Hey everybody
Its time to wrap up on my month of Inktober for 2018 with fun a retrospective look.
What a crazy month, its always tricky to up with the inktober goal of drawing everyday that is for sure.

Looking around the blogs I'm proud of how much we have all produced !! Everybody has created some amazing work and I'm always happy to be part of this fun initiative.

For myself I feel like i've done some of my best 2d art work in recent times alongside some really silly and fun bits of art. Importantly I've learnt something from each and every one. I've included at least one learning per inktober image below so check it out :-)

Firstly something a little different

This month ended a little differently then i expected too, I stopped posting from the 27th October onwards. The reason why, I started to take some of my art learnings and apply it to my fun repainting tool I'm developing.

You can see an early version of this with my painting of Neo, and a sneak peak at the brush mark enabled version of a photo of one my kids.

More on this tool when I finish it. Back to inktober directly :D

The Kick Off

I kicked off with a round up of my previous inktober, some tips and tricks to help everyone here get started :-) It was great to say that some people did indeed join in based on this post. This made the effort of posting really worth while :)

Stats Time

I found out recently that Procreate the art application I used on iPad for my digital drawings, keeps a log of statistics per image.

So here's some stats for my digital inktober art.
I drew for 35 hours 40 mins on ipad with 28,689 pen marks. At an average rate of 14 marks per minute and with average drawing time of 2 hours 11 minutes. I hadn't realised I spent that long drawing last month.

I don't usually do graphs but since this is an art heavy post and it's interesting to see images stats against the output.

Time spent on each image in minutes.

Number of pen marks made per image.

Pen marks made per minute for each image.

To clarify none of these numbers include any of the traditional work in listed below, just digital.

Retrospective Time

First 2018 inktober, the warm up

My first inktober of month was a great warm up for me, nothing serious and trying to get the creative juices flowing. Super quick marker silhouettes drawn in quick succession in almost random shapes. The challenges her was to turn each one into a character. Keeping to a light comic/illustrative style. Not the best work I've done but fun none the less. Lessons learnt here, inspiration can come in many forms, even shapes in shadowed forms.

Day 2, Cluster Skulls

Going with a hellboy comic style just black and white here. lesson learnt keep this one simple and avoiding details can work well for comic style :D

• Time Spent: 58 mins
• Total pen marks: 907
• Pen marks per minute: 16
  

Portrait time for day 3

I felt the like tackling some portraits, I started with 3 portraits in different styles with no reference imagery as I find this the most difficult. Saying that getting a true likeness from photos and life drawing is difficult too, such as Clint Eastwood below.
Lessons learnt try different mark to create line work, remember this is about human perception and not about 100% realism.

• Time Spent: 2 hours 11 mins
• Total pen marks: 2503
• Pen marks per minute: 19
  

Day 4 and 5 lunchtime sketching and The TerribleTubbies

These two days where about fun illustrations. My day 4 sketch had been a time limited sketch during my lunchtime at work. I wanted to draw a little scene that told a simple story that made you think, who is looking for who?

• Time Spent: 50 mins
• Total pen marks: 828
• Pen marks per minute: 17
  

The next day was one of those randomly inspired moments, hopefully most people in the world recognize my nightmarish teletubbies tribute.

• Time Spent: 1 hours 4 mins
• Total pen marks: 974
• Pen marks per minute: 9

Lessons learnt from both of these . Story telling in art can work even in the simplest forms. Outlines are overrated, fat brushes and large forms can work well with some styles.

Day 6 and 7 Toons and Trolls.

This was a pen to paper day, using fineliners and markers to make some fun cartoon network style and a two headed troll/ogre.
Lessons learn't make sure proportions are correct before inking anything :-D sorry overly large headed troll dudes....

Gotta get me some of that Deadpool

This was a truly fun portrait to-do, going all out with inky brushes and keeping things expressive.
Lesson learnt here, its OK to make a mess on purpose sometimes, especially a controlled mess of course. Its almost like Deadpool ran head first into my ipad....

• Time Spent: 1 hours 55 mins
• Total pen marks: 1640
• Pen marks per minute: 14
  

Tyrion Lannister aka Peter Dinklage.

Next up one of my longer portraits, this time of the awesome "Tyrion Lannister" character from Game of Thrones.
My main approach to this one had been to create the portrait using only lines, so there are no mid tones used to draw his face at all. Just black and white line work... lots and lots of lots of line work. 6075 lines to be exact.
lesson learnt, line work like this takes a huge amount of effort!!

• Time Spent: 4 hours 16 mins
• Total pen marks: 6075
• Pen marks per minute: 24
  

Oh yeah here is a time lapse video too :-)

Art by me of course and music by the awesome @jeffandhisguitar https://choon.co/artists/jeffguitar

Darkside of the Ink

Day 11 and 12, I went to the Darkside to paint the one and only Darth Vader. Starting with a super quick marker sketch then refined on the Ipad to a final piece.
Lessons Learnt Use the Force and trust your instincts

• Time Spent: 1 hours 52 mins
• Total pen marks: 1357
• Pen marks per minute: 12
  

Day 13 and 14

Illustration styley for these two days, first off an ipad drawing called "The Powerful Ones" and in a similar styley for day 14 "The Many" using fineliners and alcohol markers.
Lessons Learnt: go with the flow, just let go and don't worry about the final output you may be surprised with what you make.

• Time Spent: 3 hours 00 mins
• Total pen marks: 2024
• Pen marks per minute: 22
  

Tiny Heroes!! Day 15.

Had to be done, miniature super heroes and yup I mixed up a ton of comic universes, sorry comic folks. These are pretty tiny drawings of super heroes drawn in a tiny style. It was fun to play with proportions and the different poses. Fine liners and markers once again.
I've also had a bunch of great names recommended for this unlikely group of heroes. In no particular order of excellence

• Band of heroes, villains and supers of dubious alignment.
• The Chibivengers
• The Hooligans
• Peculiar 12
• DoDoengers (Avenger Dodos)
  Lessons Learnt: Tiny drawings are great for quick simple designs
  

Day 16 to 19 fineart style portraits

So as I hope you have figured out I like to play with different styles.
But I do like too make more refined and classical style portraits.
With these portraits I used a mix of photo references, some closer to the originals references then others. But importantly I used random ink splatters to find inspiration rather untraditional ;-) .
Lessons Learnt: Reference is important for realism, even when creating portraits from random marks on the canvas.

• Time Spent: 3 hours 57 mins
• Total pen marks: 2719
• Pen marks per minute: 11
  
  

Day 20 and 21 Negan and Lucille

One of my bigger portraits in terms of amount of work for inktober.
This portrait of Negan from Walking Dead, really was a tricky likeness to get right. Painted on ipad using procreate. Lessons Learnt never under estimate likeness, it's a tough cookie and the human eye sees all

• Time Spent: 3 hours 09 mins
• Total pen marks: 2729
• Pen marks per minute: 14
  

Gotta give a big shout out to @jeffandhisguitar for providing his amazing tunes for my videos.

Day 22 The Pumpkin King

Just a fun brainstorm doodle that turned into the king of pumpkins.
Lesson learnt: Think about ambient lighting even for low key

• Time Spent: 2 hours 29 mins
• Total pen marks: 2243
• Pen marks per minute: 15
  
  

Day 24 # There is no spoon

This guy needs no introduction, slightly easier likeness to make then the others I'd say. Probably due to his sunglasses and baby smooth skin.
Lesson learnt: less can be more when used correctly

• Time Spent: 1 hours 54 mins
• Total pen marks: 1450
• Pen marks per minute: 13

Rocky Meoawning.

A fun painting of my cat when he was a kitten.
lesson learnt: Strange cat poses make for strange cat artwork

• Time Spent: 2 hours 1334 mins
• Total pen marks: 1334
• Pen marks per minute: 11
  

The Pumpkin King colour

This is the colour version of my Pumpkin King.
Lesson learnt Contrasting shadows can over power the image easily, need to be careful with ambient lighting

• Time Spent: 2 hours 01 mins
• Total pen marks: 1514
• Pen marks per minute: 11

Arghhh a Monster

One of my last inktobers of the month. A quick sketch of a monster design before I embarked on building an automatic repainting tool :-)
Fun fact, I drew this like much of the these images while being distracted by the latest daredevil season on Netflix.
lesson learnt: watching TV while making art slowed down every single bit of art and inktober post I made

• Time Spent: 37 mins
• Total pen marks: 392
• Pen marks per minute: 11
  
  And a little gif of the process.
  

What I've learnt from Inktober 2018

Lesson Learnt, I love inktober :D most important thing to keep in mind enjoy your art, if you are not enjoying your self think about why.

Thanks for viewing
Nick aka @niko3d

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