I found out about Inktober when I got a group of friends together to go see Margaret Atwood at Town Hall. It was a great evening, Samantha Bee interviewed her, and their conversation was fascinating and thoroughly leavened with dry Canadian wit. Before the show, of course, everyone was pulling out their cell phones to take photos of the stage -- everyone, that is, except me (I'm still resisting the smartphone) and my friend Shari B, who pulled out a small sketchpad and a pen and proceeded to draw it!
I thought that was rather delightful and I said so - I liked her drawing, too, it was simple and clear and did a good job of showing the stage. She told me she'd been taking a drawing class that was specifically aimed at those who consider themselves artistically uninclined, and it sounded pretty interesting.
She also told me about Inktober, invented by illustrator Jake Parker. It started out as something he came up with for himself "as a challenge to improve my inking skills and develop positive drawing habits", and then people wanted to join in. I've joined a Facebook group and a Flickr group for Inktober, and I'm really enjoying it - the group participants range from people like me up to professional artists, there are doodles, there are comics, there's a woman who's doing a gorgeous noir graphic-novel presentation, there's Chicken Month, there's an alternative set of horror prompts called Shocktober, there are drawings that are silly, gorgeous, simple, elaborate - and so far I haven't seen ANYBODY say anything negative. Is it that possible this is the one set of spaces on the internet where if somebody doesn't like something they just scroll on by? Even the FB admin mentioned that today. Pretty nice, I hope I haven't just cursed it.
Anyways, so far so good, I did fall one day behind during a weekend at Lake Sebago where we ate and paddled and then ate some more and then talked on into the evening all of the sudden I was just ready for bed - but I caught up tonight by reining in my tendency to throw in everything but the kitchen sink (almost literally on Day 2 when I drew a wave of trash where there are even legible labels on some of the things) and doing something simple for Frail.
No great masterpieces so far and I but I'm having fun with it and I'll be curious to see if I notice any difference in my drawing by the end of the month. If you've been following this blog for any length of time at all, you'll know that I like to art every now and then, but it's sporadic - I'm doodling all the time but this idea of sitting down and Drawing A Thing every day for 31 days is new.
That's it for the write-up - click on any photo for a slideshow view of what I've drawn
I thought that was rather delightful and I said so - I liked her drawing, too, it was simple and clear and did a good job of showing the stage. She told me she'd been taking a drawing class that was specifically aimed at those who consider themselves artistically uninclined, and it sounded pretty interesting.
She also told me about Inktober, invented by illustrator Jake Parker. It started out as something he came up with for himself "as a challenge to improve my inking skills and develop positive drawing habits", and then people wanted to join in. I've joined a Facebook group and a Flickr group for Inktober, and I'm really enjoying it - the group participants range from people like me up to professional artists, there are doodles, there are comics, there's a woman who's doing a gorgeous noir graphic-novel presentation, there's Chicken Month, there's an alternative set of horror prompts called Shocktober, there are drawings that are silly, gorgeous, simple, elaborate - and so far I haven't seen ANYBODY say anything negative. Is it that possible this is the one set of spaces on the internet where if somebody doesn't like something they just scroll on by? Even the FB admin mentioned that today. Pretty nice, I hope I haven't just cursed it.
Anyways, so far so good, I did fall one day behind during a weekend at Lake Sebago where we ate and paddled and then ate some more and then talked on into the evening all of the sudden I was just ready for bed - but I caught up tonight by reining in my tendency to throw in everything but the kitchen sink (almost literally on Day 2 when I drew a wave of trash where there are even legible labels on some of the things) and doing something simple for Frail.
No great masterpieces so far and I but I'm having fun with it and I'll be curious to see if I notice any difference in my drawing by the end of the month. If you've been following this blog for any length of time at all, you'll know that I like to art every now and then, but it's sporadic - I'm doodling all the time but this idea of sitting down and Drawing A Thing every day for 31 days is new.
That's it for the write-up - click on any photo for a slideshow view of what I've drawn
