inktober 2026 day 4 cactus

 Drew it, went to erase the pencil and smudged the ink all over.

bah

I get a sense of pepperami animal here.

inktober 2026 day 3 miniature

 How many angels can fit on the head of a pin?

Well I only drew one miniature angel

inktober 2026 day 2 relic

 I've got a story that I've been writing for ages about Edward Martyr, local boy and King of England, who was done in by his younger brother at Corfe, and dumped here in Wareham for a bit, till he was taken to Shaftesbury. Then through various hoopla he ended up in a cutlery drawer in a bank vault, then eventually in a Russian Orthodox church.

So

Relic in a cutlery drawer

inktober2026 day 1 Apple

 Apple

not apple on a bed

I bought some new pens a while back after seeing someone use them. Rotring Tikky. They are horrible and I managed to smear some lines instantly. I reverted to microns.

Unfortunately I couldn't find a pencil, except for a Screwfix free pencil, which is actually not bad.

inktober again 2026 version

Well, right on track with feeling terribly old and feeling time is zipping past at a terrifying pace its Inktober again.

Just for variety i might follow the prompt list.

So I guess I have to draw an apple.

 

GMTK GameJam 2026

 I was going to try and build a game for the game jam about getting cut off by the tide, but instead opted for a corny joke and an excuse to draw lots of Count Draclias.

I might even get round to putting the game on Itchio

or not

I was trying to get a fawning hands up style vampire, but couldn't get it right.

Elements of drawing exercises 6, 7 and 8

 I thought exercise 6 followed the approach previously used, and the outlining of tree branches was to get the idea of the spaces around objects, but reading again Ruskin wants the overlap of the branches to be described by the outline. 

Exercise 7 is about getting the hang of brushing tone evenly. He suggests visiting any ordinary water colour painter to see how this is done by a workman... I think if I was the workman I'd be pretty hacked off by Ruskin's condescending attitude, but anyway I didn't have any paste board, or Bristol board, or Prussian Blue, or in fact a camel hair brush of three quarters of an inch. 

I did try using a 1/2" red sable brush and some Dr Martin's 'Easy Spill' Phthalo Blue on a bit of cardboard, but lost heart and skipped to the next exercise.

Exercise 8 is the one that prompted me to do a Phd, the text I remember hearing was"...Now if you can draw that stone, you can draw anything"

The bit I didn't remember was the caveats that followed immediately "; I mean anything that isdrawable. Many things (sea foam, for instance) cannot be drawn at all, only the idea of the them more or less suggested ...."

Interesting at the time Ruskin wrote the book no-one had been able to see foam except in motion, the capability of photography to capture such things was decades in the future.

Strangely this exercise drops the instructions about what type of pencil or pen should be used and dwells on the direction of light. So I dropped the nasty H pencil and switched to a 2B.

I've stuck the book in my work bag, and will try and carry on withe the exercises over lunch at work.