Inktober 31/31

November 1, 2015Leave a comment

Day 29

When I get allergies, I get them bad. I blame the spring, (beautiful, though) harsh mistress that it is. I can go from perfectly fine to unable to breathe through the nose in like 30 minutes, after an endless succession of sneezes and then stay sick for a couple of days.

I felt really bad so I tried my best to do something simple to both get the inktober entry done and cheer myself up.

Also known as the Snot Queen. But that’s not as fabulous.

Day 30

Still sick. I don’t even remember what I did most of the day, all I knew was that my head was pounding and that for some reason, I craved chocolate all day. Not that I need a reason to want to eat chocolate (choco-holic right here), but I was really drawn to it. Maybe I just needed sugar? Or the endorphins?

(I did have some chocolate, in the end).

Black circles are accurately represented. Trust me.

Day 31

The last daaay! Initially, to follow last year’s Halloween drawing, I sketched myself in a InuYasha costume, but then I decided only some people would get that it was me or recognize the suit, so I settled for something more obviously Halloween-y. I colored with copic markers and I messed up the background a bit, it’s so hard to cover big areas! (And I’m not very experienced with copics) But I think I did an okay job fixing it digitally 🙂

We don’t carve pumpkins here and Halloween has started being celebrated more massively (not even close to North America tho) just recently, but the pumpkin is such a Halloween symbol and I’ve seen Halloween stuff plastered everywhere today, so… why not?

I hope y’all had a fun and safe Halloween!

Inktober 28/31

October 31, 2015Leave a comment

Day 28

I’d had a visual in my head for a couple of days now. I’m not sure why, but I’m really into flowers lately. I plan to do a calendar for next year, so I was trying to come up with images that weren’t related necessarily to the seasons.

Initially, the eye was supposed to be looking forward directly, but when I painted it, two things happened: one, probably due to the eyelashes, the eye’s gaze was redirected somewhere else; and two, the colors I chose for the first layer looked coincidentally a lot like a globe’s.

Given the fact that there was a rose (took one of my photos as a reference) next to it, it evolved into this whole concept of Mother Nature looking on, it reminded me so much of this beautiful video I saw a while back:

I try to be conscious of the environment, and despite the lack of recycling culture in my country, I do the best I can, trying to repurpose things and using discarded cardboard for crafts and projects.

So I really like how it turned out: Her hair dense, thick and kind of curly, the flower in bloom, the watchful eye.

The world is watching..

I cropped it a little to post on my instagram, and I’m not sure which version I like better, though I’m leaning towards the cropped one. What do you think?

Inktober 27/31

October 30, 2015Leave a comment

Day 27

As you may already know, I’m prone to headaches and this one accompanied me for quite a few hours (and actually it survived the night and stuck to me next morning, the clingy little bastard), even as I got back home from the dentist in the afternoon and tried to be productive. Needless to say, my energy was drained and I was pretty useless.

(Heh, at least I managed the inktober entry).

Current mood

Inktober 26/31

October 29, 2015Leave a comment

Day 26

Again, kuretake zig clean color brushes ~~(that is such a mouthful)~~ practice! The colors are super vibrant, so they’re challenging to handle, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it :)! I used a white paint marker to outline the star, the girl and for some details in her hair (they didn’t come out as intended, but eh, happy accidents).

The scanner made the colors look a little weird, so I did my best to modify levels and saturation so it was as close to the original as possible. I confess I fixed a little purple stain on the star I couldn’t manage to get out in time (I momentarily wondered if I should just keep staining it on purpose, but I don’t think it would have looked too good..)

The theme alludes to my love of stars and Illustration Friday‘s topic of the week: Adventure. (Also, last week’s topic was ‘star’ and I couldn’t quite get it right, so this is take two!)

Flying in the stars.

Inktober 25/31

October 28, 2015Leave a comment

Day 25

Here, I decided to use two things I’m not very experienced with: the pentel brush pen and the kuretake zig watercolor markers. I’m still unsure the set I got on Amazon for these markers wasn’t half dry already (despite it had the closed packaging and everything), since they seem a lot drier than I saw in demonstrations on youtube. But regardless, I wanna learn how to use them.

I had a sketch I had done a while ago just waiting to be colored 🙂 so I did, and then I made the lines with the brush pen. I think I’m getting slightly better at making consistent thinner lines, though a lot of the lines still came out a lot thicker than intended.. but it’s all good for practice!

I added a little digital background to finish up the piece.

Wondering what would it take..

Inktober 24/31

October 27, 2015Leave a comment

Day 24

Determined to get back into the swing of things, I decided to try some lettering. I’ve seen so many beautiful (and yet simple) pieces where it’s just a word or two + flowers, plants or even stains and it looks so cool.

To make it even more inky, I decided to use colored inks instead of watercolor. After all, I’m never gonna get better with ink if I don’t practice!

Since it’s spring here and I love flowers (despite allergies), I settled for a spring-y theme. And while I post online mostly in english out of habit now and I love the language, I wanted the word to be in my native language, spanish. Primavera means spring ♥

Just saying the word out loud makes me happy.

Inktober 23/31

October 26, 2015Leave a comment

Day 22

On this day, we celebrated my grandma’s birthday again (hahaha) and I got home kinda late.. and then, for some reason, everything I tried to draw came out wrong. It was weird, not as I intended and I couldn’t fix it.. I felt really blocked, frankly.

After several failed drawings, I settled on something I just needed to get out of my chest.

And to be honest, I didn’t like the result either. But I was done trying to make something cool. I just didn’t wanna break my inktober streak. 21 days already, I couldn’t give up just then.

Day 23

Next day, I was still feeling kinda bummed, art-wise. Things still refused to go my way. But, like the day before, I wasn’t gonna give up entirely, I needed my inktober entry!

So while I wanted to do something more complex, I settled on an encouraging quote to cheer myself up, using masking fluid for the lettering and colored inks for the background. While I was still annoyed as I worked, the end result did cheer me up a little, so I call it a success. Also, I hadn’t done lettering in a while! My handwriting may be a little weird, but any practice helps.

Tea (& milk) also helps soothe the soul.

Inktober 21/31

October 25, 2015Leave a comment

Day 21

The October 21st! The birthday of the most awesome silver haired lady of them all! (Aka my badass grandma).

I wanted to make something that would show her deep love of vegetables and her unbreakable sense of independence. Sadly I didn’t have much time to get it done, but I did what I could 🙂

Hope the image quality isn’t too bad! Both the banner image and the one below were taken with a phone camera. I didn’t have a chance to scan it (or take proper pictures) before giving it away.

Not a hair out of place, no matter how rough the adventure ♥

Inktober 20/31

October 24, 2015Leave a comment

Day 20

October 21st is my grandmother’s birthday. Since it would be a small celebration (for now), I volunteered to make a little cake. I love making pastries, but my self control is too little when it comes to sweet, yummy things, so I don’t make them very often.

That is also why I still haven’t figured out why the oven hates me so much. It either burn things, burns the sides or makes it look plain weird. In this case, the pan proved to be way too small for the amount of dough and it just became a waterfall of dough and making a giant mess.

Baking fail.

I *could* save a good chunk of the dough and get it properly baked, but it looked like a cake with a radioactive mutation or something.

It tasted pretty good, tho.

Inktober 19/31

October 23, 2015Leave a comment

Day 19

I was a little dry for ideas… that was, until I took a good look at my (messy) desk. There was a little plastic container full of thumbtacks.

Hmmm. I thought.

Uh! what if it was giant?

Why not? It could be a strange land. The land of thumbtacks. Or it was the sacred thumbtack.

Oh! I know…!

The Adventures of the to-do list!

I shall not let procrastination win!

Chibasaur

Illustration by Camila Galdames

Category: inktober