Inktober Day 4 - G Pen.That Is Not A Good Environment For Chiihon. Or Anyone, Really.Im Absolutely Gobsmacked

Inktober day 4 - G pen. That is not a good environment for Chiihon. Or anyone, really. I’m absolutely gobsmacked that my g-pen still works after months of sitting in a drawer unused. I thought I was going to have to buy a new one!

Inktober day 5 - brush inking and ink wash Lucas survived (more or less), but the police never found the culprit. It’s time for my favourite part of Inktober, ill-advised adventures in ink wash! I don’t like this method enough to use it at other times of year, but when I’m restricted to ink it can be a fun alternative to paints. I don’t think I’ve ever drawn this part of Lucas’ life before. (I don’t think I’ve drawn him recently enough for anyone to know how this turned out either... maybe he’ll show up later this month.) The police took the incident very seriously, but there’s not much you can do when there’s no sign of an intruder, no weapon, no discernable motive, and when your victim finally wakes up he insists it was a hairy monster that came out of his mum’s mirror. Or just screams a lot, the poor lad. Best stop asking him.

I’m back! Just in time for Inktober! We had a family medical crisis over the Summer, so between that and a tiring Summer job I haven’t been able to do much drawing at all. Even out of these little ones, only the Ginkgo was drawn over the Summer itself. Still, things have calmed down a bit now, so I thought I’d post a few photos of the decent drawings I do have before Inktober starts tomorrow.

Inktober 2015 - Day 9 : gel pen Not all the fairies in Louise’s house are creepy and bad.

I’ve been working on some illustrations for The Spook’s Apprentice to put in my portfolio, since my book illustrations are a bit scant at the moment.

Originally I planned to use my gel pen for finer hatching like I usually do, but I have some older pieces done that way that I’m still pleased with, so I tried thicker hatching using my mapping pen instead. I think it looks pretty good so far. I’m also trying to be a bit more creative with composition. I’ll probably do three full page illustrations and three insets, and then pick the best ones out of those.

The last of the non-fiction drawings from when I had computer troubles.

This was really common when I was in primary school - comparisons of clothing styles between puritans and catholic royalists. One thing I noticed though is that they tended to show upper-class royalists, and middle or lower-class puritans, so I drew a standard upper-class royalist pair (although they ended up looking way too much like the actual king and queen...) and tried to find information on what upper-class puritans would wear.

It turns out puritans were very much in favour of the social hierarchy, and upper-class puritans would have worn richer fabrics and embellishments like ribbons and lace edging to visually indicate their social standing. The open-fronted skirt was apparently a more conservative style at the time, because it required less of the more expensive outer fabric.