We’re either at 12 or 13, the most recent number I wrote down is 10. I’ve filled 2 for sure but maybe 3 since then.
I can’t recall when the travel sketchbook I finished up recently was completed, but I know for sure we finished up two (a medium white and medium black) in the last few days. I’m pretty sure we’re at 13 but I won’t know for sure until I go through the finished sketchbook bin and count!
This is such a funny milestone to reach. Only 4 years ago I had never filled a sketchbook from front to back in my life, now I can’t recall for certain the number of books I have filled.
Here is a small sample of some favorite pages from the 2 sketchbooks we just filled up. I say “we” because my partner and daughter both draw in my sketchbooks too! This time around there’s a lot of Beastars studies. I’ve been drawing from referencing the manga, I love Itagaki’s style and I’d love to emulate it in my own anthropomorphic work!
I want to make an attempt at doing sketchbook tours in video format in the near future. A lot of people are moving out of our house soon which will free up a lot of room, I’m hoping to have a place to record in private. All I have is my phone, I don’t have any fancy equipment, but I figure it’s worth a shot either way! Stay tuned…
Until next time, take care, and I hope you have a wonderful day!
These aren’t my best work, but that’s the point! I’m learning a new set of skills: hand lettering and brush calligraphy.
I’ve never had good handwriting. It’s usually quite legible, but it’s not neat and tidy. So many girls I went to school with seemed to have beautiful handwriting by default, while my handwriting was more like that of most boys.
However, I was lucky enough to be taught cursive by my mom when I was in kindergarten. My generation wasn’t taught cursive in elementary school, but those times had been recent enough that they still had the instructional banners on the classroom walls. So I never forgot how to write in cursive and I think that has been a huge benefit for present me who is trying to learn brush calligraphy!
Drawing letterforms has always interested me so I have dabbled in hand lettering before. I’ve also been fascinated by design and typography for a very long time, so it’s something I have an eye for even though I’m not yet skilled in doing it myself. When I make something that looks good, I know it. But the same is true for when I make something bad, which is far more often currently! But that’s the point of learning, and the point of shamelessly making bad art, one day my skill set will have grown to the point that executing my ideas properly will come more naturally to me.
I think I will include something to do with practicing these skills in my New Years resolutions for 2023! I’m not sure what exactly that will be yet, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.
Until next time, take care and have a wonderful day!
For the record, if you get confused easily like I do, >25 means older than 25.I did not want to reveal my full date of birth.
If you’ve ever been on social media, you may have seen people posting these introductory memes. My friend recently redid their take on this one, so I decided I would give it a go as well!
This ties into something I’ve been meaning to talk about too, I’m trying to create an avatar of sorts to represent me since I want to remain anonymous. The author of a manga I recently finished represents herself with a pigeon, and such things are very common among Japanese creators. More and more people are using personas to represent themselves online and I am very much here for this trend! Privacy is very important to me.
So far I’ve come up with this snowshoe cat character. I want to refine this design and try a more detailed style of drawing them. For now though, this Animal-Crossing-inspired “chibi” style will have to do. Even though I no longer play video games, I’ve spent so much time drawing Animal Crossing fanart that it’s just become second nature to me!
I consider this a thumbnail sketch, it’s very preliminary. This is my very first time attempting to draw this character, so some details may be subject to change! I think I’d like to add some asymmetry to the facial markings for a more distinct look.
Why a snowshoe cat? Well, I have a classic tuxedo cat as well as one who looks like a purebred Tonkinese cat, but they are sisters from the same litter! Snowshoe cats have the perfect cross between these two coats. I also have a separate fursona designed by the same friend I mentioned earlier, and that one is a hummingbird. Perhaps I can get permission to post it here sometime…
That’s all for now. I hope you have a wonderful day, and I will see you again soon!
Well folks, I did it. 31 illustrations in 31 days. Some took several days to complete, some of them I only spent a few minutes on. Either way, I got it done. Now I am exhausted and never want to look at another micron pen for the rest of my life! (Just kidding.) I’ve already complained enough about how hard this was in the previous post, so I will focus on the positives now.
I really did learn a lot from this challenge, and even walked away with more confidence in my abilities! The prompts helped me come up with ideas I never would have thought of on my own, and I got several illustrations I love out of the deal. Noticing which illustrations I enjoyed making the most was very enlightening, and I will definitely be using that knowledge going forward.
For the record, I got most of my references from Pexels and Unsplash. Some were also referenced from my own photos, (such as the shed,) and a few were referenced from my imagination or memories! Another thing I’ve learned from this challenge is just how important building a visual library through mileage is. The more you draw from seeing, the more you’ll be able to draw from muscle memory! I’ve found that I really like drawing my own memories.
While I’m really grateful that I finally completed Inktober for the first time, I’m not sure it’s something I’m going to do every year. By the time next October rolls around I’m sure I’ll be considering trying again, but I will be more willing to drop it if I feel it is doing me more harm than good.
If you have any questions or comments about any of the illustrations, please feel welcome to leave a comment! Thanks for stopping by, I hope you have a wonderful day!
On day 27 I did a very low effort sketch and filled the rest of the page with journaling about how burnt out I was feeling.
Undertaking any art challenge comes with the risk of burnout. Inktober is a 31 day challenge that asks you to create 31 inked drawings in that time period, and even assumes you will work at a 1:1 day to illustration ratio. On top of that, it is probably today’s most popular art challenge, meaning you have endless options for art to compare yours to, which adds a significant amount of pressure to make each illustration good.
Inktober is the perfect recipe for burnout, and many artists acknowledge this. Some artists simply refuse to do Inktober for this exact reason. I decided to take it on anyway, knowing full well the potential consequences. Thankfully I took steps to make it easier on myself, and I know I would not have completed the challenge otherwise. Despite my efforts to streamline the challenge, I am still left feeling incredibly drained! Even as someone who draws almost every day for pleasure, Inktober really pushed me to my limit.
Currently, I don’t even want to take photos of my Inktober drawings. Looking for a place with good, consistent lighting and then setting up my desk easel and then meticulously framing each shot… It all sounds like too much for me. I’ve also been waiting for a sunny day that probably won’t come, November is very cloudy and rainy here, so I will end up having to settle for subpar indoor lighting and photo editing. More work for me!
It really doesn’t help that problems in my personal life have come up at the same time as I was working through this challenge. Even without a day job, I find myself overburdened with responsibilities. Currently I am juggling: Raising a one year old, caring for three cats (including one who is elderly and terminally ill,) house chores, running errands, countless appointments with Doctors and the like, caring for myself, my romantic relationship with my partner, and a primarily text-based social life. It is important to note that I also struggle with physical and mental disabilities! I think the fact that I completed all 31 prompts within the 31 day period is nothing short of a miracle.
Honestly, the truth of my victory is messy. Sometimes I would push off my other responsibilities until the next day, or stay up too late and sacrifice my sleep so I could work while our baby slept. Ironically, I seem to do my best work while tired, so this worked both for and against me. I often had to sketch ahead of time to account for the days I would just not be feeling up to creating. Sometimes I would just count starting the illustration as a victory and then work on it little by little in the days following. This experience has made me incredibly grateful that I don’t sell my art for a living, and especially grateful that I rarely take on commissions.
Now I question if I will ever do Inktober again. Maybe when our daughter is older, and by then we will also have less cats. While I am extremely satisfied by my success and all that I learned through this challenge, I’m not sure if it was worth the blow I took to my mental health.
I am excited to share what I made with you all, but please be patient with me while I heal and rest. Take care of yourselves, have a wonderful day, and I will see you again soon.
And the largest at that! It taught me that I prefer to work smaller, so it may continue to hold that record for a long time…
Strathmore Sketch: 400 series, recycled paper, 11×14 inch, 60lb. Painted the cover with the only Poscas I had at the time, not a color palette I’d typically go for!The liquid chrome Molotow accents on this piece really make it pop IRL!This piece just feels balanced to me and I really like the color I used. I remember I really enjoyed making it!The solid gold petals were actually because of a marker explosion! Happy accidents and all that, right? At first I was afraid it was ruined but now I like it even better.This was a value study I did with a mechanical pencil. Not the best tool for the job, and I knew that. I learned a lot and ended up really happy with the results! My reference was a photo of my dear friend’s dog, Kimber.This is actually a pretty small doodle, don’t be fooled by the image scaling! I just wanted to practice drawing hummingbirds and using alcohol markers, and ended up loving the results. Too cute!
For the longest time I could not for the life of me fill an entire sketchbook. It took me until 2019, at age 23, to completely fill a sketchbook for the first time. I still remember that chilly November morning, how I sat in our car in a gravely parking lot, doodling while I waited for my partner. I yelled from the elation when I realized I had finally done it. That was a day I checked a major milestone off my bucket list, I remember it with the same kind of clarity as the day I first held my daughter.
Now in the nearly-3-years since that time, I have somehow managed to fill another 9 sketchbooks, 5 of which I finished up this year because of my Art Supply No Buy and my newly found dedication to no longer abandoning sketchbooks partway through. I can see myself finishing up another one or two before the end of this year if I keep up this pace!
Allowing myself to see sketchbooks as a private place to practice, make a mess, and have fun has really helped me overcome the “precious sketchbook syndrome.” The gorgeous sketchbook tours filled with finished pieces on YouTube are cool and all, but not knowing that those artists probably keep a messy thumbnailing sketchbook on the side really held me back for the longest time. It’s awesome to make good art in your sketchbook, and you should always feel proud when you do, but your sketchbook should be a safe place to make bad art. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a million times more: without bad art, there would be no good art. So make bad art, and lots of it!
This sketchbook is actually primarily filled with bad art. It was hard to pick out what to feature here because so much of it is not really spotlight worthy in my eyes. That’s actually part of why it’s become so sentimental to me though, she served me well through countless trials and errors. It’s also the first sketchbook of mine I’ve allowed my 1-year-old to flip through and scribble in wherever she pleased, and that couldn’t have happened if I cared more about the art inside! Now it is an irreplaceable treasure filled to the brim with memories.
Inktober is finally nearing it’s end. Once it’s done I will be writing a summary post and showcasing my favorite pieces. I look forward to sharing that with you all! Take care until next time, I will see you again soon!
I have to admit that I actually bought some art supplies recently, although they are not meant for me! That being said, I haven’t been able to resist using them a bit. I’m fairly certain you all will forgive me considering the circumstances!
My 11 month old daughter recently discovered the joy of scribbling when she got hold of a ballpoint pen. So despite wanting to hold out till the end of the No Buy to introduce her to drawing, we caved and bought her a few art supplies. She tends to hit milestones early, I shouldn’t have been surprised!
“First Scribbles” Ballpoint pen on wall, collaboration between my daughter and partner, September 19th 2022. Frame by me, gold acrylic paint pen.
It turns out we might not have needed to buy any art supplies though, as she has figured out the Boogie Board and primarily uses that for her scribbles! Oh well, what’s done is done. She really loves the erase button, she often scribbles just to press it and see it disappear!
More lovely artwork by my daughter!
We bought her a very cheap pad of paper and a set of 8 larger washable crayons, all for about $5. She mostly bites the crayons and tears the paper, but she’s enjoying the new toys so that’s what matters. I can’t resist a good crayon, so I doodled a sweet Australian pup in my daughter’s sketchbook…
Unironically my favorite TV show.
We also found a dinged up magnetic drawing board at the thrift store, admittedly we have gotten far more use out of it than she has! It’s gotten my partner drawing a lot more, so I’m really happy about that. I may still upgrade to a less broken one next year.
Fun and adorable doodles by my partner, Jasper Rae.
So while this may be considered a “slip up” in terms of my No Buy, I’m perfectly content with that. No regrets here, only happy memories made! Thanks to this No Buy the purchases were made with intention, so that still feels like a win for me.
I have been feeling a lot more tempted lately, and I’ve occasionally found myself looking forward to the end of this experiment. Overall though I feel an abundance of gratitude towards this No Buy, I feel like I have been extremely productive this year and learned a ton of valuable lessons.
That’s it for now, I have another post very close to ready though, so I’ll see you again soon! Take care, and I hope you have a wonderful day!
Autumn Treats coloring page!I saved enough times while making this piece to create a work-in-progress collage!
When I first blogged about drawing mandalas digitally, I introduced the concept as “Mandala made easy!” I have since come to learn that easier doesn’t always mean easy.
This piece took several hours of work, even with the benefit of only having to draw each item once! This isn’t the first time this has happened, many of my digital coloring pages took a surprising amount of effort to create!
Making these is so enjoyable that, despite the frustrations I come across, it’s still very much worth the effort to make them. I get lost in the work. So lost sometimes, that I can forget I’ve even drawn that day, and then I still feel like “wow I haven’t been drawing enough lately!”
I love the meditative repetition of drawing mandalas by hand, and all the quirks and imperfections that make them so charming. But I also love the satisfying, immaculate symmetry of a digital mandala, not to mention the convenience of having the option to draw on my phone at any time! As long as I am drawing mandalas I think I will be making use of both methods, I enjoy them about equally for different reasons.
You can find this coloring page and all my other digitally-drawn coloring pages for FREE to download and use in this Google Drive folder!
If traditional art is more your speed you can find hand-drawn coloring pages, also FREE to download and use, in this folder right here!
I’d like to make even more autumnal art this year so hopefully you’ll hear back from me again soon. Until then, take care, and have a wonderful day!
Truthfully, I started this piece last month and didn’t work on it again until today. I did about 80% of it in a single sitting today while my wife and daughter simultaneously napped.
I actually meant to include this in my post about dangle doodles as a header image and introduction to the whole concept, but then I finished the sketchbook I did all my other dangles in! I really wanted to share that sketchbook ASAP, so a sacrifice was made.
At least I did eventually finish it. I’ve started to let myself abandon projects if they no longer “spark joy” despite my perfectionism and completionism. I debated just scrapping this one, but seeing it completed really makes me glad I didn’t!
My Portfolio and Folders page is an index of all my public Google Drive folders filled with art, including all of my free coloring pages. You can find this one in the Traditional Art Coloring Pages folder.
Thanks for stopping by! Have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you in the next post!
I’m just too amused by this sketchbook page to not share it.
It took me so long to finish that she had already turned 10 months by the time I finished! It’s hard to make time for big projects like this when you’re a full-time stay-at-home mom, but it was very much worth it in my eyes. I even kept it as simple as possible, but I simply couldn’t find the time to work on it most days! It got done eventually though, as you can see.
You can’t tell just from the photo, but this is a VERY large sketchbook. I’m not sure of the dimensions, but it’s over 12″ wide. That contributed to how long it took to finish, each small illustration would have taken up most of the page in one of my travel sketchbooks!
Luckily though, starting today, I am only a part-time stay-at-home mom! Due to our situation we qualified for free daycare, so we now get 6 hours of free time every week day. She loved it too, no surprise there since she is such a social butterfly. She even napped TWICE, and she hates napping for us! I can’t wait to have so much more time to devote to my creative hobbies!
That’s all for now, I hope Monday was kind to you all, and I’ll see you in the next post!
Ari October Art 