Inktober 2022

October was a busy month for me this year so I didn’t have time to do all of the prompts. However, as I still wanted to participate, I chose a few of my favourite prompts from this year's list to do illustrations for.

Day 1 - ‘Gargoyle’

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[Image ID] A black and white sketch of an imaginary tower. It has a small, arched stained glass window like in a cathedral at the top and two taller stained glass windows below that. There are also three bat gargoyles. [description end]

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I enjoy sketching architecture so I was quite pleased to see a prompt which lent itself to an architectural sketch. I wasn’t sure where I was going with the piece when I started it, so I referenced various photos of Victorian industrial architecture from a book on the topic and based the design of the building on those. This was a nice simple illustration to create as the only materials I used were a pencil and several sizes of black fineliner. I normally prefer to use colour in my work, but drawing with only a black fineliner makes a nice change every now and then.

Day 3 - ‘Bat’

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[Image ID] A pointed arched window displaying a cloudy but moonlit sky. There is a full moon near the top of the window and patches of cloud, on alternate sides and at the bottom. Four bats are flying up from the clouds at the bottom towards the moon. The sky is a mixture of purple and greyish blue tones. [description end]

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I thought of various ways to interpret this prompt but in the end I decided to base my illustration on a stained glass window. The initial sketch for this, and the subsequent pieces in this post, were all done on the computer. I found sketching my composition digitally to be very helpful as it removed the stress of having to repeatedly rub the sketch out to adjust it, and then damaging the surface of the paper in the process. Once the digital sketch was completed I printed it out onto normal printer paper and used a lightbox to trace the outlines over onto watercolour paper.
I mostly painted this piece with watercolour, but I also used a silver Posca paint pen for the border of the window. The ‘sky’ parts of the window were an interesting experiment with controlled wet watercolour. I needed the paper to be quite wet for the colours to flow together nicely, yet I also needed to prevent it being so wet that the colour bled into the clouds and moon. To achieve this I wet the paper in sections as I went, and used a relatively fine brush instead of a sponge to ensure I didn’t go outside my sketch lines.

Day 14 - ‘Empty’

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[Image ID] An imaginary, pinkish-burgundy, furry, sloth like creature sitting on the floor. In front of them on the floor is a pile of pink marbles with the lid of a jar perched on the end. The jar itself has been upturned and is being worn as a hat by the creature. [description end]

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Although Cycloth is cute, she also has a mischievous side. In this instance she thought an upturned jar would make a funny hat so emptied the marbles all over the floor to free up the jar. I painted this piece in gouache rather than watercolour for several reasons related to the subject. My main reason was that I thought the opaque qualities of gouache would better lend themselves to painting Cycloth’s fur. As I began to paint it I realised that the brightness of the gouache was also a better fit for Cycloth’s colour palette. Once the paint had dried I added a few details with a 0.05 size black fineliner and some highlights with a 0.8 white gel pen.

Day 30 - ‘Gear’

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[Image ID] An industrial style research desk depicted in watercolour. A series of pipes and gears, of various sizes, are on the wall behind the desk. On the desk itself are a variety of test tubes, jars and bottles. There is also a piece of equipment with a large crystal sticking out of it, as well as a notebook and some loose sheets of paper with notes and diagrams on. [description end]

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I was very pleased to see this prompt in the list as it gave me a reason to paint something industrial/steampunk inspired. I initially struggled with how to interpret this prompt as it is very open ended, you could add gears to almost anything in either of the aforementioned styles.
I eventually settled on an illustration of a research desk and minimised the gear element to the mechanics on the wall. I almost always sketch my watercolour paintings in watercolour pencil as it can be blended into the painting with water in a way that a normal graphite pencil wouldn’t. In this particular painting it served a second purpose in adding a subtle red tone to the edges of all the elements which I thought was a nice way to tie all the colours together.

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Watercolour Paints: Windsor & Newton Cotman range
Watercolour Pencils: Castle Art
Gouache Paint: Castle Art
Fineliners: Unipin waterproof
White gel pen: Sakura Gelly Roll

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Artwork ©Dragonsflyatsunset 2022, all rights reserved.