Lessons from Inktober 2021

Last October I managed to achieve something I’d been wanting to do for quite some time- a new picture uploaded (to instagram) every single day for a whole month.

I was a little scared to commit initially and threw some already completed artwork at it for a while before realising that I was going to have to pick up the pace and draw lots of new stuff.

Then I started doing-up partially completed sketches to keep the numbers up.

I also re-drew some artwork from my childhood, which was a huge boost of inspiration for me. It’s interesting to look back at that work and see the design choices that dominated. Lots of belts- final fantasy perhaps? Lots of Dragon ball Z-style suits with fabric sashes around the waist.

Eventually I ran out of candidates for pictures to finish and was forced to draw completely new stuff.

The result of all this hard work was …to lose a lot of followers on Instagram.

Looking back at the work its clear that the quality suffered towards the end. I was under a fair bit of time pressure and it shows. There was probably also a lack of consistency- something I’ve always suffered from perhaps, but I hate seeing artists make the same piece over and over. I like to tackle new stuff!

Not that I’m overly concerned with instagram followers. Social media is well documented to be a totally bonkers minefield. Early in 2021 I’d seen my follower count shoot up from about 100 to nearly 600- all while I stood back in bemused interest and did absolutely nothing. I hadn’t uploaded anything in months, and yet up and up it went.

So when the count stopped at 597 I couldn’t help but think that a little burst of uploads might push over that arbitrary line, like that mattered, and having a go at inktober might be the perfect time to do so. Well, that shows what I know, eh?

While it may have been a disaster from a self-promotion point of view, from a personal perspective I feel very glad to have done it. There’s a lot of value in consistently doing something every day. I also felt like I was really learning for a change. It’s hard not to refine when you’re tackling the same sort of thing over and over in such a short space of time.

Norseman vs the Wyrm

Here’s a recent piece of artwork done for Xp-Pen, who earlier this year were nice enough to send me a shiny new graphics tablet to try. The XP-Pen Artist 22 (2nd generation)

In short- my review was very favourable- but if you’re interested in learning more you can read the full thing here: An artist’s Review: XP-Pen Artist 22 (2nd generation)

Also if you’re interested in the technical details purchasing one, the links are below:

Xp Pen store: https://www.storexppen.com/

Product Details https://www.xp-pen.com/product/855.html

Vincent’s Vivarium

I can only imagine how touched my uncle would have been to see so many dear and familiar faces here today, to celebrate his life and mourn his tragic passing. No doubt many of you had your reservations about coming- I understand that Uncle’s singular personality rubbed some of you up the wrong way.

In his defence I can only say that Uncle Vince was a character- a unique individual. I myself still have strong feelings about some of his habits, exploits, and ventures- the otter-cheese farm, the mandatory zipline to the downstairs toilet, bear boxing- I never supported any of these. Now that dear Uncle is gone, I shan’t worry about having to wear pink stockings after nine pm, eating only with spoons, or only turning anti-clockwise in the presence of women.

We may never truly know how Uncle Vince passed away. We may never know how he wandered into the locked greenhouse in the middle of the night, without his protective bee “disguise”, stark naked and with two lamb chops and a pork loin taped to his forehead. We may never know how he came to be so riotously drunk as to do that, despite being teetotal. All we can say is that he will be missed, and as the sole inheritor of his massive estate I feel it is my responsibility to thank you all for coming. Cheers.

Now, who’s up for canapés?

A man in a bee suit lovingly attends to to his plants

Secrets of Nature: Episode 01

Here’s a little something I made some years ago-  the HD remastered edition:

The backstory is this:

At the end of the first year of University we had an assignment to throw together a few seconds of animation- preferably being inspired by illustrators and not the more obvious examples of conventional animation like Aardman studios. The thing was, once I’d got started I realised that I much preferred the conventional animation- and that I wanted to do something more like that. We had three weeks for the brief, which I reckoned was more than enough to learn how to do something basic.

I got carried away. But I also had a brilliant time, and started to wonder whether I should have studied animation instead of illustration (I’m unsure to this day frankly). Anyway- the end result was something silly that I’m still oddly proud of to this day. I’d uploaded it to youtube some years ago, but the quality was so poor that I’m not surprised that nobody really watched it.

It occurred to me that I could download a copy of flash (or animate as they’re calling it now) and use the trial period to open the old files and re-save a higher def version for the modern era. So I have. It’s still a bit rough around the edges, but I have to let it go now. I have a terrible weakness for wanting to go back and fix my old stuff. Which is probably why I never get anything new done…

Foray into 3D

In an effort to make myself more flexible as an artist I’ve been forcing myself to learn some 3d. Forcing isn’t really the right word I suppose- I enjoy it too much. I have to force myself to do 2D at the moment. I was rather proud of this car I made though, so I thought I’d show it off:

A 3d model of a vintage car

It’s modelled in Blender based on the one from my “Great race” picture. See:

A steampunk themed race

Now, how the heck do I texture things?