Inktober

Inktober 2018: Bactrian Camel

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Inktober 6- Bactrian camel

Inktober 6- “Bactrian Camel” I’m on the hunt for the “perfect” sketch journal for my Mongolia trips. I used Moleskines for years until the new owners ruined the once-excellent sketch journal paper by making it too thin. I’ve worked my way through almost all of the Stillman & Birn line and may have found two finalists. So here’s the first drawing I’ve done in my Gamma hardbound, a white domestic bactrian camel I saw in Mongolia. I’ve actually seen her a number of times over the years and have done a painting of her. I used a Pilot EF fountain pen. I like the combination so far.

Inktober 2018: Marabou Stork

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Inktober 5- Marabou stork.jpeg

Inktober 5 – “Marabou Stork” Moving on now to my fountain and dip pens. I saw this marabou stork on a 2005 art workshop/safari in Kenya. He was one of a number storks and lots of vultures hanging around a cheetah kill. I used my Pilot EF pen for this one. I think it was a little too fine for the size of the drawing and the time I wanted to take to do it, around 90 minutes. But it turned out ok. I used my go-to drawing paper, Strathmore 300 vellum bristol.

Inktober 2018: Mongolian Sheep

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Inktober 4- Mongolian sheep

Inktober 4- “Mongolian Sheep”- Another piece done with the Copic Multiliner SP 0.1 in my Stillman and Birn Beta Series sketchbook. The wool let me get looser with the pen, but I was careful to try to capture the expression in the eye. I did bite the bullet last night and order the ten pen set. It will arrive, shipped from Japan, sometime between the end of October and late November. As you can see I work pretty traditionally. My influences include many of the great pen and ink artists and illustrators of the late 19th/early 20th centuries…Alphonse Mucha, Edwin Austin Abbey, Joseph Clement Coll, Joseph Pennell, William Heath Robinson and William R. Leigh. More about the latter when I do an African subject. I’ll be posting some tutorials soon on my nice new Patreon site. https://www.patreon.com/susanfox
@inktoberworld2018 #inktober #wildlifeart #animalartist #animalartistsofinstagram #wildlifeartistsofinstagram #sheep #copicpens #stillmanandbirn

Inktober 2018: Wildebeest

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Inktober 3- wildebeest

Decided to switch to more traditional pen and ink today. Also, my Copic Multiliner SP 0.1 pen arrived yesterday and I wanted to take it for a spin right away. I’ve been using Sakura Micron pens for some years now since, as one artist friend put it, they have been the “gold standard”. But I’d become increasingly irritated with them. The nibs didn’t hold their hardness and the lines became irregular and unpredictable. Drove me crazy in the field. Plus I never liked that they were disposable. And I wasn’t going to start up with Rapidographs again. Been there, done that, battled the clogging. Plus expensive.

I’ve been seeing the Copic name around for a year or so (first encountered it as tools in Autodesk Sketchbook, then as markers, not drawing pens, and I gather this is a newish product. The SPs have an aluminum body and ink cartridges. I’m going to see If I can refill mine once it’s empty. But least one isn’t throwing a whole pen away

So I dove in this morning and did this fairly quick drawing of a wildebeest I saw and photographed in Kenya (I only draw and paint from my own reference). Overall, I like the pen. At first it did not like being moved away from me one bit and was skritchy and cranky. I thought that might be a dealbreaker. But it finally “broke in” and that wasn’t a problem anymore. I kept the technique simple…mostly vertical parallel lines, no crosshatching. I did a pencil underdrawing first.

I’ll try a few more pieces with it and then decide if I’m going to pop for the ten pen set ($59.95 through Blick). The drawing was done in a Stillman and Birn Beta series sketchbook.

Inktober 2018: Michiko

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Michiko 2 900

Michiko held this position just long enough for me to sketch in her head and basic body position. She’s a 13 year old tamed feral who we’ve had since she was 3 months old. She recently went deaf and has some arthritis in her hind end but otherwise is in great shape. Created on my iPad Pro with Tayasui Sketches Pro using the pen and watercolor brush tools. #inktober #inktober2018 #catsofinstagram #catartist #animalartists #calicocat #tayasui #ipadproart
 

Inktober 2018! I’m Doing It!

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Inktober 1- Michiko copy

I’ve decided to participate in Inktober 2018! The idea is to post an ink drawing every day this month. I’m going to do my best to accomplish that. Real and digital “ink” are equally acceptable and I plan to do both. Yesterday evening I decided to start with a quick sketch of one of our cats, Michiko. I used Tayasui Sketches Pro on my iPad Pro with a Box Wave stylus and the dip pen and watercolor brush tools. It took about five minutes.

I won’t be posting every piece here, just a selection of them. All of them can be viewed on Instagram (foxartist) and Pinterest (foxstudio)

#inktober #inktober2018
More about the event here: https://inktober.com/