Artober 2020

Back in October I took part in not Inktober, but Artober - a more personalised list for a smaller group to work from, and it also meant that I didn't need to stick to just ink. As with every year I've done a challenge list for October, I'm not worrying about doing something super-detailed. I want to have some fun without any worry. It's also a good chance to use some materials that aren't in great condition and/or need using up. I've bundled most of them up so as not to have 31 images to click through. Some scanned and some taken with camera phone. Every picture has been created traditionally. Hopefully it's fairly clear what's going on with the pictures without going into detail!

1) Pumpkin - coloured pencils; 2) Sparkle - pencil.

3) Fuzzy - (hardened!) watercolour and marker pen; 4) Bicycle (my word choice) - watercolour or acrylic and coloured pencil.

5) Trash - marker pen; 6) Wander - watercolour. Simple idea to have pawprints as if a cat has been wandering across the page.

7) Mountain - charcoal on acrylic paper; 8) Gift - pencil; 9) Breathless - pencil. Got a little inspiration here from a well-known Corrs song.

10) Grand - inks on acrylic paper. Who needs a smooth brush, eh?...

11) Dizzy - felt tip; 12) Drenched - felt tip and coloured pencil.

13) Blocks - inks; 14) Tiptoe - pencil; 15) Blue - watercolour on acrylic paper.

16) Feast - felt tip. I had some fun with this; 17) Hound - marker pen.

18) Strive... not here? We'll get to that a bit later...; 19) Crowd - inks. My one reference to this year; 20) Handle - fine line pen; 21) Brave - pencil.

22) Wings - charcoal; 23) Basket - felt tip and coloured pencil; 24) Glow - inks. Inspired by the original Disney Beauty and the Beast. Yellow ink looks more orange...

25) Clamber - coloured pencil; 26) Pint - pencil. Lord of the Rings-inspired.

27) Harvest - fine line pen, marker pen and wash. Had quite a strong sudden inspiration for this one: a combination of a nod towards my university final film "Not I" and a childhood memory of wearing these masks (I had the pig mask) to celebrate 'Harvest' in Infant school (do children still celebrate Harvest at all?) - albeit in a far less intimidating way - both to do with the traditional tale of 'The Little Red Hen'. And lastly it gave an added Hallowe'en theme. It's tempting to animate this idea sometime. 

28) Dusk - pastels on acrylic paper. May not give an obvious imagery for 'dusk' but was fun arty stuff to do, nevertheless; 29) Laugh - fine line pen. 

30) Switch - marker pen. Of course these things aren't nearly such a taboo now, but this brother or boyfriend? is not keen; 31) Buried - watercolour and acrylic? on acrylic paper (a bit of charcoal travelled over to it later on), Suitably Hallowe'en-y ending.

Thanks for taking a gander at these. And that's not even it. For every day of October I was also taking part in Dogtober - as renamed by me. I found out too late that there had been a 'Dogust' challenge for this year and I wanted to take part. The more to draw, the merrier... Will post my drawings - in a very similar fashion to this - within the next few days.