The theme I went with for Inktober 2019 was "Eyes". For the word "Ring", I immediately thought of "Samara" from the movie "The Ring". I wasn't looking forward to searching "The Ring Girl" for reference, but I made it through by keeping the light on at night for a night or two. This was a warm-up image to establish size, composition and technique. Being so used to working in digital, I was a little hesitant without the undo key!
I began day 2 with a drawing of Trump but decided Inktober wasn't an appropriate platform to stir up political emotions. Instead I made the closest thing I could think of: A Zombie.
A fish eye has an obvious connection to the word "Bait". I used washes to add depth and added white highlights. Being low on supplies, I used white acrylic paint and a toothpick for the white.
This is a depiction of Jack Nicholson's eye from "The Shining snow meme". The technique used in this image was similar to Day 3.
I went with a more abstract image for "build". The idea of creating an eye out of wood planks came after struggling to find interesting people related to the word "build". I spent the most time on this image out of the all Inktober 2019 sketches. I wanted to be very deliberate about where the boards were placed and how they interacted with each other in the image rather than relying on implicit shapes and forms.
"Husky" was an easy word to base the theme of "Eyes" around. This image was created entirely with a .3 mm artist pen.
This is an image of Giselle's eye from the Disney movie "Enchanted". Some days you just don't have much time to spend on Inktober... this was one of those days.
The word "frail" seemed like an appropriate word to utilize a very loose pen and ink technique. The line work was created with a dip pen and ink. The washes were brushed on with a watered down ink. The white was painted on.
It was difficult coming up with an image that associated the word "Swing" to an eye. The solution of a golf swing in the reflection of sunglasses was a bit of a stretch, but nothing else was coming to mind. This was another relatively quick sketch using or or two artist pens.
I set out to create an image of an eye using various patterns. The result didn't match what I envisioned, but the intention is apparent.
John Snow in the Snow! I was slightly torn between making an image of John Snow (from Game of Thrones), or the Singer of the 1993 hit single "Informer". It was interesting trying to establish a likeness with one feature. After posting the image on Instagram, people seemed to know who it was. I wonder if the same would have been true without the prompt.
I was really looking forward to this one, and knew early on that I was going to try out a reverse ink technique with white out. Unfortunately, working with a white-out pen was much more difficult than I thought it would be. I couldn't get the control I wanted from the lines. The white out was drying out too quickly and didn't come out smooth. In the end I made it work, but it wasn't quite what I was going for.
My original idea for the word "ash" was to somehow relate the eye to volcanic ash. I quickly changed my mind when I did an image search for the word "ash" on google. I'm not familiar with the Pokemon characters so I can't call this "Fan Art", but it seemed like nice switch in style.
... It's an overgrown eye. This was the result of doing a quick sketch of an overgrown eye without much of a plan. Disturbing.
The idea was to draw the eye of a cultural legend. There were many to choose from, but Bob Marley is not only considered a "Legend", a compilation album was released entitled "Legend".
One of my favorite movies growing up was "Major League" staring Charlie Sheen as Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn.
This image reflects designs seen on various types of Christmas Tree ornaments.
This is the depiction of a little misfit devil character a friend and I came up with.
This is based on the image on the Gadsden Flag's "Don't Tread on Me" slogan. I had some wild ideas of creating an eye out of tire marks or tire materials, but ultimately, the idea of drawing a snake seemed more fun. For this and the remaining images, I worked on Multimedia paper and used and aqua pen for washes.
This image was a bit more illustrative than others. It tells a story of many unsuccessful attempts at capturing the elusive treasure on Inktober. I continued to work with the aqua pen for washes and a new gel pen for highlights.
How do you depict an based on the word sling? How about an eyeball about to be shot from a sling shot?! It took a while to come up with something for this image, but I was happy with the result.
I worked on Destiny 2 for close to three years and have been playing it for much longer so, this seemed a fitting representation of the word "ghost". While not specifically an eye, the Ghosts have characteristics that mimic a human eye. I went a little too dark with the washes initially so it was tough to get the values correct.
The Mask of Tutankhamun is one of the most well know pieces of ancient art. I spent a lot of time making sure the polished gold material came across successfully without relying much on line work.
The final image for this was based on a really quick doodle I made of some guy who's either really dizzy or really high. This style of drawing is what can be found in many of my sketches.
Eat me! Who can forget the gingerbread man character from Shrek!? This was one of the quickest and I thought most successful images I made for Inktober 2019.
I drew this image of an eye in the dark... literally. I turned the lights down and drew the image in very low light and didn't modify it afterward. The result was interesting. It ended up being a more painterly than the other images.
This eye has glaucoma, is crying, AND if you look closely, has contacts on. Lots of coatings! This image ended up being my favorite image of the Inktober 2019 set because the result reflected my intent very closely.
London Eye... It's a ride. This was another real quick one.
This person had a real bad day. Looking up "injured eye" on Google yielded some very interesting results but I went with the look of a brutal boxing injury.
It's a baseball catcher! Can you tell which one?
When attempting to come up with an idea for Inktober, it was interesting to find out where the research would take me. This image of a longan fruit is an example of finding an interesting idea through internet meandering. I had no idea what I was going to do for this image, until I found information about this fruit, which in Cantonese is translated as "Dragon Eye". It get's it's name because the dark center makes it look like an eye. On day 31 of Inktober, that was enough for me!
I made it through Inktober 2019 without missing a day! It was really nice to get back to drawing traditionally. In order to keep at it, I based all of the images on the theme of “eyes” and limited the size of the images.
