A month ago I took on the challenge of “Inktober”, I blogged about the challenge before I was due to start my drawings (linked below)
Instead of following the official prompt list for the daily illustrations I decided to create my own visual prompt, this was would be famous film/TV robots and mecha. I chose this month-long prompt as I felt the practice of drawing these complex mechanical designs would benefit me towards improving my preferred style and themes. Plus robots and mecha are badass right!
As I don’t have a Kim-Jung-Gi level visual memory (info bottom of page) each of my ink drawings were visual studies of images I found online. I purposely found images that had 3-dimentional poses that might be deemed hard to sketch. After a few weeks this greatly improved my ability to get down on paper exactly what I am observing. My process was to first do a light sketch with pencil and then once satisfied I would apply the ink using a variety of line thickness and blocked ink for shadows.
For me the hardest part about laying down the drawings was making sure they fit onto the page properly ! This posed to be very difficult but it taught me how to plan out the size and position of my images before getting into any details. A big lesson I learnt with this challenge was to get out of the mindset of thinking that some things are harder to draw than other things. I would find myself not wanting to draw certain poses or subjects based on their complexity, but at the end of the day the act of drawing is just copying what your eyes are seeing. So once you visually break down your subject into simple shapes and let go of the mind made label of what it is you are drawing there shouldn’t be any limit to what you can draw !
So here they all are !! All numbered and labelled encase you don’t know or are interested in the robots. Enjoy !
Looking at all my drawings together on one page like this fills me with a nice sense of accomplishment. I will be taking on more daily challenges like this in the future. I’m thinking I might make my own ones up too, like a daily environment for example. It’s something that is easy to do for an hour a day and at the end of the month looks like a huge achievement.
I mentioned Kim-Jung-Gi and his crazy visual memory earlier, below is a link to his website and if you love detailed ink drawings you should absolutely check him out ! He is the master.
Thank you for reading and keep on creating !
Mark
