#Inktober Owl

I have been trying to blog more often, with more of my artistic content.  So, have you heard of #inktober?  It was started by Jake Parker as a way to polish up inking skills.  (He also started the #artdropday).  I took a week long illustration class from Jake at a Writing and Illustrating For Young Readers a few years ago and soaked up some of his genius, at least that was the hope.  He's one of those ridiculously talented/practised artists that can draw so effortlessly that he makes the rest of us look bad.  But anyway, I digress. This is inktober day 1.  With many more to follow.

owl

 This owl is a sort of compilation of a couple of cute owls, and as such is not a specific breed of owl.  He was fun to draw and has a different look then my other Owl that I did in pencil.  (he is very specifically a barn owl)

Ironically an owl was the first thing I drew with that last hashtag media bandwagon I jumped on.  Weird.  Either way, that #365drawing frenzy gave me great fodder to digitally color and turn into nice finished polished pieces later.  And as I seem to sometimes need a push to produce artistic content in quantity, it seemed like a great idea to participate in this one too.  And goes along with my newly defined outlook and identity as artist first, and illustrator of books as an extension of that.  As opposed to primarily and almost solely identifying as a writer/illustrator of children's books.  Of which I have worked on for a long time, but have not published or even tried to publish any thing as yet.  Which was getting really discouraging.  Also since I had an almost single handed focus of working on my dummy book, I was taking hardly any work to a final polish.  I think I was too narrowly focused on a long term goal with very long term payoffs.  So although I will continue to eventually finish and then submit my dummy book, I am going to play at being an artist just for the sheer joy of creating content that I personally like to create and look at and polish my skills in the process. And not limit myself to other possibilities. 

#365 drawings: hand study 15/365

sloppy hand sketch

So it is somewhat embarrassing to have such a public commitment that I am not being very consistent with.  I am feeling rather exposed with all of the posting, especially when I am not particularly proud of the finished sketch.  But I'm still going to do it, but try to be more accepting of my imperfection.  I also just might not post the ones I think are juvenile.  (or realize if I just do a drawing to get it over with and am in a hurry, of course I will hate it)  I also feel really protective of the illustrations for my book... and will still draw them (they are after all more important than this "fun" goal to stretch myself and break down the mental blocks to my drawing) but probably won't post them.  So.. bear with me, and be forgiving if I'm very publicly not upholding my end of the bargain.

This very messy sketch was done on awful scratch paper (remind self to cut nice papers to fit into my Sunday traveling sketching case) and whilst trying to wrangle four kids solo in church.  I am frankly amazed I was able to draw at all.  (helps that all of my kids also have drawing cases like mine to similarly occupy themselves)  Honestly it helped me transition to a place of peaceful focus for just a brief time, and helped change my negative mood into a positive one.