Category: style exploration

Inktober 2019 Conclusion

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Oops, pretty late on this one! Another year of #Inkotber has come and gone.

This is my 5th year participating, but only my 3rd year actually managing to make a new painting for nearly the whole month. I usually burn out somewhere in the last week or am too busy with the influx of holiday portrait commissions to be able to finish, but I’m always glad to have participated.

This year, as anticipated, I crashed and burned near the end with the incoming commissions. But I did make a few pieces I’m really proud of, and really solidified a style I enjoy working in.

The fox painting below has already sold, and I was honestly a little heartbroken to part with it. It’s one of those pieces I keep looking at and I can’t believe I made it. Real proud of it for now, so I’m probably going to make a print to hang on my wall.

My favorite Inktober pieces from this year! (A few of them are still available in my Etsy shop)

I also got pretty obsessed with the purple/orange/black palette I ended up using. Still on a roll with it, and trying to incorporate some more colors into it.

The main four colors I used for it are Dioxazine purple, Mauve, Cadmium Orange Hue, and Payne’s Grey. Then obviously black ink along with them.

A little tip I discovered (which is honestly probably common sense to you if you use ink frequently), is that you can clean a plastic ink palette really well with rubbing alcohol!

My palette has been stained and building up ink for like 5 years now and I didn’t want to throw it out, but I couldn’t see what colors. Was actually mixing in it. Then I realized if I clean my dip-pen nibs with rubbing alcohol, why the hell would I not try that on my palette?!

Works like a charm. Except for the areas that had the least diluted ink. Those are pretty caked on, but at least now I can actually see what I’m mixing. I hope that tip can help someone!

That’s all I’ve got for now. Most of my original Inktober paintings can be found in my Etsy shop, and I’m working on making prints of the few that people requested on Instagram. Now, onward to the holiday shop rush!

Thanks for reading, and stay warm! ❤

I thought it was the ugliest palette ever…

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I picked up a reddish-orange colored pencil to sketch with the other day and decided, “I should base today’s color scheme off this pencil.”

As my hand automatically reached out for the paints, my brain short-circuited. I don’t normally use a bright, bold red in my limited palettes. What do I do? Pastels don’t match this color, do I even have matching colors?? In the midst if the internal struggle on what the hell color even is, I looked down to find my hand and eyes subconsciously coordinated what I thought was the absolute ugliest color palette in the world.

This grody palette consists of vermillion, a weird/obnoxious limey-yellow-green color, a sort-of-pastel yellow, lilac, and a dark periwinkle I like to call “burple”. Burple can’t decide if it wants to be blue or purple. How am I supposed to make that work?? Just imagine those colors for a hot second. Laying those out on a palette looked like fresh spring barf…gross.

The paint was already on the palette by this point, so I’m basically committed now. I decided to start painting. To my surprise, the owl that I painted looked kind of alright in the colors. I mean it is an obnoxious owl so it gets a pass on the weird color combo, right? I decided to give the palette another shot and went for something I thought surely could never work; a portrait.

As it turns out, I really liked the effect on that too! It looked kind of vintage, and…I don’t know. Something about it just works. Suddenly my brain explodes with 2.3 billion other ideas on what I think this palette would be suitable for. It has certainly grown on me, so expect to see this pretty-ugly combo for a while 😉