I thought I’d give #Inktober a go this year. I used to draw all the time when I was young. But I fell badly out of the habit a long time ago. This past year, I’ve been trying to get back into the drawing habit.
“Anyone can do Inktober, just pick up a pen and start drawing.”
So says Jake Parker, who kicked off the whole Inktober – if you will – “thing”. The objective is simply to produce a drawing in ink each day in October. Parker sees Inktober purely as a way to “develop positive drawing habits”.
I want to produce at least one drawing per day this month, and to share weekly updates of my scrawlings here.*
Will I be able to keep drawing all the way through this most Inktoberful of months? Only time will tell.
If you draw – or if you are simply drawing-curious, why not give Inktober a go, too? You don’t need to have been with it from the start. Just try doodling. I’d love to see the results!
Now, here are what we might call – if we were being very generous – the “fruits” of the first week. As you will see, I’ve bent the rules a wee bit, and produced more than one picture, some days.
Sunday 1 October 2017
My first Inktober picture. A face, radiating sunshinulent colours.
Side portrait using two kinds of brushpen.
Monday 2 October 2017
A plant in my back garden inspired Monday’s pic. But I took significant liberties with the colouring!
Les yeux de Lou Reed. Sketched from the photograph at the top of this fine Guardian article.
Tuesday 3 October 2017
Dancer.
Closed-eyed reflection, rapidly sketched on a train.
Wednesday 4 October 2017
Speedy self portrait, via my reflection in a train window on my pre-dawn morning commute (hence flaskulent coffee making it into this photo). It was alleged variously by Facebook friends that it looks like I might be giving “the finger” or even flipping “the bird” here. But I assure you that that is meant to be a pen!
A forlorn personage gazes skywards.
Moustachioed fellow.
Thursday 5 October 2017
“Between thought and expression lies a lifetime”, the Velvet Underground once opined. There lies a gap of similar width between what I had in mind for this picture, and what I ended up with. Drawing can be a frustrating experience. On my way to the train, I’d seen (through half-opened shutters) a woman opening up a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop in near total darkness. Inspired by this sight, I wanted to draw a murky, indistinct figure barely distinguishable from the surrounding gloom, the hatch of the hole-in-the-wall framing the whole thing, and using subtle gradations of biro cross-hatching to create depth and shade. What I ended up with is a long way from the idea in my mind.
Friday 6 October 2017
Another picture inspired by Thursday’s idea. But this one went off in an entirely different angle. A running-out brushpen provides the hair shades.
Saturday 7 October 2017
My lovely friend Charlie Eastabrook kindly bought me a red brushpen while she was on her honeymoon in Japan earlier this year. Thank you for such a wonderful present, Charlie! I used this pen for the two pictures I’ve drawn this morning.
The oddest thing happened to me last weekend. Clicking on a tweet from Diva Magazine, I read a short interview with a pop star of whom I’d frankly never heard, named Lauren Jauregui. I was greatly impressed with Ms Jauregui’s views (Sample quotation from the Diva interview, concerning celebrities being "out” or otherwise: "A lot of artists are held back by the notion that they’ll lose their fan base or alienate themselves. Even friends and family would tell me to keep it to myself. But the more I thought about it, the more I was like, Why?“). I tweeted a link to the interview, expressing my admiration for her views.
Completely unexpectedly, I got lots of tweets from fans of Ms Jauregui, for whom she would seem to be both figurehead and inspiration. In these times in which LGBT rights are once again coming under fire, it is particularly heartening to see a pop star with a huge following willing to be so open and uncompromising in her views.
As a micro-tribute to Ms Jauregui’s inspirational stance and to how welcoming her fans were to me when they really didn’t need to be (it seems they are part of a crowd known as “harmonizers”, in reference to
Ms Jauregui’s group, Fifth Harmony), I attempted to draw les yeux de Lauren Jauregui.
It’s never too late to Inktober
Please give Inktober a go. Draw whatever you want. Enjoy it! I would love to see what you come up with!
Footnotes
* Time for one of my simple questions with no – that’s no – prize! To be in with a chance to win nothing, just answer the following question: What does the title of this post reference?
MJCarty 