AHAtober 2022: Inktober for Self-care

AHAtober 2022: Inktober for Self-care

Author: Alison Hazel   –   Published: December 2021   –   Revised: January 2024

Introduction

Inktober is an art movement devised by Jake Parker way back in 2009. To do Inktober you draw one ink artwork for every day of October.  At the end you have thirty-one artworks.

Inktober Prompts

Each year the official Inktober prompts are published which you can follow. Many artists and creators devise their own prompts depending on the type of art or interests they have.

For instance, there is the Starztober challenge for astrologers.

The Inktober artworks are drawn in ink thus it is called Inktober and not Paintober. Many artists take up the challenge, post their work and process drawings on their social channels.

The Inktober Challenge

Inktober is a challenge you take with yourself. The task to create one ink drawing every day for the month of October. To win Inktober is to complete thirty-one drawings in the tenth month.

Many people start Inktober, but not everybody completes it, and I can attest to this. Inktober is not a competition against other people, but rather it is a contest with yourself.

The question is, “Are you able to create one new ink drawing every day for thirty-one days?” That is the challenge of Inktober.

When you complete all thirty-one drawings before the month has ended you win Inktober.

Inktober Winner

See how one artists won Inktober. I was fortunate to interview an artist who did AHAtober for the first time and completed all the artworks. Check out her story here.

 

Previous Inktober Years

I’ve started Inktober before, but I’ve never completed. I believe that this year I will get there. I’m more of an artist than ever before so I am up for the challenge.

AHAtober Prompts

If you want to be traditional you can find this year’s official Inktober prompts here.

As an aspiring artist, I have created my own Inktober prompts this year and they are all related to self-care. I plan to use my Inktober drawings as the basis of a coloring book which I plan to publish next year.

This year my personal Alison Hazel Art Inktober theme is around supporting mental health, mindfulness and neurographic topics like rest, reflection and the work/life balance. I feel these are the topics I mainly focus on in my art practice and I want to share them with you.

Inktober Journal

I have a new journal dedicated to Inktober this year it is a Stillman and Birn Nova Series sketchbook with toned paper. The size is 3 ½ by 5 ½ inches or 9cm by 14cm. Note that this is a pocket sized notebook.

I believe this will help me complete Inktober because I only have to draw a small artwork. It has over 60 pages which is more than the 31 pages I need for one page per day.

I usually only draw on the right-hand page and leave the left side empty as it is the back of the previous artwork.

Cover Page

Below is my inside cover page. It is clearly written AHAtober, Inktober for Self-care. So now when I look back at this journal in years to come I will immediately be reminded what it was all about.

AHAtober journal cover page

Prompts Two-Page Spread

On the next full two-page spread I’ve written the full list of AHAtober prompts. I have the 1st to the 16th or October on the left-hand page column and the 17th to the 31st on the right-hand page column.

This way when I’m out and about with my AHAtober journal I can see the day’s prompts and get right on drawing the artwork. I plan to start these sketches early in the day. I may be at a coffee shop or on my lunch break and I have no reason not to at least draft the outlines.

 

AHAtober 2022 prompts list

Drawing Inks and Supplies

I recently started working with colored inks and I plan to use this medium in my Inktober challenge this year.

The art supplies I’ll be using are:

Art supplies

My Art Style and Process

As with most of my pen and ink drawings, I plan to start with a pencil sketch. I’ll also have a border typically 1cm or half an inch wide. Then I’ll do the black pen outline. Next, I’ll add colored inks either with a pen or with a paintbrush.

Inktober Strategy

My strategy for Inktober for this year is as follows:

  • I hope to win at Inktober.
  • I plan to only compete with myself.
  • I will draw every day.
  • I propose to learn more about how to work with inks.

 

Aspiring Artist Activity

Gather your Inktober sketchbook, pens and ink and please do the following:

Inktober Prompts

  • Decide whether to use the official Inktober prompts, my Inktober prompts or create your own Inktober prompts.

Inktober Journal Setup

  • On the first page write your name.
  • Write the year.
  • On the second page write the prompts list. This may flow over to two pages.
  • On October 1st, start your first drawing perhaps on the right-hand page.
  • Keep going inking every day and complete the challenge.

Share

  • If you are comfortable, share your artworks with the hashtags #inktober or with my hashtag #AHAtober.

AHAtober Artworks

Below are some of the AHAtober artworks from you and me. Tag me on your drawings and I’ll add them below.

AHAtober Diary

October 11th

I managed to get the first 9 drawings done on time, but since day 10, I’m now officially running behind. I hope to catch up three days worth of artwork later on today. To do a daily art challenge is exactly that – a challenge.

 

Alison Hazel

Author Bio: Alison Hazel

Alison Hazel is a hobby artist and she shares her ongoing journey about becoming an artist later in life. She creates simple art that anyone can make. She hopes to inspire you to reach your creative potential in the area that suits you.

Read more about Alison’s story.

Send Alison a quick message.

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Perpetual Nature Journal – Canada Geese – Ink

Perpetual Nature Journal – Canada Geese – Ink

This week I went to the beach where the protected waters of English Bay laps desultorily at the coast in Vancouver. 

Just behind the foreshore and promenade is a well manicured strip of parkland comprising grass and flowers to enhance the nature beauty of the area. 

It is here that the Canada geese gather or is that flock? 

How many do you need for a flock?

Field Sketchbook

I had my travel field notes sketch journal and a pencil and the. 

The plan was to draw the sea, but I did quite a few sketches of the geese. 

Here they are swimming in the sea.

I’m not very good at drawing people and animals,so I thought it would be a challenge to sketch some geese for my new perpetual nature journal. 

In ink

Here are some pencil sketches I did on location at English Bay in Vancouver. 

Studio Sketch

Next, when I got home,I looked at more free images from the web of geese. 

I sat down in my creator studio and attempted to draw the geese again.

I tried to sketch a few poses. 

After three attempts I did one in my perpetual nature journal. 

Pencil Sketch

First the pencil sketch. I’m using a 2H hard pencil and drawing lightly. 

The back feathers have a beige look with white curved edges.

I tried to replicate this with my pen.

Pen

Next I went over the outlines with a black pen. 

It is the Faber Castell Pitt Artist pen in a 0.1mm nib. 

Black Ink

Then it got out my black waterproof Indian ink from Windsor and Newton.

I painted the neck, beak and legs making sure to keep the cheeks white. The legs have knobbly knees and duck feet.

Gold Ink

As I wanted to try out my gold ink, and I do love a bit of bling on my artworks. 

With a very thin brush I painted the back feathers in with shimmer.

Yellow Ink

For the soft underbelly I wanted a light taupe beige. 

I’d decided to water down some canary yellow ink with a minuscule dash of black.  

This was very thin and created a light beige.

I painted the underside of the fowl to add some dimension to the body.

Green Ink

For the background grass I blended apple green ink with sunshine yellow and thinned it with water.

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Naming the Birds

I wrote the Latin name for these birds Branta canadensis underneath and also Canada Geese.

Vancouver Nature Map

On a separate piece of paper I drew the map of Vancouver and the surrounding 10km where I live. 

The plan is to add a little icon of each Natur Journal sketch on the map in the place where I drew the image.

This will grow in the future as I really get into nature journaling.

Finished Artwork

I really enjoyed creating this nature drawing in ink in my Perpetual Nature Journal.

I’ve only started nature journaling earlier this month and so far I’m loving it.

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Sketchbook African Violet Ink Wash

Sketchbook African Violet Ink Wash

Sketching

This weekend I had planned to go to the beach. It’s a short bus ride from my home and very pleasant to spend time there on one of my precious days off. Unfortunately, it continued to rain which seemed to be set in for the whole day. My original idea was to go to the coast and do some sketching of the shore, the seaside, and seascapes. I’m particularly interested in the pebbles and what is brought up on the beach by the high tide. Objects such as shells and seaweed are always interesting things to draw. However, I decided to stay at home because of the incessant downpour.

African Violet

I have a little African Violet plant that I received around Christmas when it was first in bloom. I’ve managed to keep this plant alive and even though the first flowers faded and went.  Now five months later in May I finally have the second bloom of glorious violet flowers. The houseplant is quite a bit bigger now and the petals are larger and more prolific. I decided that this little plant would be my nature sketch for today which I will do at home in my creator studio. Not being able to visit the beach to do some sketching this weekend home sketching is the compromise.

Border

In my Leuchtturm A5 sketchbook, I start with a border on my page, even if I don’t stick to it, because it does help to align the image.

Pencil Sketch

Using a 2H pencil I sketched lightly to layout the subject and ensure that the main petals were slightly off center in my composition.

I added a few of the leaves for balance and drew some of them over the border which I thought would be an interesting thing to do.

Black Pen

I went over the sketch with a Faber Castell Artist Pitt 0.3mm pen in black and firmed up the shapes and main details of the plant.

Although the petals are smooth and don’t have much texture the leaves themselves are quite deeply veined.

Upon close inspection I realized how the curves were happening on these leaves even though they are quite furry leaves, they are still somewhat raised and pillow-like where the veins run.

I drew many of the veins on the leaves with the pen.

I could have drawn more leaves, but it seemed overwhelming and as there are plenty of leaves on the plant than there are flowers.

I didn’t want the greenery to overshadow the lovely purple blooms which are the main reason for the drawing in the first place.

Ink Wash

I had recently been watching a YouTube channel by Alex at The Daily Nature Journal about using botanical inks in his drawings and this inspired me to dig out some of my inks.

Not that I have botanical inks (not yet), I have normal inks, but I did have one bottle of Purple Mojo ink from Private Reserve ink company which I’ve had for years.

I dug out this old inkpot, shook it up and got out my palette.

I took a regular paint brush and dipped it in water first and put some water on my palette just a few drops because I was going to dilute the ink down.

It was serendipitous that I happened to have purple ink and I was drawing an African Violet. How convenient is that?

With a wet paintbrush I dipped into the ink and strained quite a bit of it off against the top of the bottle and then ran the ink into the water pool on my palette.

I mixed up the water and ink which dissolves immediately. The water thinned the ink down which is what I was going for.

Ink is not like paint where you must work the pigment, inks dilute rapidly.

To dry paper, I washed the purple ink onto my violet petals. I did end up with quite a few hard edges and thought that I perhaps could have wet the paper beforehand, but I kept going.

I painted a first light coat on all the petals and let it dry a little bit.

I applied a second coat of the same consistency of ink wash over the petals as well.

I let the second coat dry.

Finally, I came back with some stronger ink, straight out of the inkpot, and added a few dimensional shadows to the petals for interest.

I let the ink thoroughly dry before I moved on, but I have to say that with working with ink gets on all your fingers. It stains everywhere and I had to stop and do some washing up of my hands and the palette and brush before I went any further.

Markers

Ideally, I would have done the leaves in green ink, if I had any, but I didn’t, so I turned to my Faber Castell Pitt Artist Brush Pens.

I started running the Warm Grey I around the edges of the leaves because they are much lighter at the edges and I did that for all the leaves.

Next, I took my May Green 170 and colored in some of the main bodies of the leaves.

It’s quite a bright green, so I was a little scared of that, but it turned out well in the end.

The second green I used was called Earth Green 172 and with this I brought more shadows and was running along the edges of the veins and enhancing the puffiness of these leaves.

I tried to work quickly with these Faber Castell Artist Brush Pens because the longer you leave them on the page the darker the color will become.

I went round all the leaves adding the darker shadows to them.

The fourth colour I added to the leaves with a light Warm Grey I 270.

I used it to blend the edges which had the light cream out into the mid green.

I just softened the color down a bit as the leaves seemed a little bit like a hedera helix leaf which has lighter edges and African Violet leaves are really not white at all on the edges, they are just lighter.

I continued a little bit further with the Earth Green just adding finer points along the ridges of the veins on the leaves until I felt I was happy with the work.

The little middle parts of the flowers which are super bright yellow I just added a few dots of Cadmium Yellow 107 in there.

I could have left those areas slightly larger as they did seem to be overwhelmed and crowded out by the purple ink

Background

Finally, I added a light Ivory 103 into the main background of the drawing excluding the border.

I felt this soft color lifted the image slightly without overpowering the plant itself.

I had considered creating the background in yellow to highlight the golden bits in the middle of the petals, but I felt it would be too harsh on such a delicate drawing.

Conclusion

I’m quite pleased with how this sketch turned out.

It was a challenge to work with the ink because you really must work swiftly.

In future drawings I will probably consider combining perhaps a purple and a blue ink to get different colours or something like that.

I do have other inks but they are metallics like silver and gold.

I do not have a red, green or yellow ink which I think I might need to purchase soon.

So, does that signal another trip to my local art store? Yaay!

Have a creative day.

Love,

Alison

Aspiring Artist Activity

  • Create a simple sketch of a flower that you have in your home or garden.
  • Practice using inks and thin them down.
  • Try to use one or more colored inks on your drawing.
  • You may use markers, colored pencils or even watercolor for the rest.
  • Get creative.

Share

Show your work on social with the hashtag #AHAinkviolets, so we can see what you create.

Artzlife Newsletter

Artzlife Newsletter

Author: Alison Hazel   -   Published: December 2024 Artzlife Newsletter Creative art journal inspiration for hobby artists Welcome to a Place for Passionate Hobby Artists Are you a hobby artist seeking inspiration, connection and gentle guidance on your creative...

Artzlife Newsletter

Artzlife Newsletter

Author: Alison Hazel   -   Published: December 2024 Artzlife Newsletter Creative art journal inspiration for hobby artists Welcome to a Place for Passionate Hobby Artists Are you a hobby artist seeking inspiration, connection and gentle guidance on your creative...

Artzlife Newsletter

Artzlife Newsletter

Author: Alison Hazel   -   Published: December 2024 Artzlife Newsletter Creative art journal inspiration for hobby artists Welcome to a Place for Passionate Hobby Artists Are you a hobby artist seeking inspiration, connection and gentle guidance on your creative...

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