Inktober 2022, Day 1: Gargoyle

Well, well. What do we have here? It is October already? I am not sure who said this or where I heard it. But someone recently said something along the lines of “If you want to make god laugh, tell him your plans.” In my case, it probably was the universe that had a big old laugh! xD I mentioned in the post before Hivefest that I had, once again, big plans for Inktober this year. Whelp.

When I returned home from the festivities in Amsterdam, I got sick. After two and a half years, Covid finally caught me. I had let my guard down. For a week straight, I felt like a chewed-up raisin. There was no way I was going to work on anything! My head felt like a tin bucket. I was floating in a cotton candy-sounding world. My entire body and all my bones were hurting. Because of the pain, I also ran on a shitty sleep.

And while my pack tells me not to give up because of the lost time I could have spent working on Inktober pieces, I know I am not well enough to fight the battle it is. I am still weak. I get tired quickly and struggle with basic things around the house. It might be a while until I am 100% once again.

I am not giving up on Inktober completely, however. I will choose some prompts I still want to do and go from there. No pressure and no obligations. I am not tying myself to the desk for 31 days like last time. I would not be able to take such a strain now either way.

So with that prologue out of the way, here is day one of Inktober. The prompt was gargoyle! Gargoyles are strange creatures. There is no one uniform way they are depicted. Usually, they are a pretty scary-looking blend of multiple creatures. I pondered for a while about what my gargoyle wanted to be.

And well, please, don’t come for me, but to me, pugs and bulldogs look a bit like gargoyles since their eyes sometimes protrude outwards, and because of their flat faces and all the cute, folded wrinkles! So I wanted to mix them in my gargoyle, with some demon horns, bat wings, and very clawful hands and feet!

_{Isn’t it adorable and straight out of nightmares at the same time?}

_{Here’s a peek at the process.}

There is one stage of the process I mostly purposefully exclude from my posts and pictures. What is it? The ugly sketches that come before the clean ones, like the one on the bottom left corner of the collage above done with only a pencil. The ugly sketches likely will never see the light of day unless you dig around my desk. If someone looked at those, they would think my ability to draw is 0 or toddler level. There are a ton of those for each drawing I make before I am ready to draw what I want to draw. And they are not doodles. Doodles can be pretty, but then there is a need to figure out shapes and composition.

Once I am ready to draw what I intended, the neat freak comes in. Everything needs to be cute, near perfect. Every tiniest detail counts. It takes hours and sometimes, If I allow myself, days.

I had not touched my inks since Inktober last year. It took me a short while to get used to the behavior of the ink once again. I started with a pencil sketch (Faber-Castell pencil 2b) that I lined using a Pigma brush pen. The lines with the brush pen went a bit wobbly on me here and there. My hand needs practice.

Then I went in with my trusted, jet black Diamine drawing & calligraphy ink. I ordered a few bottles of this ink straight from the UK, since the shortage in the shop here. That is how much I love this ink! It is my favorite of all the inks I have tried so far. I added a few white dots to the gargoyle here and there using a Sakura Gelly Roll pen for a bit of a dreamy effect. And it came to life!

_{Do you like it?}

Thank you for stopping by and checking out my artwork! I missed this in my life! I am happy to participate in Inktober, even though I will not be doing all the prompts this year.