Day 15: Fish Motifs and the Start of Inktober

 

Day 15 involves more fish, but this time co-ordinating themselves a bit better, colour-wise, and hopefully looking more goldfish and koi-carpish, for an upcoimg pattern.

In case you're thinking there's something really fishy going on here (yeah, pause to groan, that's fair :-) ), I'd been thinking about a fish pattern for a while, but was spurred into action by it being, not just Day 15 of my own minnow-like daily sketch challenge (OK, time to call the pun police...) but day one of the huge online art challenge that is Inktober. And Day One's prompt for that challenge is/was "fish".

And if you're thinking, "Isn't there some controversy around Inktober this year?", yes, you're right, But as I don't know the ins and outs of it and only want to enjoy pen and wash as normal, my thinking this year is simply to enjoy it, and to take advantage of the very many prompt lists for the event as and when they sound fun, as a way of being able to travel alongside more artists and designers, and so make my own 100-day daily challenge feel less daunting.

(And yes, for the purists, I know that some people tut at the idea of adding colour to an Inktober sketch. But art without colour? I won't say it *never* happens here, but it's rare).

Does all that make sense? I hope so. In any event, watch out for these fishy folk on a pattern near you soon.

More tomorrow.

Why PC Problems Were the Best Thing Ever (and Daily Sketches 9, 10 and 11)

 Phew-today's sketch is finally here. Not because of the sketch itself, but because the PC needed fixing.

(Sidenote if you're new here-I'm lucky enough to be married to a computer man.)

The fixing itself was no problem, because the Computer Man actually had a free morning, and bless him, got to the fixing really quickly.

But the PC's initial refusal to play nicely was the best thing ever...

How can I say that? Surely it's just stressful?

Well, yes. But it also forced me to:

a) Do an entire half-day of purely traditional pen and wash art.

Daily Sketch 9

Like this one, which shows the main ingredients of a cheese and chutney sandwich (which I found myself  yearning for at an inappropriate 11am. As with other food, once I'd drawn it, I stopped craving it. Magic!) But I digress...Also had to...

b) Move rooms whilst the PC was being fixed. (yes, we live in London. So the options for moving around the house are limited. But even a move to the sitting room was a move to different light, with different objects to normal. Like our trusty (if somewhat overgrown) rubber plant...

Daily Sketch, yes am ahead of myself, 10

and 

c) Force myself just to draw, without checking reference images on the PC, (Like these highly whimsical fish). Whose scrummy neon pink colours really haven't scanned in well at all. But who are a homage to my Mum-RIP for more years now than I can believe-whose favourite go-to doodle was anthropomorphic  fish. 

Day 11: Highly anthropomorphic fish

Which led to...

d) The discovery that *sometimes*, doing quicker, smaller art (these are all more like 2 inches or 3 inches squareish in a sketchbook) is so much more fun, more liberating, and "do-able all-round) that that's probably where I'll be heading for some of the days of this challenge.

And speaking of the challenge... I could simply have auto-posted these three images to look like they were spread over three days. In the interests of transparency though (and sanity), as discussed yesterday, I'm "telling it like it is," posting all three, and taking the weekend off.

See you Monday. Have a good one!