwork featuring our favorite finned friends and Caiti Rose’s great mission to raise awareness about their struggle. There’s the free downloadable coloring pages I mentioned, a great shop, and more to be discovered there, so dive on in! 🙂

The Return to the Sketchbook

After some neglect, I finally brushed off my sketchbook and have been showing it a little love again. I figured I’d share some of my recent illustration-sketch thingies with you guys. 🙂 Here are my 3 latest pieces, all done with watercolor markers and sharpies. Some of you may have already seen them over on Instagram but I figured I’d share them here anyway. ❤

Not my usual color palette, but hey, it’s fun to tinker around with different colors from time to time. Yellow was a bold jump out of my comfort zone.

This one was kind of inspired by the dead twins in The Shining, but I was listening to The Birthday Massacre, hence the bunny mask. This one was just a quickie since I felt I needed to push myself that day to practice more. I wish I’d taken my time with it more, but hey, that’s what re-draws are for, right? 😉

Just did this one tonight. Was wanting to do a creepy spin on those cute poses couples do for photos so I thought it’d be fun to have a girl covering the guy’s eyes with bloody claw hands while he’s obliviously unaware he’s about to be dinner.

Hopefully there will be more of these art posts. Shark Week is coming up so I’d love to do some Shark illustrations soon, like last year’s whale shark drawing I did. Definitely need to buy some new watercolor markers soon. My poor little babies are drying up!! D:

Anywayyy, hope you guys enjoyed the drawings. What creative stuff have you been up to lately? 🙂 I’d love to chat about it!

My First Drawings of 2019

New Year, New Sketchbook

I mentioned recently that I’d try to make more time for drawing this year, and part of that goal is to fill up the new sketchbook pictured above! 🙂 I loved the cover when I saw it and figured the new sketchbook might help to inspire me to keep at it with my drawing if I had an actual set amount of pages to fill up. So far it seems to be working. I’m definitely rusty and I’m tinkering around with watercolor brush pens so that’s been fun. It’s taking some getting used to but I feel like I’m *starting* to get the hang of them. Anywayyyy, here’s some of the WIP drawings I’ve got going so far.

I did this Ignited Moth to be my profile picture and debut picture for Instagram. It seemed fitting to finally make a piece to go with the alias I’ve been blogging under the past couple years.

A WIP shot of the girl that kicked off the following WIP piece. I need to fill in a dark background for it and add some more details, but you get the idea. I’ve always been a fan of drawing monsters, so expect plenty of those in the art posts to come. 😉

It’s been interesting using the watercolor brush pens more. They’re definitely a good practice in patience for me. I have to go slowly and deliberately with each stroke and it can be difficult for me with my itty-bitty attention span. It’s kind of relaxing in its own way, too, though. Here’s a close up of the monster pictured above:

I don’t really know what exactly I was going for with this guy. Like a horse skull mixed with some sort of Krampus vibe is about the only way I could describe the creative notion behind him.

This drawing almost didn’t get beyond the sketch stage. I was originally going for a pinup Poison Ivy, then when it wasn’t going how I wanted I was going to do a whole Día de Muertos inspired makeup on her, but for now I’m leaving her like this. We’ll see what happens with her in the future. 🙂

Well, that’s it for today’s art post. I hope you guys enjoyed. What creative shenanigans have you been up to lately? What are your go-to art tools of the trade?