Hello November!
Last month…
I went to France!
Mr. Husband and I spent two weeks of October in France, visiting Paris, Bayeux, and Rouen! It was our first BIG vacation in years and was an amazing adventure! We got to see SO MANY art museums and so much history!
Paris, Bayeux and Rouen
Before the trip, I worked a lot on my graphic novel. Right now, I’m still in the middle of editing the script and planning page layouts. I’m currently done up to page forty-two! And we had super fortunate timing on our trip that we got to see a comic exhibition at the Pompidou Center! I’m inspired by all kinds of art, but seeing a collection of original drawings from some of my all-time favorite comic artists was a dream! I also learned about many other cool artists and books to add to my reading list! (By the way, I just started Head Lopper, and read Detective Beans: The Case of the Missing Hat in October. They are both soooo good! Detective Beans is the best!)
Bill Watterson, Mike Mignola and Nicholas de Crécy
Our last hotel in Paris was in a neighborhood surrounded by manga shops and video game stores! Even some of the cafes were manga-themed! It was super neat and a fun surprise! (I mean I expected to be inspired by all the super amazing art at the Louvre and L’Orangerie, right? But I didn’t expect to see a whole bunch of cute manga art too for inspiration! So cute and fun!)
Waiting for our coffee in a cool little cafe!
Now that I’m back home, I’m super inspired to get back to working on my book and sketching again! I took a sketchbook to France, but did not use it once. There was just too much to see! (And too much rain! It rained like the whole time!)
I’ve already started sketching little characters, in both cartoon and chibi styles. I’ve dabbled in manga-style characters before and wasn’t going to keep working on it. But chibis are so darn cute and I love to draw cute stuff! So it’s been fun to work on both styles and mix it up just a little bit after seeing all the fun manga art in Paris.
Doodling different ways to draw the same pose, chibi and cartoony…but now that I’m looking at it, I’m thinking it’s very minute differences and I’m stressing over not much? …but also a chibi coffee enthusiast!
I had also been playing around with a loose, scribbly drawing and inking style that I really like…And I do really like it. But it also just doesn’t feel like ME. So recently I’ve been going back to my usual, tidy drawing and inking and just owning it. (FINALLY). It’s encouraging to embrace my own style before starting a belated Inktober!
Scribbly vs tidy… again, not HUGE differences…but they feel important in the world of cartoons?
This month…
The first priority for November is Inktober — or “Inked-Over” as I’m calling it. It’s always a challenge, daily drawing, but in the best way. I think I grow so much as an artist every year I try it. So better late than never, right? I couldn’t come up with my own theme, so I’m going to actually try the official Inktober prompts this year. I don’t love ’em, to be honest. But that will just make it an extra challenge, I guess! My personal goal is to include a character in each drawing, since it’s something I always want to practice. (Maybe a fan art drawing for each prompt? Dunno.) We’ll see how it goes, but I’m excited to get started…
After seeing the work of comic book greats up close, I’m both super inspired (and completely intimidated) to work on my own graphic novel. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to chip away at my remaining script and layouts to do, a little bit every day…after I’ve finished the drawing for the day…
I didn’t get any comic strips done last month, and realistically I won’t have a ton of time left to work on them this month too. It’s a bummer because I do love it. But it’s just a lot right now. I just can’t do it all at the same time. But maybe if I get a super fun idea, I’ll take a break from my book for a couple of days to work on it…
Same with a new illustration. Maybe this month? I have a lot of ideas, but again, maybe I’ll get to them after Inked-Over. Who knows, maybe with a month of consistent practice, I’ll make them even better than I would if I started working on them now?! (Plus I just really really want to get done with the book script so I can move on to the next steps…)
Anyway, time to get to work!
Thanks for reading!
(And thanks for the continued support! I know I’ve only gone all-in on cartooning for a few years now, but I’ve been working as an artist and Summer Child Designs for eight years now! WOW!)
P.S. – Don’t forget! You can support my work (and get cool stuff!) by shopping prints, shirts and more at INPRNT and TeePublic!
Bee Sauls Art 