It's surreal that is has been over a year since I first joined the Inktober social-media art movement! I'm happy to claim that I started a tradition and recently finished up a total of thirty one drawings for my 2nd annual Inktober participation. Unlike last year, where I was pretty much freestyling with no subject planned beforehand, I decided it would be more interesting follow a theme this year. It helps for the purpose of consistency. Let's see if you can catch the theme by the end of this blog.
Okay, starting out with #1 "Cat Loaves" and #2 "DC Comics's Catwoman". I quickly ran out of Ink, hence the reason why Catwoman's outfit looks so... plain. As for the crew of cat loaves, my game designer partner, Barry, threw me the idea and I went with it. Fun fact: this was also Barry's 2nd year of Inktober, and he's a programmer! Kudos to him for going out of his comfort zone and doing this again.
On the 3rd day, I rushed out to Hobby Lobby and acquired myself some new PrismaColor pens, which resulted #3 "Witch-Cat" and #4 "Moon Cat". As you can see, the new ink pens got abused pretty quickly.
After seeing one Josh Grilli's (ultra talented artist, who is also a member of Louisville Makes Games) Copic marker drawings, I was inspired! Inspired enough to go out and grab myself about a dozen of those expensive markers, but more importantly, his drawings inspired me how to frame my drawings a little better. Which is evidently visible in #5 "Marvel Comics's Black Cat" & #6 "A tales of two cats: Dark Stalkers's Felicia & Grumpy Cat"
I was intrigued with the colored Copic markers and decided to test them out, but with only one color, since I had to borrow it from Josh, as I was waiting impatiently for mine to be shipped from Joann's Fabric. The crazy thing is, as soon as I started coloring with the red Copic marker, I regretted my decision. Why? Copic markers are made with alcohol and the ink bled through my Moleskin sketchbook pages with ease. So, basically the backside of my 8th drawing was ruined, but it looks great, I think.... #7 "Lion Warrior" (Which happens to resembles Lion King's Simba). #8 "Okami's Kabegami"
Since the back page of #8 was ruined, the next shot is of only one page. #9 "Totoro napping on Catbus" looked really promising at first... until I got too excited with using a thick-tip pen and started to fill in more of the background than I should of and ruined the whole drawing. =(
I quickly bounced back the next day with two very cool drawings of two very interesting characters. #10 "Lord Beerus of Dragon Ball Super" and #11 "Yugito Nii and Matatabi from Naruto's manga"
I was quickly running out of ideas to continue on with my Inktober's theme, so I decided to throw a little curve-ball and sketch an idea I had in my head to help promote Roaring Cat Games. It quickly went from sketch to digital vector art in a matter of hours. #12 " Mitsuyoshi Jūbei of Blazblue" and #13 "Roaring Cat Game's Roary with a Pumpkin Mask". We now have an October-theme logo for RCG!
So, now I am about midway through Inktober, I was falling behind a couple of times on drawings and ended up having to cover two to three drawings a day. At this point, I was probably spending over an hour on each drawing, most of the time were spent researching and figuring out what I should draw, cause you know, I was staying true to the theme and what not. So, after some rough time with researching through the comic books and video games' universe, I ended up with #14 "Kitty Pryde and Lockheed from Marvel Comics" and #15 "Blazblue's Taokaka".
#16 "Tekken's King" and #17 "Celty Sturluson from Durarara! anime" took a lot of time with researching, composition planning, and careful inking. Ultimately though, it resulted with possibly my favorite two drawings from the whole month.
Okay, I'll admit, I got super lazy with #18 "Calligraphy Catfish". This is what happened when I am crunching for time and didn't plan things out very well. #19 "Samurai Pizza Cats" was something Barry had recommended because I was quickly running out of ideas. It was also the first time I heard of these cats. I think they're, like, the Japanese version of Mutant Ninja Turtles?
These next two drawings were fun to plan and sketch out. Using my newly acquired Pentel's Calligraphy brush pen, I managed to dish out #20 "Studio Ghibli's Kiki & her pet cat, Jiji" flying high through the clouds and #21 "Cheetara from ThunderCats".
It was almost like I hit the jackpot with ideas to fulfill my silly Inktober's theme after stumbling upon the famed 80's cartoon, ThunderCats. I was also behind a day, so continuing the ThunderCats influence, #22 "Retro Lion-O from 1985" on the left side and #23 "Modern Lion-O from 2011" on the right. The fusion of time! Hooooooooooooooooooooo!
A little nostalgia was brought back with #24 "Final Fantasy's Cait Sith" (Bonus gif animation) and then something completely different with #25 "Blair of Soul Eater anime". A lot of mistakes were made with drawing Blair, but thank god for the Sakura White Gel pen (a blessing in a small tube), I was able to somewhat correct my ink mistakes.
Due to catching a stupid cold, I fell one day behind in Inktober. I quickly filled two pages of my sketchbook with #26 " DC Comics's WonderCat, Bat Cat, Super Cat" fighting #27 "Marvel Comics's Catasha Romanova/Black Widow, IronCat, Cattain America" and hopped on back to bed shortly after I finished inking.
The theme steam was quickly evaporating. I had to reach out to my peers for ideas and managed to render #28 "Lucky Chloe from the new Tekken game" and random #29 "A new Pokemon, Incineroar".
So, here we are, arriving at the final two drawings of Inktober 2016. #30 "A black panther with Black Panther from Marvel Comics" and #31 "Trigun's Vash the Stampede is getting heated at Kuronecko".
Other than experimenting with new ink pens, I felt that I got better at conceptualizing art. The best and biggest challenge for me was researching my subjects before hand. Since, the majority of depicted characters are actual characters from their respective universe, I wanted to capture their official outfit/looks and their personality. I think I achieved that fairly well throughout the month.
By this time, I hope you've figured out what my theme was for this Inktober! Thanks for reading!
