[ creativity is human nature ]
the art represents (looks like) something that already exists, not non-representational.
I fell behind yesterday because I was busy, but I’m happy to say I’m all caught up!
Edited later to add: If it wasn’t obvious from the lack of subsequent posts about Inktober, I ended up giving up.
This little guy is Wisp from the Animal Crossing videogame series. He’s a cutie 🙂
When I saw that prompt I knew I had to draw him.
I was a little lenient on the mandala part today, but I still think it fits my theme ❤
I’m quite rusty after a few weeks of not drawing, but something is better than nothing!
He’s based on a butterfish. I think they just look much like the quintessential fish to me.
I’m going to be doing all my inktober sketches in the same small sketchpad I’m bringing with me on my trip to Texas later this month, for consistency, and because the small format is less intimidating given I’m just now getting back into daily drawing.
I will probably continue to do small doodle-y things like this, nothing too fancy because I’d like to complete the monthly challenge for once and if I try to be too detailed every day it’s going to wear me out. Which is exactly what happened last year, lol.
I’m proud of myself for pushing through the very strong feelings of not wanting to draw and making this little guy. He’s cute.
As the name implies, this sketchbook was originally a planner.
I wanted to do something like a bullet journal for the conversion classes I had been attending but I didn’t realize how difficult that is to do without a dotted notebook.
I gave up quickly, and the book sat in my shelf for a long time. I realized that paper planners aren’t really for me anyway, I do just fine using my phone’s calendar app.
In October 2019 I started drawing in this sketchbook, but the 1+ page per day challenge wasn’t started until late December 2019(?), most of the sketchbook was filled between January and February 2020. 133 days total, from very start to finish.
But here are the rules I lived by for this particular sketchbook challenge:
>I, Ari October, had to fill at least one page per day with a drawing.
>Other people could help me fill pages, but those were bonus pages.
>The drawings didn’t have to be good, they just had to get done.
So not 100% of the works are mine, my partner also assisted me in my goal to fill this baby up ASAP 🙂 You can tell which are hers because she signs them as Jasper or Jazzy.
And quite a few of the pages in this one are just lazy plaid patterns and other very lazy pattern doodles, because it was a good and safe place to experiment with color pallets.
This time I didn’t include 100% of the pages like I did in the last sketchbook folder, because many of them were just journal entries that would not be of interest to anyone but myself. I included pretty much all the doodles though.
There’s a page where I left the journal entry visible because of the placement of the mandala doodle, but you can easily just not read it. I don’t mind either way.
I had a lot of fun filling this guy up. Not so much fun taking pictures of every page though, my legs went numb @__@ Had to make use of that morning light though! It’s the only way for me to take decent enough pictures of my art without extensive editing of each image.
I asked my partner’s nephew if he ever draws. Apparently he does! When he’s not playing video games or bored to death with school work. He said we should all draw together, using this prompt generator he downloaded onto his phone.
My partner and her nephew both went off something I said, since they were having trouble figuring out what exactly to do with the prompt. I said, “what do you guys do on a lazy Sunday, why don’t you draw a unicorn playing video games or something?” So they both did that. Hilarity ensued!
And I of course took a cutesy route, because I am a sucker for cute stuff. Plus, I had already grouped my 3 purple Copic Ciaos together, thinking about doodling a mandala or something, and figured that’d be a perfect pallet for a unicorn 🙂
Certainly not a masterpiece or anything, but this prompt got me drawing something I normally wouldn’t have even considered drawing, and I think the result is quite endearing.
I gifted the finished piece to my partner ❤
On my birthday this year, I spent a good chunk of it finally coloring the birthday present I had started for my best friend an entire 2 years earlier.
Said friend’s birthday is now a little over a month away, which reminded me I’d like to post this here.
I was so incredibly relieved to finally have this done, but in the end I’m think I’m glad I finished when I did because my coloring skills had greatly improved in the 2 years since I did the line art! So super happy with the final product, he looks so cute!
The character is Punchy from Animal Crossing, the theme was “Fight Club Punchy”, because that’s what they asked for 🙂 I do like that movie a lot, a little too painful for me to watch nowadays though. I’m a lot more sensitive to violence than I used to be, and I have always been sensitive.
I encourage anyone reading to consider the projects they’ve been procrastinating, perhaps it’s time to decide to finish or ‘frog it’ 🙂
Unfortunately I ended up giving up in the first week, but I’m still really happy with the illustrations that came of it.
I’m really excited to give it another go this year, probably trying to theme mandalas around the prompts! I haven’t done a themed mandala in a while because they’re more effort, but they are so much more interesting.
Whatever I decide to do, I do plan on at least participating to the best of my ability. Wouldn’t be right if I didn’t, being an artist under the name October and all 😉
This was just a scratchy practice sketch with mechanical pencil, but somehow I managed to push forward long enough that I actually like the result!
Obviously it’s not perfect and there’s still a lot I can improve upon, but I think I still managed to capture her likeness well enough and it’s overall just a super cute drawing 🙂
Content warning: miscarriage & suicidal ideation
On April 30th 2020 my life turned upside down.
Our baby, a gummy-bear-sized embryo measuring 7w4d was found to be dead at the 8 week ultrasound. No heartbeat, a few days behind in growth, irregularly shaped gestational sac. I never dreamt that a cluster of cells would wreck me to the core.
It didn’t hit me right away, part of me expected this. I didn’t begin my descent into sobbing and despair until I was scheduling my follow-up appointment with the secretary that I checked in with an hour prior.
I had always said I expected my first pregnancy would miscarry. I heard it was common, and having EDS I assumed I might have fertility issues.
I quickly spiraled into an extremely dark depression. The kind I used to experience through ages 12-21. The kind that left me obsessed with death, chronically suicidal. My emotions were an absolute roller coaster. I have never flip flopped so drastically before. Some days I was filled with hope and determination, only to fall into hell again at a moment’s notice.
I made this butterfly mandala on May 18th, desperate to create something of value out of the tragedy that had occurred. Obviously it did not heal me, it could not save me, but it gave me something to look at and made our child’s existence more tangible.
On May 27th I also made this piece that I typically avoid showing people because it is so much more straightforward than the butterfly:
It’s the closest thing I could create to a portrait of our baby.
The embryo is actually pretty much to scale with a real 7 week old embryo on the physical copy. It’s actually pretty cute, I think, as cute as a weird blob can be.
Please remember that all people experience grief differently.
Some people do not outwardly grieve miscarriages at all, others react even worse than I did. Most fall somewhere in-between. Grief is also something we don’t just “get over”, it is something we move forward with. Grief is traumatizing, and it is a trauma very few people get to avoid.
However you experience grief, whether you grieve an unborn baby, a child of any age, a sibling, a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, cousin, friend, acquaintance, a beloved pet, a place you cannot return to, even an enemy or a stranger…
Please remember that grief is a bizarre, hard-to-define thing that we all experience differently and you are not weird or wrong for grieving whoever and however you naturally do.
May the memories of those you love that have gone before you bless you always.
Flip through the entire thing at your own pace on this google drive folder!
On November 27th 2019 I accomplished something a lot of artists my age consider elusive: I finally filled a sketchbook from front to back. I had even went above and beyond, leaving very little white space.
It is important to note though that the sketchbook was TINY (3.5”x5.5”) and it took me 2 YEARS to complete! I started it some time in November 2017, so literally TWO YEARS!
I filled most of it in the last 6 months or so of that timeline though.
That sketchbook saw me through a lot.
There’s a lot of really personal stuff in there, it’s very much a visual journal.
I started the sketchbook as an artist that didn’t take art very seriously, didn’t draw with consistent frequency, and had no idea what I wanted to do. I was also still actively using drugs and alcohol.
By the end I had begun to take art seriously, was drawing nearly every day, learned how to sketch anything and everything from reference, had just begun to draw mandala art, and I was a little over a year into my sobriety.
My advice to anyone that wants to get into art is “just get started and don’t stop.” That’s what I had to do, I couldn’t have come as far as I have without simply getting off my butt and putting pen to paper.
It doesn’t matter how many “horrible” looking things you pump out, each and every one of those gets you closer to what you want to achieve. Without bad art there would be no good art. That’s what every “famous” artist has done and continues to do. Even if you think every single sketch they made is a precious treasure, they didn’t. That much I can promise. #MAKEBADART
There is still a “wrong” way to practice, if you do the same “wrong” things over and over you won’t be learning much. You gotta push yourself and try new things. Experiment. I suggest coupling hard work with studying the work of the artists that inspire you. This is applicable to ALL styles and mediums, even literally splattering paint on a canvas. There’s always room for improvement, never stop growing!
You’ll be amazed when you look back and see how far you’ve come.
(Edit 2026-1-30: I messed up big time and now the original publish date of this post is lost forever. I tried to the best of my ability to estimate the original published date so it will remain in chronological order. WordPress devs… Please make this mistake more difficult to do.)
Ari October Art 