Inktober 2019: Reflections

Let's start off with a few notices:

• ALL of the illustrations from this year's Inktober have been scanned in, enhanced and uploaded to my website. You can see them here as well as over on my Instagram.

• ALL of the witchy pieces are available for you to buy as stickers, cards or prints on my Redbubble shop.

• If you want to know more about the art supplies I used, as well as information on my prompt list and inspiration, check out my last Blog Post. The only addition I made was for day 31; I used my Arteza Premium Gouache, and if you want to know what I thought about it check out my Inktober Instagram Story Highlight!

I don’t think I’ve been this productive in a while - it’s a good feeling!

I figured I'd start off with some quick-fire questions (mostly to prevent me rambling):

1. What's my favourite piece/s?
   Ancient Witch and Sea Witch are my two most favourite illustrations overall. They just make me smile and I love how they both turned out; I feel like every time I look at them I notice something new!

2. What's my least favourite piece/s?
   It’s a toss-up between Merchant Witch and Cat Witch. I just don’t think I executed either of these the way I wanted to - I think I could definitely do better.

3. What's been the biggest surprise?
   Probably the way that some of the pieces I thought would be the most difficult ended up turning out. Glitter Witch, Fire Witch and Autumn Witch were all pieces I was worried about because I didn’t know how I was going to make them work, and they actually ended up being some of the easiest and most fun illustrations to put together. I think the key here was simplicity and being creative with whatever medium I chose.

4. What's been the biggest lesson I've learned?
   That investing time at the beginning to really visualise the end result is a key component of planning. I’m a neurotic planner anyway, but this year I took the time to think about each of my captions, and which pieces I would film the process for, and which ones might take longer to work on due to the medium I chose - this saved me so much hassle overall because I knew my schedule was tailored to catering for these factors.

Overall, I'm really proud of what I've managed to achieve this year for Inktober. In case you haven't been following along over on Instagram, I went away to Cancun for a week in October, and so for most of this year I've been in two minds about whether or not to participate in the challenge at all. It was for my cousin's wedding and, if I'm honest, I really wanted to enjoy every second of the time I had with my family and completely disconnect from everything else. But the allure of Inktober was too much to resist and I decided, quite last minute, to bite the bullet and do it.

So, with the goal of trying to get the best out of both worlds, I spent the first 15 days of October illustrating all 31 pieces, including colouring, filming and editing most of the video footage. I made sure that I scheduled enough posts to cover the entire time I was away, plus the day after I got back, just to alleviate the pressure during the wedding/holiday.

Now, I won't say that this month hasn't been stressful. I pushed myself quite hard, I definitely zapped more energy from myself than I'd intended, and it certainly took its toll given that I’ve now got quite a bad cold. But I am really, really pleased that I committed to the work and have produced 31 illustrations that I'm really happy with. I'm also quite chuffed that I didn't miss an upload - I know it's not the be-all and end-all, but in the past I've had to play catch up at least twice and I can't quite believe I avoided that this year.

How have you found Inktober this year? Did you participate? How did you approach the challenge? If you didn’t take part this year, are you inspired to try in 2020? Let me know in the comments!

Thank you to everyone who has supported my work by liking, sharing, following and commenting - you’ve made this challenge extra special for me and I truly appreciate you all!

Don’t forget that you can find the full portfolio of illustrations here, and get stickers, cards and prints of them here!

Puddles of Experiments

So far, 2019 has been the year of getting really, really messy for me, and I’ve been loving every second of it. If you couldn’t tell from the name ‘Puddles of Ink’, my artistic process usually involves me getting various splotches all over my hands, and it’s been nice to embrace it as opposed to try and steer clear of it because of time constraints or work commitments - I can’t really show up to meetings and look put together with ink all over me!

I’ve completed a couple of pieces this year, but more than any other time in my life all I’ve really been wanting to do is try out different materials and techniques, pair different tools together, read a bunch of different arty books and watch different artists create things outside of my own bubble. It’s been so eye-opening and liberating; it’s been amazing to get back in touch with the kind of art you’d do as a kid - drawing inspiration from everywhere and letting go of what you’d established as your routine in favour of the unknown. It’s taught me quite a bit already, and whilst I wanted to share it with you I also wanted a record for myself so that if I ever feel creatively stuck in the future I’ll have this to look back on.

I’ve been having the most fun using up and re-discovering a lot of my old supplies that I hadn’t reached for in a while, alongside buying some newer ones that I know I’ll use. I think it’s easy to get in the habit of using the same tools to create the kind of art you know, and it’s also easy to get distracted by shiny, new toys. I think I’ve struck a balance by working with my almost-finished-but-not-quite-there supplies for less refined, sketchbook bits, and learning what I’d like to work with more and what I don’t use very often. I’ve also been discovering which tools I like for different things; watercolours tend to be my go-to, but I prefer markers for faces and character work. Recently, I’ve started using different supplies in my technical practice, making learning anatomy or colour theory more interactive. One piece I’m working on at the moment features a skull from lots of different angles, and I’ve used watercolours, inks, brush pens and liners to put it together. It’s been fun to let the watercolours do their own thing, add in some blocks of precision with the inks, and spend time focussing on making sure my skulls are as accurate as they can be for this style of illustration. Whilst I actually really enjoy studying anatomy, this was a great way to break up labelled diagrams with technical terms!

Digital art has been so much fun to experiment with, and I’ve especially loved working with colours and different effects to create illustrations. Colour theory is something I need to work on, and this has forced me to think more about how I choose colours for pieces and how I can change the entire look and feel of something just by altering them. I’ve also used it for simple sketching and character work, and I find that it’s had a knock-on effect with my traditional art, because I want to see if I can create the same kind of looks with watercolours or pencils on paper. One way I’ve been working on this in particular is timing my warm-up sketches and choosing different brushes and tools to use so that I get a feel for how they work and interact with each other. Rebelle 3, the software I’m using at the moment, has an incredible watercolour tool that is so real and interactive, and using it for these quicker pieces has helped me learn how I like to use it.

I still have a long way to go with my 2019 goals, which you can read about more here, but I’ve been more in the mood to just go with my gut when it comes to putting pieces together. I plan on talking more about the supplies I’ve been working with and the books I’ve been reading in future posts - if there’s anything in particular you’d like to see then let me know in the comments :) What sorts of things do you do to keep your art fresh or to spring yourself out of art block?