Bone & Lace

Trunk!

Trunk call? Two beings with equally delightful but different trunks having a chat. Back to the brush pen for this one, and reeeeaaaallllyyy enjoying the weight and quality of blacks and fluidity of line it gives.

Drink!

Exactly what it says on the tin. My favourite variety. Really just an exercise in crosshatching and shape but still happy with the result.

Shredded!

Tried drawing the shredded paper that my little gift-to-self* came in. Beautiful packaging. Beautiful PEN. Still playing with it. I think some of the other Tom's Studio pens might be more ergonomic and better for flowy/precise linework but this wee new Field Mouse is an absolute cracker for just being *there* when you need it.

*For tackling Inktober (and my art generally) seriously this time. And trying my darnedest not to self sabotage.

Sting!

PSA for all fellow hospo workers out there. Testing a new pen and new-to-me ink.

Sweep!

Any Glaswegians recognise this view?

Heavy!

I've been stewing on this pun for MONTHS now if not years but never gotten around to putting it on paper. So now you can enjoy it/suffer from it too!

Reckless!

I've been watching/listening back through a lot of DnD actual plays recently, so of course Reckless made me think of only one thing. So I went back to the OG barbarian subclass and did a wee study of my favourite BERSERKER from the Lewis chessmen collection.

This one using a couple of Pigma Micro pens because they had been a bit more convenient/easier and less messy for a more on-the-go sketching day than the dip pens I've been trying to get my head around.

Starfish!

Just a little starfish. Exactly as it says on the tin.

"Pierce"

Not happy with this one yet with regards to the prompt but I do like the overall pattern/details in individual areas. It was also great practice for just pumping out the leaves of different tree species I commonly see here. Was going for that effect that happens when light pierces through the leaves of the canopy and you get something like god rays... probably easier to achieve if I could find something like an actually sunny day to see how the light behaves in actuality, myself! But being October in Scotland, that's probably about 6 months off yet...

"Deer"

The paper about the REALLY COOL reconstruction of this 2,500 year old tattoo from a Scythian ice mummy came out a couple of months ago, and I've been thinking about copying it out for myself ever since. Like, the whole process of how they digitised it is great in and of itself, but also - IT'S SUCH A DANG GOOD TATTOO. Better yet? This badass ink is on a woman's forearm. Anyway, when I saw the prompt for deer, I knew it was time.

I didn't pencil first or anything like that so it's not *exactly* right as per the archaeology but I'm super pleased with how it's going so far. Also I'm not trying to fit it on a skinny human forearm so I don't really mind if it morphs to fit the page a bit more naturally, y'know?

Will update to include the finished picture when it's all done.

Reference:

"Murky"

EDITED/UPDATED:

I just found out that Manchán Magan passed away in the last couple of days. I wouldn't say I was intimately aware of all his work but I adored the periphery that I had stumbled on through his podcast "The Almanac of Ireland," and the various obituaries and memorials I've been seeing have opened my eyes up to just how much he had created, that awaits me now. There was a snippet of one of his books, "Ninety Nine Words for Rain," that spoke about the etymology of the Irish (and similarly Scottish Gaelic) word for otter - dobhrán/dòbhran - coming from an old word for deluge or heavy rain, in the form of dobharchú/dobhar-chù (water dog, or dog of the flood/deluge). As well as being an old word for water/deluge, "dobhar" is more modernly used to describe something as dark, gloomy or obscure, which sounds pretty murky to me. There's a few more steps in between I'm sure, but it got me spinning on the murk of water when the flood comes after deluge and the murk of language when people are made to forget/lose it, which is maybe a bit more like the murk of a drying mud puddle in drought than of a flood, but in this story there's otters in both. So I tried drawing an otter from memory but accidently went with a different (black) ink that didn't flow so nicely out of the dip pen as the blue and red I'd used previously and it went a bit janky, so I tried again both with a photo reference and then with the brush pen I'd used in the first couple of days.

ORIGINAL:

I was mostly just in a murky headspace for this one - had an idea, could not for the life of me find the One. Singular. Thing. that I felt needed to enact it, ran around like a headless chook seeking the answer, eventually chilled myself out by deciding to just sample these two old pen nibs for the sake of doing SOMETHING and see if either of them might be fun to play with during future Inktober prompts (I'm determined this time through to get some use out of the things that have been sitting unused in my drawer, whether it's because they're "too good" and I've been saving them for the "right moment" or whether like these nib pens and my brush pen, I just don't really know how to use them so I haven't tried). But then a blob of ink blotted onto the page and this murky little blob-doodle-thing emerged. Success!

I'm still going to try to come back and do the thing I had an idea for but in the absence of that, at least I did this, and this something is a lot more than nothing and a useful reference guide to boot.

Also, have a sleepy dog!

"Crown"

You might remember under Moustache I said I don't really go in for human faces, and I tend to especially not like them when they're under a crown, so this day I looked up and thought of the crowns of trees, and how in canopies they alway reach out intricately but never seem to actually touch/entwine. This was in the midst of the Yellow/Amber weather warnings for Storm Amy in the UK so I wasn't about to go outside and lay underneath any actual trees so it's more of an imagining/meditative doodle/remembering, but I still like how it turned out. Having done it though, I'd now really like to go repeat the exercise in fair weather so I can work from observation and see how off my imagining was.

"Weave"

Hopefully will get back and do something more... well... anything, really. Didn't have much time, spent most of the time I did have adding to Day 1's "Moustache" with grieving chimpanzees, thought it would be cool to try and get my head around how herringbone weaves work because I love them in textile and knitting, and so there's just... this.

But! It's something. I'll edit this post to add in whatever "proper" thing I (hopefully) end up doing, but I'm not gonna let it make me fall off the wagon already, so I'll take it as a win and move on until I find the time/feel the urge for something more interesting.

"Moustache"

Belated posting - first day of Inktober 2025! And I'm determined to make it through all the way like I haven't since 2016, although (evidently) I'm not being at all fussed about posting/getting what I do online in time. I'm more focused on actually getting my hands inky on schedule, and I feel like the social media distraction aspect has been a significant factor waylaying me in the past (it takes me an unbelievably long time just to make a single Instagram post. You Would Not Believe. My distractability levels are off the what chart was that again?). So I'm gonna do my drawings day by day, post everything I do here on Tumblr as and when I get round to it (probably randomly and in clumps just like today's dump), and then just post a couple of roundups on Instagram of my favourites when I feel like it.

For the prompt moustache, I don't really like most human faces so I went in for the animal kingdom again. I did the catfish initially and then I heard the news of Jane Goodall's passing and went back and did the most moustached chimp I could find a reference for. But I also came across a photo of a young Jane walking hand in hand with a chimp, and it really spoke to me so I attempted it as well. I don't normally work from photos so it felt a bit off but I think it still turned out okay?

Also using a brush tipped pen that's been living in my drawer rent-free for the first time, it's quite a different feeling from both a normal brush and a normal pen so feeling quite awkward to use, but I think it's good for me to push through and try and get a feel for how I might actually make use of it. It was waaaaaay nicer to use for the hair and shading on the chimp than more geometric/detailed like I'd started out trying to do for the catfish, though I still enjoyed how that one turned out in the end.