The above image was my favorite for this week. I was trying new things – this was my niece having a hard time of it when she found her daddy’s jeans hanging on the line. It is one of my favorite moments. Faces and emotions are not easy to capture. I vow to work this next year to do better with them.
I am pushing myself to try different styles – quick drawings, purposeful drawings, tiny lines, emotion on faces, events.
Following the prompts of Inktober has been great at stretching my creativity and I hope expanding my range (depth and breadth.)
Inktober is an international challenge to artists to pick up a pen and practice ink drawing daily and share it online. I use the time as a yearly exercise to improve my observational skills with 10 second sketches, but this year I am also doing a few finished pages in my new nature journal.
Above is my ink of a blue heron. Below I added light watercolors. Later I added notes and observations in the whitespace.
I have been wanting to take my love of birding, hiking the state parks, and nature photography to the next creative level – nature journaling seemed to be an obvious extension. To break through the paralysis that inevitably happens when it comes to my drawing, I signed up for a class by Jan Blencowe and it has been fabulous. I highly recommend it for beginners, as well as “stuck” veteran artists.
One of the new tools I am learning to use, and quite enjoying, is the extra fine fountain pen that uses platinum carbon ink.
