Day 29: Double – Azalea

For this piece, I had chosen a flower that grows in bunches but decided to only draw two, as to fit the theme of the prompt, and with it, create two sisters.

These sisters were initially planned to be twins, however when it came to drawing them at different angles, I seemed to struggle with the features, so they look more like sisters as opposed to twins.

On one hand there is an older sister who protects her younger sibling, but on the other hand, the younger sister is quite mischevious and gets her self into trouble. So, the older sister often has to look after the younger one, and often has to apologise for her sister’s actions.

 

Day 30: Jolt – Dianthus

For this piece, similar to previous ones, I had wanted to create an afro silhouette with the petals from the flower I had taken inspiration from. With the Dianthus flower, it has a ‘jolt’ of colour going in an almost circular pattern around the petals, and I had wanted to incorporate this element, but when I have done so, the petals almost look more like butterfly wings, which as our Lord and Saviour, Bob Ross says, is a happy little accident that I had came across, as I feel it makes the character look sweeter in a sense.

I feel this character would be very caring and gentle, with an almost healing and calming essence to her.

 

Day 31: Slice – Calibrachoa Lemon Slice

As this is my final piece for inktober, and it falls upon the day of Halloween, other than the already given pattern of the flower, I decided to keep the colours black and white, in a stripe pattern, which I believe also fits well with a Halloween theme and style. The style also reminds me of Beetlejuice, which is one of my favourite Tim Burton movies, especially for Halloween.

I really like how this character turned out, and feel she is a good ending to the challenge. I feel I may have had good and bad pieces during the month, however, I am very happy to end with this character.

As of her backstory, I feel she would be an entertainer of some sorts, possibly the ringleader of a circus, as she is very upright and I feel she could command an audience.

 

My opinion on the experience as a whole.

OH MY GOD! I can’t believe I’ve actually made it to this point! I have managed to complete every design within the time frames, posting one to social media each day, and not missing one!

Although there have been some pieces where I have struggled with shaky lines, bleeding ink or positioning of features, I believe this challenge has made me more confident with working traditionally, especially with ink, and I would like to do more linework by hand in future projects.

I have worked quite small during this project, so maybe in future, I will try to work a bit bigger, as this may have given me more issues than necessary, as the little mistakes would be more noticeable on a smaller illustration.

But I am excited to work traditionally again in the future, as I have gained more confidence and would like to see how the techniques and process I have learnt would work when applied to different imagery.

I have missed working digitally though so I may give myself a little break from ink, just for a little while, once this project is out of the way and the zine has been created.

 

Future plans.

As I have stated throughout these blog posts, especially with some pieces in particular, when it comes to putting all of these characters into a zine, I will be returning to some of the pieces to refine them further, whether it be by doing so digitally, or by redrawing the whole piece.

I also wish to add in items that would go along with these characters. Not for each of them, maybe just for the ones who have a stronger backstory, as I don’t want to be spending another 31 days on this challenge, and I feel 62 pages may be a bit too much for a zine?

I do still plan to make the zine, possibly by using the risograph available in college. Once I have refined all of the characters to my standard, I will scan them all in digitally, edit them properly so that the colours are richer, and the white background of the sheet will not be visible, then I will lay them out into pages for the zine, ready print out and to make masters with on the risograph. I believe I will only be using the black ink on the riso, as I want to keep the designs as similar to the original pieces as I can, keeping the theme of inktober very apparent.

I’m so happy to be done but so excited to start the next steps of the process, creating my first professional zine! If you have been reading my blogs and have enjoyed my inktober posts, if the zine is something that you would be interested in purchasing, please let me know.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM MELON.R!!🎃