Tag: sketchbook art

Inktober 2022

~ Ari October ~ 1 Comment


To view all 31 illustrations, click here to visit the Google Drive folder!

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!

This is the 10th sketchbook I’ve filled from cover to cover!

~ Ari October ~ 6 Comments

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!

Sketchbook number 9!!!

~ Ari October ~ Leave a comment

Last night marked the completion of the 9th sketchbook I’ve ever filled from cover to cover! So as promised, here are some of my favorite pages from said sketchbook. (Some of my favorites from this sketchbook have already been featured in my post about dangle art!)

Although this sketchbook was started in 2019, I actually filled about 60% of it in the last month. I’m excited to be starting a brand-new travel sketchbook, and I’m wondering how long it will take to fill up since I won’t be abandoning it this time! I think I will take it at a leisurely pace though, since I’m working on finishing a massive sketchbook that I can only draw in at home!

I’ve been wanting to make more Google Drive folders for my sketchbooks like I’ve done for the first two I completed, but I’ve not made the time to do so. I decided to just bite the bullet and do that for at least this one I just finished! I of course wish the photos were better but something is better than nothing in this case, and there were nearly 100 pages to photograph! Some pages have been slightly altered and one withheld entirely for the sake of privacy.

So if you’d like to “flip through” the sketchbook at your own pace it is available for viewing here! (Click me!)

Whew, two posts in one day! Time to rest up. I hope you all have a wonderful Saturday, and I will see you in the next post!

Dangle Doodles!

~ Ari October ~ 4 Comments

I checked out the book “The Art of Drawing Dangles: Creating Decorative Letters and Art with Charms” by Olivia A. Kneibler from my local public library and it has changed my life! How did I live 26 years without the magic of drawing dangles?

I’m a sucker for all methods of doodling and pattern drawing, which is why mandala is such a recurring theme for me. Dangles are right up my artistic alley. So after copying down many patterns in the book for reference, and of course practice, I decided to create my own original artworks using the dangle method:

In the future I would love to create real, tangible, 3D dangles! My partner pointed out to me that wind chimes are in fact dangles and that just made me all the more excited about the idea!

I actually have another post set to come out as early as later today, so I will see you all again very soon. Have a wonderful day!

“Ex-Planner” Sketchbook – the fastest I’ve ever filled up a sketchbook so far!

~ Ari October ~ Leave a comment
My favourite spread in this one is actually the first one 0:
If you’d like to flip through this sketchbook yourself, check out the Google Drive folder!

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.