Inktober review

I know the month isn't over yet, but I had set some October goals, and this seems like a good time to go over them. I want to blog about where I am in my life now, and I can't seem to get started. Maybe going over the one-month-only goals will make a good transition.

 I really wanted to tell a story. I did not have it in me.

There is a level at which that may be a result of my scattered, fragmented mind. It was an even bigger obstacle that I don't draw well. At least, I can't draw well enough from my head.

That makes sense. I attended a Rose City Comic Con Panel once. The artist (I can't remember his name but I think he worked for Dark Horse and I know he hated Rob Liefeld) talked about spending about ten years drawing everything, because anything can come up in the course of a story.

I have not done enough of that to just draw anything in my head. I decided to just draw from photo reference, using word association and different themes to pick what. That has felt better. I mean, I can still see flaws in every single one, but I can also see that there is something captured. Drawing-wise, that is where I am.

That does not have to be a huge deal; I have no aspirations to be a professional artist. However, I do like drawing, and when there is something in my head I want to at least get something proximate out.

I believe the answer is to do one drawing daily from reference. That will probably be mainly photo reference, but I might start sketching household objects and things too. (I have an obvious affinity for animals.) By next October maybe I will be able to tell a story graphically, or maybe I will spend the month drawing different superheroes. There's a lot of things you can do.

In addition, I have had The Art of Comic Book Inking on my to-read list for a long time, and I am reading that now. I do love a good theme.

I will not be posting the pictures daily after the 31st, but I do look forward to going back to pencil. It's funny, but when I was younger I didn't like pencil texture at all, and being able to erase was not enough of an inducement to using it. I'm not sure when that changed. It's not even so much for the erasing as for the ability to smudge instead of smear. Of course, now I generally don't like drawing on sketch pad paper.

Clearly I am just difficult, as we have always known.

I suppose at some point I will also have to commit to using some kind of edge when the drawing calls for a straight line. I know it's not really cheating, but I've been putting it off.