Inktober 2016 – #14 Scarecrow

I almost went prompt free for today’s Inktober drawing.  I wasn’t feeling either the official Inktober prompt of “tree” or the Drawlloween prompt which was “scarecrow row”.  My  morning cup of tea was not going to stay piping hot for long and no alternative ideas were appearing in my mind’s eye.  My indecision was annoying my 9 year old who told me to “just try the scarecrow idea”.  He was right.  I was steering clear of the scarecrow because I have never drawn one that wasn’t in cahoots with Dorothy.  Drawing a more scary scarecrow, therefore, felt like a serious challenge but that was precisely why it was best I push myself to do it.  So I put fountain pen to paper and gave it my best shot.  He definitely doesn’t look the type to skip along the Yellow Brick Road.

Inktober 2016 – #12 Igor

The only way I managed to get my Inktober drawing done today was by drawing while I was having my morning cup of tea.  It is, therefore, a bit rushed and not a remotely developed or detailed drawing.  I used the Drawlloween prompt again.  The prompt was “I’ve got a hunchback” which could either have suggested Quasimodo or an Igor.  Since I have decided that my sketchbook should stick to the monster theme and Quasimodo is not a monster, I determined it would have to be Igor who appeared on the paper.  Just as yesterday, I cribbed from my own art work, and pretty much copied the character design of the Igor I painted in my altered book.  Definitely not a great drawing but at least I drew something and kept up with the challenge.

Inktober 2016 – #11 Creature from the Black Lagoon

Today’s Inktober drawing was again inspired by a Drawlloween prompt.  “Slimy swamps, foggy bogs” instantly made me think of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.  You know how I love my classic Universal monsters!  I had to fit this drawing into the narrow window of time between getting home from work and heading out to collect my children from school so I was, I confess, a tad lazy and pretty much recycled my own artwork.  Back in February I painted a Creature from the Black Lagoon in my altered book of monsters so I basically just purloined that character design and recreated it in ink in my little Clairefontaine pad.  I did tweak it in one significant way: the first Creature was at the beach in an Edwardian swimming suit so I decided to put the new Creature into skimpy Speedos.  Perhaps one is the ancestor of the other.

Inktober 2016 – #10 Red Demon

I turned to the Drawlloween prompts again for today’s Inktober drawing.  Today’s prompt was the punny “Demonday” so obviously that meant drawing a demon.  I definitely fell into stereotype territory with this one.  One of my sons suggested I should draw the Balrog from ‘Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring’ but I would have had to have worked from a reference image so instead I used my cliche stuffed imagination to come up with a red demon with a tail, horns and cloven hooves.  Zero points for originality.

Inktober 2016 – #9 Dummy

For today’s Inktober drawing I once again turned to the Drawlloween prompt.  Said prompt was “He’s a dummy, doll” which obviously suggests ventriloquist’s dummies.  I think most of us can agree that those dummies are creepy as heck, right?  I have written about dummies before, over on my art blog, when I painted a dummy in my altered book of monsters so I won’t write at length about them here.  They are just creepy.  I actually used that painting as the jumping off point for my Inktober drawing.  I painted this very early this morning when it was still dark.  It is not much better now actually as it is dim and rainy outside – what we Scots would call dreich.  As such, with that quality of light my phone photograph of the drawing is pretty wretched.  You get the idea though.

Inktober 2016 – #8 Spider

I did draw this yesterday but did not get around to blogging about it.  I used the Drawlloween prompt which was “8 legs; 1000 eggs”.  I could have been more imaginative about it all but I did indeed plump for a spider, albeit one that isn’t likely to be found in nature.

My 13 year old son is an arachnophobe and, of course, now that the Autumn chill is taking hold, more and more spiders are seeking refuge in our house.  This is especially true of the bathrooms.  I am always minded to leave the spiders be.  I deal with the webs once the spiders have departed them.  I would much rather have chubby spiders in the house than flies or gnats so the spiders are my allies in that regard so, unless they are Black Widows, they are welcome.  However, my 13 year old was wigging out every time he had to go for a shower.  My 10 year old read online somewhere that conkers ward off spiders so he placed conkers throughout the bathrooms.  It was determined that this was not a solution to the problem when my 13 year old went into the bathroom and found a chunky spider sitting right on top of a conker.  I am currently trying to convince my 13 year old that spiders are just our eight-legged housemates and nothing to be worried about.  He is not buying it.

Anyway, here is my spider for the eighth day of Inktober.

Inktober 2016 – #4 Sarlacc

Today’s Inktober prompt was “Hungry” while the Drawlloween prompt was “Tentacles” so my brain fused the two and came up with the idea to draw the Sarlacc.  If you don’t know what the Sarlacc is then you and I can’t be friends.  Just kidding.  The Sarlacc is a carnivorous beast that lives in the Great Pit of Carkoon on Tatooine, the desert planet prominently featured in the Star Wars movies.  Space Gangster Jabba the Hutt threw his enemies and those who displeased him into the pit where they would be  gradually and painfully digested by the Sarlacc for a thousand years.  The hungry Sarlacc has tentacles so – ta da! – I managed to fulfil two prompts in one drawing.

Inktober 2016 – #3 Mummy

It is only the third day of Inktober and I must admit that I had to rush this drawing, cramming it in during a ten minute tea break.  Thankfully the small scale of the drawing paper and the fact I am using a fountain pen makes this much easier to accomplish.  I was not inspired by today’s official Inktober prompt so instead I am using the Drawlloween prompt.  Thank you to Sam of the Mechanical Pen blog for making me aware of Drawlloween.  I can see me using many if not all of these prompts since I am such a fan of monsters and horror movies.  Today is apparently Mummy Monday so I drew a quick mummy holding a birthday cake in reference to today also being my second son’s 11th birthday.