I have been feeling like sketching for some time, but haven't had a chance until today. I was inspired by 
I started off with three rather silly looking pumpkins (I mean you can't help but love those funny faces) and then the shading got a bit tricky. I carried on with my shading and that brought me to thinking about Sherlock Holmes. Yes, I know jumping around and all but it happened so I'm telling you about it ok?
I was trying to think of what the term is for the pressure on paper that you use to get different shades with a pencil and I couldn't so I tried looking it up in le'Google but you know what I got instead? Pages and pages of writing tips for children. I learned that there seem to be a lot of issues plaguing kids these days with pencil pressure, grip, stroke, character spacing and a vast array of other things that are now clumped under dysgraphia which is the term used by occupational therapists to tell you that there's something wrong with your child even if there probably isn't. I mean granted there are definitely issues, but I think so many of them are taken way out of proportion and taken advantage of by these new therapies.
When I was a kid, I just had to practice until I got it right.
I decided the middle guy is an opera singer and needed a hat like the one McGonagal wears in Harry Potter.
I don't use a range of pencils when I sketch, mostly because I don't have a range of pencils. I couldn't even tell you what B or H this clutch pencil is, but that's why I was looking for the word for the pressure you use to attain a darker or lighter shade while writing or sketching. I only use pencil pressure to shade in my little halloween chuckleheads (
My word, that word I was looking for just did not want to be found today. The closest I got was pencil sensitivity. If anyone knows it, please be so kind as to share it with me because the results were interesting but not accurate for my search. Did you know that some of the latest drawing tablets are reported as having over 8000 levels of pressure sensitivity? I wouldn't even know where to start with that and whether they even work the way conventional paper and pencil do.
I used a lot of pressure to shade in the dark section of the hat which in graphology (the study of handwriting and their links to personality traits), would imply that I was drawing with a lot of passion, emotion or with a cause I believe in. In actual fact I find this kind of exertion for this shade quite tiring but necessary to achieve the overall look and don't think it was linked to any real emotion other than the fact I like Halloween and wanted to get this piece looking nice.
I chose a funky kind of wonky font set for the words because what's not to like about funky and wonky for Halloween right? It also seemed to fit the little opera singer's face. I'm going to call him Larry.
What was left was to do the leaves and some shading at the bottom and then sign my name somewhere. I like how the leaves underneath them almost look like arms with fingers as if they're ready to hold hands. Silly little trio of Halloween chuckleheads.
There used to be an initiative a few years back that went around called Inktober where you were required to draw an illustration (preferably in ink) for each day of October, but I never was able to do more than one sketch before life happened. Let me know if you ever took part in it or what your latest drawing experience has been.
