Inktober 2019

Frustrations with technology

Third time lucky. I started writing this post a couple of weeks ago, halfway through Inktober. Life got in the way and I forgot to finish it. Then yesterday I resumed writing while out having coffee using an app Blog Touch. Usually the app works well but the app crashed and suddenly the page was blank - no text and no images - just the heading!!!

Foolishly I hadn’t done a draft in iPages and copied it over but had written directly in the app. I’m not taking any chances today.

Inktober 2019

So back to Inktober 2019. I decided ahead of the challenge that I would go rogue and not try to adhere to any of the official prompts but to create my own theme. I wanted to use this time of daily drawing to explore paintings done previously to see if the images would lend themselves to a new series.

I returned to the original images used for the paintings and did a series of ink drawings, experimenting with composition and values. 

Riverside Trees - and below the original painting in oils.I really like the sparse, clean look of this drawing - the white space is very relaxing and quite a contrast to the original painting Riverside Trees which has very saturated colour. 

Pumula Rocks is one of a series painted when I did a Professional Process Course in South Africa. Revisiting the photographs of these rocks gave me inspiration for a few Inktober drawings.

This drawing was done in ink on grey gesso with fountain pens and a dip pen with white ink. 

And another in the Pumula Rocks series...

Bunya Riverside - ink detail above and oil on canvas below

Nymphaea -  Water lilies were the inspiration for a couple of paintings so it was natural when I wanted a break from monochrome to use coloured ballpoint pens for this drawing.

The positive aspect of being in charge of one’s own prompts is that some days an simple Notan drawing is sufficient to lay the basis for a later abstract series. My plan is to use these as a kick start for small watercolour abstract paintings. Now that I have rekindled the daily drawing habit it makes sense to continue and expand the practice.

AN APOLOGY:

The sizes of the images are all over the place - those that were uploaded in Blog touch refuse to be resized in Blogger and I don't want to tempt fate and loose the whole post AGAIN if I try to correct the sizing in Blog Touch!