Inktober 2020 – Week 1

Inktober 2020: Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5

I’ve been wanting to participate in Inktober for the past few years, but it always competes with my desire to paint as much Halloween nail art as possible. However, pandemics suck away my creative juices and Inktober drawing requires fewer decisions since I only have one canvas to fill and I’m not going to mess with colors and someone else is handing me a vague subject to play with. Sounds less juice-requiring do-able-ish. 🤷‍♀️

Style-wise I decided to also limit my decisions: I will be combining super cute styles like the ones that can be found in Angela Nguyen and Zainab Khan‘s books with Zentangle. Right now I’m also using these cool hexagon cardboard coasters because the shape appeals to me. They are not art-grade and that does affect my line quality, but meh. They’re fun.

(And if you’re wondering what Inktober is, it’s a month-long (or once a week for the whole year) drawing challenge where you’re supposed to be (mostly) drawing with ink instead of constantly erasing your work. I do sketch out the main subject in pencil, but the tangles are done traditionally with a pencil “string” guide and then just the pen and me. Following the founder–Jake Parker’s–prompts is optional.)

And now to the art…

Day 1: Fish

This is not the first time puffer fish have appeared on the blog. This time it’s all my own drawing so I gave it an appropriate expression since they are puffing up to protect themselves after all…

For the tangles I used a new one to me called Dap and an old favorite: Sez.

Day 2: Wisp

It’s October so I didn’t really think all that hard when it came to this prompt. Instead I decided to focus on making it funny by having one ghost trying to glomp the other who is…not excited about the prospect.

For the tangles I used two familiar tangles: Amaze and Onamato.

Day 3: Bulky

Again I didn’t spend too much time trying to pick my subject. I nearly drew a hippo or rhino instead, but then I realized the elephant could hold a weight in its trunk like it was “bulking up” and that was just too amusing.

For the tangles I used two familiar patterns: Sedgling and Hollibaugh.

Day 4: Radio

I think I was more creative with the way the ribbon tangle works with the radio than in drawing the radio itself, but it works. And I think out of the four drawings I have now I’m most excited to come back to this one and maybe color the radio in.

For the tangle I used a new one to me called Doo Dah. Simple, but fun.

Week one is done!

Guilt dump

So…I still haven’t written up my final post about my One Zentangle a Day project. I have not forgotten! I just…kinda stalled out when it came to presenting what tools the books mentions vs what tools I used vs what I recommend. It’s a gross info dump, but I do hate how people are like here’s this thing I did and it only cost me $5 but then you add up the cost of the tools they used and the price you’d pay to do it is…significantly higher.

(And I’m guilty of doing this too. I’m not trying to cast shade–only acknowledge tool-ownership privilege.)

Expect another Inktober post next Monday. 📅