Admin Post: Inktober Discussion Post

[goss]

Hey guys, I came across this video today that's right up our alley. It has some really useful points for those of us participating in Inktober:

"" (Watch on YouTube)

It also got me thinking that since the comments section of our INKTOBER MASTERPOST has really taken off with everyone sharing their daily Inktober offerings there, we could have a separate space as an Inktober Discussion Post during this time, for questions/comments/suggestions on topics like:

- What kinds of tools and art supplies are you using for Inktober?
- Are you limiting yourself to just black ink, or using a variety of colours and values?
- Are you using a new medium for the first time, like dip pens, or are you experimenting with particular products?
- Do you prefer everything being organised in one sketchbook? Are you using varying kinds of paper?
- Have you discovered any new tutorials or inking techniques that were useful to you?
- What kinds of challenges and frustrations are you encountering?
- Do you need a boost of encouragement to keep on going?
- Are you having issues with time management? Is it affecting your RL/work life?
- Or anything else about Inktober that you might want to talk about.

So feel free to use this post over the next four weeks for discussing all things Inktober-related. :)

Comments

What does "Ink Drawing" mean?

[goss]

One of the big issues that seems to come up is how people interpret the phrase "DRAWING IN INK" from the official rules.

Is it just using a black ink pen on white paper? If so, then the only way to produce a range of values is by varying line width (hatching/cross-hatching) or stippling with dots, right?

Last year for Inktober, I actually found that using a ballpoint pen can be quite close to pencil shading, in that the more pressure I put on it can result in a darker effect.

Or if you're using a grey ink pen or coloured marker, then perhaps the more layers added can result in darker values.

And then there's the option is ink and paintbrush right? It's almost like painting with watercolour in a lot of ways, in that the lighter values can be created by diluting with water.

And nowadays, I see a lot of tutorials where they're using a white pen to go back in and add highlights.

Last year, I think I tried a lot of these, and even overlaid a couple with watercolour paint afterwards. I think for me the main focus was learning how to use ink in various forms.

This year, however, I think it would be a good learning opportunity to challenge myself to achieve a variety of effects using just a single pen or colour ink. So, I'm thinking of maybe designating one week for just that purpose.

Re: What does "Ink Drawing" mean?

[yhlee]

Alfonso Dunn's Pen and Ink Drawing adds scumbling to the list, and one really interesting exercise early in the book is to produce a ten-step value scale (white/blank to black/completely full) using one or a combination of line width, hatching/cross-hatching, stippling, and scumbling. I don't have very good skill with this yet but it's something I want to work on.

I used to draw a lot with a ballpoint and love the amount of expression you can get out of one!

Re: What does "Ink Drawing" mean?

[goss]

Oh yes, scumbling! I remember trying something like that last Inktober:

Inktober 2017 - Day 6: Waves (G)

The overall result was pretty cool, even though up close it looked like a hot mess while drawing. LOL.

Re: What does "Ink Drawing" mean?

[yhlee]

Oh, that looks gorgeous! The overall effect is incredibly dynamic. :D

[mekare]

Good idea! And thank you for sharing that video. Re supplies I am mixing and matching everything I got in my past Scrawlrboxes this year with previous old supplies. I rarely tend to use inkwithout prompting and this is a good way to get back into it.

[dhampyresa]

I am doing strictly black&white this year. I have a finepoint marker and a broadpoint marker for big swatches.

[yhlee]

- What kinds of tools and art supplies are you using for Inktober?
I'm sticking to fountain pen and ink simply because it's portable and I do a lot of sketching on the go.

- Are you limiting yourself to just black ink, or using a variety of colours and values?
I'm just using black ink.

- Do you prefer everything being organised in one sketchbook? Are you using varying kinds of paper?
I'm sticking to a drawing paper pad so that I don't have to worry about chasing down different sketchbooks. It's a Norcom pad and I'm liking the paper all right.

- What kinds of challenges and frustrations are you encountering?
I can't render glass at all! (Not surprising, since I can't render glass in any medium.)

- Do you need a boost of encouragement to keep on going?
Yes; I find art very intimidating. I tend to do quick sketches rather than detailed elaborate ones and I kind of regret that I don't know how to produce something more elaborate and polished. (I would probably have to do pencils first for it to come out at all.)

- Are you having issues with time management? Is it affecting your RL/work life?
Not too bad; I have time management issues independent of Inktober so it's not really having an extra impact. :p

[olivermoss]

Glass is hard! It's hard to get the effects light enough.

Art is intimidating, but Inktober is hopefully about improving so mistakes and failed experiments are alright. Or, so I keep trying to tell myself.

[olivermoss]

- What kinds of tools and art supplies are you using for Inktober?

Yes, all of them. But I am mostly clinging to my familiar Sakura PN. I got a special 32 page sketchbook for Inktober because I wanted to have a completed, physical thing at the end. But it's made it hard to do washes and it's made me not want to experiment since I can't start over.

I have dip pens (feel free to ask me questions about them or how to troubleshoot them. I really like them, especially as they are way more ergonomic than any other pen.) I also have brush pens, multiliners, fineliners, several inks, brush pens, etc.


- Are you limiting yourself to just black ink, or using a variety of colours and values?

I am not sure yet. I am using alcohol-marker safe inks so I can color later if I want.

I've also been testing my pens and inks:



Because not all really stand up to coloring.

- Are you using a new medium for the first time, like dip pens, or are you experimenting with particular products?

I am trying dip pens and technical pens. I thought I'd like the technical pens and be frustrated by dip pens, but it's been the opposite.

- Are you having issues with time management? Is it affecting your RL/work life?

I had an super adverse reaction to a medication on Oct. 1 and it's thrown my much-prepared-for Inktober into chaos. I am playing catch up. I wish I could cheat and post a few other recent drawings, but I already posted some of them around >.>

- Anything else?

I am getting caught up in my audiodramas and podcasts while drawing. They are like shows that I don't have to look at.

[syntheid]

I watched the same video yesterday hah. I think the reason I succeeded last year was that I thought about how much time I wanted to dedicate to it and made sure my goal for success was low enough to hit. So even a 10 minute scribbly doodle with a ballpoint pen was a success. Which I did partly because hitting the daily goal last year was more important to me than trying to produce anything really nice.

This year I'm... I dunno. I think I'm more interested in composition and working on foundational and conceptual skills so that maybe next year I'll feel comfortable producing full illustrations. It'll be fun if I still manage to do something every day, but also it's okay if I give up somewhere, and I'm not sticking to always posting it either. It's more just an extension of what I was already doing in my sketchbook, with a slight restriction of making sure to use some ink in it. I'm mostly using mediums I already started to get familiar with last year: brush pens, ballpoint pen, ink washes. With mixing in maybe watercolor or posca pens and possibly doing initial sketches in graphite/col-erase. I'm using a couple sketchbooks, neither of which I particularly like, but I want to finish them up so I'm using them.

The challenge is part making sure this doesn't affect RL/work, ahah. And I guess working with the terrible paper in the one sketchbook and the size of the other.

Tips & Miscellany:

* Specific to ballpoint pens, I picked up some Bic Round Stic Grip since I've been hearing for years that other people love that particular pen for sketching, and what I realized is this brand has a very dry ink which means it beads less and lets you get finer/lighter lines. Though what makes them good for sketching makes me dislike them for writing, ahah.
* The Kuretake Fudegokochi brush pens were the ones I liked the feel of most last year, but they are not waterproof even after drying. However, I saw a comment about and then tested for myself that if you wait for some time, they actually do become water resistant. So some of the pieces I did last year I could actually use watercolor on now. I'm not quite sure how long you need to wait though, probably at least a couple weeks for the water resistance to take effect. But it was interesting to find out.
* Though if you want one that's just waterproof once it dries and a felt tip instead of a bristle tip, I'm liking the Zebra disposable so far.

[syntheid]

Just an interesting thing, bisonfisticuffs has been doing single box panels of a small, wordless comic every day, and I think it's a really neat idea that I'm tempted to try sometime.

[goss]

Ooh, I like that idea! :)

[eller]

- What kinds of tools and art supplies are you using for Inktober?

I'm using a fountain pen with a bent (fude) nib. It's one I already wanted to test out for drawing last year, but I didn't go through with Inktober then.

- Are you limiting yourself to just black ink, or using a variety of colours and values?

Black and white, I guess. There's black ink in that fountain pen. However, I yesterday did something on grey paper where I used a white pen for highlights. I'm by no means limiting myself in any way.

- Are you using a new medium for the first time, like dip pens, or are you experimenting with particular products?

That fountain pen. I usually don't draw with my fountain pens (considering my clumsiness, I'd risk ruining the nibs, and my pens are entirely too valuable for that!), so it's kind of a new technique for me. (Well, not quite new, obviously - anyone who's ever sat through art classes has been forced to do some inking at some point - but one very rarely explored.)

- Do you prefer everything being organised in one sketchbook? Are you using varying kinds of paper?

I had this sketchbook lying around which had paper that turned out to be really suited to ink drawing... So I'm using that now. More or less. I'm not fixated on having a "finished product" at the end, so I'm quite open to testing other papers as well. It's not about being organised - it's sketches, after all, and I think most of them will simply go into the wastepaper in the end. I'm treating this as an exercise.

- Have you discovered any new tutorials or inking techniques that were useful to you?

I haven't been looking, although the book that yhlee mentioned earlier in the thread looks interesting. If I ever decide to do more ink work I might look into that.

- What kinds of challenges and frustrations are you encountering?

The fact that I'm inexperienced with ink, I guess. It's not really frustrating me, though. I don't have the ambition that any of my Inktober drawings should be "good artwork" or anything, and I don't have to please any clients, so I can approach this in a very relaxed way.

- Do you need a boost of encouragement to keep on going?

Yes and no... Well, in my mind, Inktober is supposed to be a group activity - so feedback is a large part of that, and I guess it would be considerably less fun if I just uploaded the picturs into nothingness. I also have a lot of fun looking at others' interpretations of the same prompts! Also, I'm always interested in technical feedback and advice. I don't really need that encouragement to keep drawing, though. I'm an ambitious person so most of that drive is entirely internal. (If I want to learn something, I learn it, even if it takes me longer than others.) And Inktober, for me, is more a social activity than anything else.

- Are you having issues with time management? Is it affecting your RL/work life?

Not really. I'm your classical commuter, I spend a lot of time on various trains. Instead of reading or looking out of the window, I can also do some sketches, no problem. I also do that when it's not Inktober (although then, it usually involves watercolors).

[jainas]

I haven't been able to watch the video yet, but I will as soon as possible.

- What kinds of tools and art supplies are you using for Inktober?
Mostly the same as last year: https://www.instagram.com/p/BajTrtDgLay/?hl=fr&taken-by=artofclem
- pentel brush (need to refill)
- Staedlers pens ranging from 0,05 to 0,7
- basic colorex inks (I love the vividness of their colors), and a few various inks I have at hand
- probably brushes and various nib-pen
- masking gum
- maybe a bit of watercolor (cheating, I know)

- Are you limiting yourself to just black ink, or using a variety of colours and values?
No limiting myself, but I do plan to have half of the drawings be usable for silk screen printing, which means two colors max, flat tints (no color gradation) and well defined lines. For now I haven't been very good at that, but there is tile yet.


- Are you using a new medium for the first time, like dip pens, or are you experimenting with particular products?
Nothing particular, but I'm always trying new things on inktober... I just doesn't know what until I start.


- Do you prefer everything being organised in one sketchbook? Are you using varying kinds of paper?
Last year I had a sketchbook (except for two drawings that were meant to be gifts from the start), which was great because it makes for a *very cool* sketchbook at the end of the month, but it's a pain for scanning, and doing anything else with the drawings. This year I aim to produce more elaborate an hopefully good looking illustrations that could be displayed or used as a starting point for finished pieces, so I decided to use paper, maybe all A4, maybe not.
224g is the minimum as I never quite know beforehand if I'll use a lot of water or not, but even that can be too thin, so I also have 330g paper at hand. My first inktobers were on a brand I didn't know, and erasing the sketch lines sometimes damaged the paper and took off some of the ink too... I switched back to Canson and hopefully it shouldn't be a problem anymore.
I saw Eller use colored paper and it's a nice idea, maybe I will as well.


- Have you discovered any new tutorials or inking techniques that were useful to you?
Not yet, but I'll probably have to for some of the illustrations I have in mind. I remember that last year someone posted a link to a tutorial channel which had vids about drawing flames, but I couldn't find it again.


- What kinds of challenges and frustrations are you encountering?
I need to be more patient and let things dry. Also I need to force myself to star earlier in the evening.

- Do you need a boost of encouragement to keep on going?
Not yet! :D

- Are you having issues with time management? Is it affecting your RL/work life?
It is affecting my sleep patterns as I go to bed too late. I really need to be more proactive about that, or I won't last the month. I'll also probably scale back social outings after next week (I have a few evenigs I can't cancel).


- Or anything else about Inktober that you might want to talk about.

[dirty_diana]

Sticking with my Copics and Faber-Castell brush pens, the new colours came and they are fun. I have a good pad of Bee marker paper, will probably just use that since I don't like the way the inks behaves on other stuff. Have to rip it out after I'm done though since the binding is not sturdy enough to keep everything in. I need an art folder thingie.

Using different colours in theory but sticking to monochrome or limited palette experiments so far. Trying to be less scared of using a lot of ink, if that makes sense. Dark values and brash shading look great when other people do it, so working on just going for it.

Don't actually have time to do it every day, so working on not feeling bad about that! A little progress is still progress.

Also working on showing people what I've done. I feel so uncomfortable posting sketches?

I love going in the tag on social media and seeing what awesome stuff people are up to and leaving hearts all over the place!