Last post I ended with a few questions of where to go next. I was hesitant to make a move for fear of ‘ruining’ the art piece. So when I did decide to make a move, I ended up regretting my actions, but I learned a lesson along the way…

When I looked at the line drawing (see below), I felt that it didn’t read well… as in, you couldn’t distinguish some of the characters placement as well… the turquoise monster with the horns behind the light green monster with the tuft of hair was of particular interest to me, as well as the crab-like monster and the green robot monsters…

I had two ideas for how to fix it:

1. Dilute the ink and watercolor in some shadows
2. Cross-hatch the shaded areas

I decided to do the cross-hatching because it was line work and that seemed more fitting, but also because I knew that the ink would bleed if I added water and I didn’t want to mess up the line work I had already done.  Well, unfortunately, I forgot to take into account where my light source was when I did the cross-hatching and added it in all the places the monsters overlapped.

I cannot explain the feeling of nausea I felt after ‘ruining’ eight days of work.

I tried to ‘fix’ it with white gel pen, but that just made it worse because it picked up the color and… well it was just worse.  Then my husband suggested I color the monsters in all the way… basically my other idea.  I said, “well I can’t make it any worse”.  So I diluted each ink with water and filled in each shape, having to contend with the gel pen and the bleeding of the outlines.

It sort of got rid of the cross-hatching, but still looked a hot mess.  The next day I added colored pencils and highlighted with colored gel pens… it IS better than after the cross-hatching.  I wish I could say that it is totally what I had intended to do from the start of the project, but … anyway, here is the state it is in currently…

After working on that, I moved on to the day’s shape…

Day nine’s shape is a pointy triangle.  For the ink, I used fuyu-gaki (persimmon, vermilion red orange) with both a Maru (mapping) soft nip and a G nib.

We couldn’t come up with a name for this one, and things were just starting to feel like, “Ugh… maybe I should sleep on it”.  So I decided not to post last night.

This morning I was walking the dogs and contemplating the last few days.  I came to realize that once again my perfectionist was getting in the way, I was trying too hard.  The point of this challenge (for me, anyway) is to inspire me to draw, get me to take risks with my art, and to learn – either from practice or from my mistakes.  So that sick feeling I got from ‘ruining’ my art is the wrong response… this is an exercise to make me a better artist, but more importantly to have fun doing it.  So what if the first 8 days of work isn’t perfect, and who cares if I can’t name this weird vampiric angle monster.  I’m drawing (almost) daily with ink, which is what Inktober is all about.

Anyway, thanks for letting me vent and to remind myself to stop being so hard on myself.  I’m going to go see what today’s shape is and draw.  Be kind to yourselves.

Until next time…
~nic