Inktober 2019 Day 1, and the prompt word was: RING

It's that time of year again, and once more I entered the maelstrom of feverish scribbling that is Inktober. Here are the first fifteen of my daily drawings (Days 16-31 to follow).

Day 2, prompt word: MINDLESS

If you've not heard of Inktober before, it's a social media challenge, where participants create and post online a drawing made in ink (of whatever kind), one a day throughout the month of October, using the hashtags "Inktober" and "Inktober2019". Artists are free to draw whatever they like, but some  choose specific themes to work on, or follow the official list of prompt words (there are also several non-official prompt lists).

Bear Baiting. Day 3, and the prompt word was: BAIT

Personally I like the challenge of the official prompt list, not because I'm particularly inspired by the words, which can sometimes appear rather lumbering on face reading, the challenge is finding a way to fit the word with an illustration that digs beneath the obvious, that is both personal and coherent. And if you can add layers that respond to the prompt word on multiple levels all the better. The interesting challenge of Inktober is as much about ideas and interpretation as it is about drawing.

Frozen. Winter is coming folks, people need our help. This was inspired by a guy who regularly sits out on a pedestrian bridge near where I live. I've not seen him for a while now though, I hope he's okey. Day 4's prompt word: FREEZE

This year I drew everything using the same pen, no experimenting with various tools. That's probably something to do with a certain degree of chaos at the moment - there's a lot going on this month in the household - dummy submissions, major building work on my house, volunteer commitments with SCBWI and so on, Inktober was squeezed in between these, I wouldn't say I was particularly relaxed during this process! And that's all on top of all the chaos in the news...

Day 5: BUILD. (an allegory of our times)

All the drawings were made without pre-October preparation, no drawings pulled out of the stock draw or created/planned ahead. I looked at the word on each morning, considered what I would draw during the day, and drew it in the evening, sometimes later. Twice I fell behind a day, it happens, but managed to catch up before the end of the month.

Day 6: HUSKY. I've been listening to a lot of smokey old jazz recently
 These are rather different from commissioned drawings - more about a meandering flow of ideas, somehow the constraints of illustration briefs can place barriers on the way we approach work. If I think - oh, this is for publication! It becomes a task, a job. Inktober is great, because although the task is still there, I don't feel the pressure of professional requirements to closely match a brief, there is a theme, but so much freedom to express and explore.

Day 7: ENCHANTED. By the time I posted the drawing the clock had turned midnight, but no matter, as they say, he who pays the piper calls the tune.

It has been suggested I "do something" with these drawings - perhaps publish them in a book? A colouring book perhaps? Or perhaps sell them as prints? I'd need to test the market for that, do get in touch if you're interested! - I have a LOT of black & white drawings, most of which just sit in sketchbooks or otherwise gathering dust, I'm not very good at merchandising/selling my work to the general public outside the parameters of the illustration business. I once started, but quietly abandoned an Etsy shop,  I'm not a great shopkeeper for my own work, something I need to look at more carefully!

Day 8: FRAIL
Also, as my Inktober drawings are fundamentally sketches I'd want to redraw some much more neatly if I were to sell them - but then of course they'd lose their immediacy. You always sacrifice something when you take a vigorous sketch and redraw it precisely, it's like caging a wild animal.

Day 9: SWING

Day 10: PATTERN
Day 11: SNOW. A very simple one this day, as I was up very early for a London trip in the morning.
Day 12: DRAGON. Drawn on the train to London.
Day 13: ASH. Aschenputtel is the German version of Cinderella, recorded in the Grimm Brothers' Household Tales in 1812.
Day 14: OVERGROWN. This is one of those drawings that kind of took on a life of it's own.
Day 15: LEGEND. The table is based on the historic medieval round table preserved in Winchester, where coincidentally SCBWI is holding it's Annual Conference in early November.

So what next? I'm considering carrying on doing daily drawings, maybe after a short break! Will I do it next year? Well, who knows! More pictures on the way from the second part of the month in the next post...






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  1. Erica9:26 pm

    John your work is wonderful. If I win biggish on the lotto I'd want to buy one or some of your drawings but I'd want the originals - not the neat model! As I've already decided to stay in this little house where I live now I would be hoping the pictures are not too big. I think Korky Paul's pictures would just be too big but I love them too just couldn't house one. What size do you work at? You do work at a heck of a rate - I just love your illustrations.

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    1. Thank you Erica! Yes, when I get stuck in I hack away at these kind of drawings, the convenience of using a Pilot pen is so much quicker than the old traditional dip pen and ink bottle, as the line dries very quickly. Most of these drawings are quite small, in an A4 sized sketchbook, some of them fill an entire sheet of A4, but the majority just half (so less than A6 size). I'd be happy to sell some originals, however some are drawn with one image on one side of a sheet, and another on the other, oops! I realised this might make it difficult to sell some of the original work, so the later ones are all drawn with the reverse blank.

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    2. Email me at art@jshelley.com

      In the case of the images with drawings on the reverse, I'd sell the whole page, naturally, so it would be all the images on that sheet.

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Since shifting my blog platform to the in-built system on my Wix-run site, I've left this Blogger blog largely untouched, however I notice the imported images from here lost some quality in the transfer, and all the image captions were lost, so I'd like to keep this old ship afloat!

Here's some nautical themed images from the archive!
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Dearest readers, I have some news to announce!

Blogger has been the home for my blog for many years, but with a new website – it’s time for a new blog too.
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Happy New Year of the Rat everyone! It’s a delicate new decade, promising lots of challenges, let's keep it in safe hands!

Things have been slow and steady here,  the last weeks up to Christmas I've been tied up with house repairs and curating Pictures at Play, the biennial SCBWI exhibition in London. But from the new year onwards it will be solid focus on new ideas and art projects.

Here are the rest of my Inktober drawings for 2019.

During the month, though I never seemed to have much time for contemplation, I was repeatedly asking myself, where is the essence of what I do? How can I connect with that mysterious flow of creativity, when things seem to just come together, almost by themselves, without me having to think too deeply - let the rhythm flow.

That is the goal of all our art of course, and one of the attractions of Inktober.

It's that time of year again, and once more I entered the maelstrom of feverish scribbling that is Inktober. Here are the first fifteen of my daily drawings (Days 16-31 to follow).

If you've not heard of Inktober before, it's a social media challenge, where participants create and post online a drawing made in ink (of whatever kind), one a day throughout the month of October, using the hashtags "Inktober" and "Inktober2019".
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I'm approaching the end of our current month-long visit to Japan, so here are some more train sketches.

For me it's been a month basically looking up old contacts, finding the current buzz of what's going on for illustrators, and peering through the busy noise of central Tokyo, where I'm staying.

Usually nowadays I stay in areas outside the circle of the Yamanote line, though I was based within it for over half the 21 years I was "permanently" living here.
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Some more train sketches from my current sojourn in Tokyo.

I've been here over two weeks now and it's been a remarkably wet and cool July until now, the rainy season just carried on and on, with some significant downpours adding to the general drizzle. The cooler than expected weather meant getting about town was more efficient (if you could avoid being poked in the eye by umbrellas) but the general gloom was definitely sense in the mood of train passengers....

I'm back in Tokyo throughout this month, and, as is my habit, have been drawing people on trains again.

As I'm staying in a central part of the city this time there are not so many long commuter train journeys, so sketching has been sporadic, on short journeys with bustling trains, when people move, get on and off more frequently, and (in many cases) block my view of my drawing model. So I'm getting a lot of false starts like this!

You've just got to get on with it....
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To all my followers,

Wishing you all the very best for a whale of a summer!

In the Chinese zodiac the pig (or wild boar as it’s celebrated in Japan) is known for being compassionate, artistic and jovial.
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