November 3, 2020 by Sheri Garvin

Finalizing Inktober

So Inktober almost went bust for me mid month when my brother passed, but I finally jumped back in on day 21 and did a few more pieces.

Here is my wrapup:

Day 7 Fancy – this was a rare bird who showed up in our area – I was practicing ink washes and will watercolor this later

Day 8 Teeth – I added this to my Nature Journal since I heard the coyotes again behind the house.

Day 21 – Sleep – this was my re-entry into my creativeness after the loss of my brother. It seemed a nice, gentle way to get back to it. My cat and pointillism.

Day 25 – Buddy – My brother Ron – we were buddies growing up on the farm as the closest to my age of the 7 of us.

I had to catch up on some Christmas commissions at this point, so I put my energy into those. I also was meeting once a week with a set of nieces who were participating with me, which I will share in another post.

One other thing that kept me involved is that I am an Admin on a Facebook group called Inktober SafeSpace where artists, young and old, can share their work without imagery depicting violence, hate, and sexually explicit material. The larger Inktober can trigger someone due to depictions of suicide and depression etc. Also, some of us simply do not like all that in-your-face art.

This is a place where people can safely have fun, share and not have to deal with the artists who are going for the shock factor, edginess, and trying to push the envelope of how disgusting they can be. Sometimes life is hard enough without having it in your face 24/7. We are a small group, but we certainly had fun this year.
All of this kept me Inktober-busy! I did enjoy the “season”.

October 18, 2020 by Sheri Garvin

Painting During Loss

2.5 months ago my baby brother, age 44, was told by his doctors that there was not a thing they could do for the colon cancer that he had battled for some time. His wife and 5 children chose to do home hospice so that they could be with him (covid rules-grrr). This past Wednesday he passed away after a valiant fight. I have learned to despise cancer!

My way of dealing with this was to spend time painting him as I remember him, and pushing myself to get better at portraiture through this, trying again and again. I want to use this grief as a force for good instead of letting it sink me. So hang in there with me, I will be posting more Inktober soon, and my brother will be my subject more than once, I am sure.