Inktober 2015

This year to make a change from the mad dash of doing 24HCD I thought I might try to join in #Inktober.
31 inked drawings in 31 days.

Inktober was instigated by Jake Parker in 2009  as a challenge to improve his already very refined inking skills.

The rules as with 24HCD are simple:

1. Draw something and ink it up.

2. Post it online. (I'll be posting here and on twitter)

3. Apply the hashtag  #inktober

4. Do this everyday throughout October.

I also have a vague notion that I might try and develop a story with the pictures... the joy of doing Inktober as against 24HCD is I can plan a story beforehand without breaking the rules.
This is a good thing, as the stories in my previous 24HCD efforts have been a little flimsy at times...

Crush them with facts

Because I am so very very well organised, I have Monday's Wych wolf page up and sitting in the Comic Press queue already..
Because I am shortsighted, i am not using the time to get ahead of myself, and build a buffer, but to dally in the rockpools, and have a go at a guest strip for my chum Steve's "Policy Police' strip.

I've had a quick sketch and my version of the protagonists are now alive in glorious pencilovision..
I've got to knock out a couple of backgrounds, and then I'll knuckle down to the task.
Should have something by the end of the day with luck.

Different strokes from incontinent pens

I've been playing with a variety of inks and pens.

My old trusty Rotring isograph 0.5mm gives good service, though like a small child it needs it's bottom wiped a fair bit, and causes a huge amount of mess in the process... I also have to cheat to get a variety of line weight when using it.

The same is true of the pigment fibre tips pens.. I have tried to get Pigma pens in the UK but no luck, the best I've found are PILOTs, the Edding ones are nice but run out too quickly ... they are also both complete buggers if I try to put a wash over the top, as they bleed.

My mixture of Manga inks seem to provide a solution, but are a bit gluey to put in the Rotring so I have to use a dip pen... The pic here is done with a DELTER SAJi nib, which doesn't quite give enough flex...and unfortunately seems to have a leaky bladder, causing ink blobs... sigh.

My old set of Waverley nibs (some inherited from the Victorian era and really quite ancient), give a good flex, but are hard to wield round the page.

So the experimentation continues, I've done 10 pages of the comic for the UK webcomix thing, and they'll all get tweaked through photoshop or mango studio...