Hello October!
October is the month of INKTOBER! I’m very excited to participate (on-time!) this year! (Last year couldn’t do the drawing challenge until November!)
I kind of spent September getting ready! I didn’t prepare anything for the prompts, but instead built a consistent drawing habit again! In August I had created for myself a small collection of art books for reference and inspiration for characters. So last month, I just used it to draw!
I tried to draw a little bit every day, practicing and studying the cartoons in those books. I also used for reference a bunch of drawings on Pinterest of characters specifically in the style I want to improve in (alas, not everything can be found in a book!). So, I definitely stayed busy, working in my sketchbook and improving my drawings just a little bit every day!
A drawing from How to Draw Cute Spooky Stuff by Angela Nguyen
My own Dracula drawing!
On this page, I focused less on finishing a single drawing and more on study of construction of the characters. I’ve got reference here from Trudi Castle, Rekaharte, and Skottie Young (the witch is from Pinterest).
Meanwhile, I started the next step of my graphic novel! It was a very slow start at first. I had to figure out how to use Clip Studio Paint FOR REAL. It’s definitely designed for this type of project, but it’s also waaaay more complicated than Procreate! I also had to make sure I was absolutely certain I set up my files for printing correctly, because I really don’t want to have to fix it later when it’s time to print! So that was A LOT for the first few days.
But once I got it all figured out, I’ve been working on it pretty consistently too! Right now, I’m working on like a super-rough rough draft. So, I’m creating all the pages, setting up all the panels, and doing really, really, really, REALLY rough drafts of characters and backgrounds. And then writing all the text and dialogue to make sure it will fit the page, make sense, and be readable!
My script, the panel layouts, and one of the pages from the book with one giant panel mapped out so far!
It’s kind of a relaxing process, since my script is really detailed, and I already created rough drafts of each page’s layout while I was writing. And since it’s the rough draft for the drawing, it doesn’t need to be pretty! Some of the panels are going to be a challenge though! In my script I noted one panel should be “fisheye view”. Um, you know I don’t know how to do that right?! (Fortunately I’ve figured it out NOW, but what what I thinking!?! Haha). Anyway, it’s such a big project and a challenge, I’m just focusing on one step at a time, and it’s been a lot of fun!
So for October, it should be more of the same! (mostly)
I’m going to keep my time split the same way, sticking to my routine of working on my graphic novel, and working in my sketchbook everyday! Only this month, those sketches are going to be for Inktober!
My small sketchbook for Inktober (A Midori MD Notebook Light in size A5), my trusty pencil bag from ellievsbear, and a book of chibi pose reference to assist as needed (absolutely no idea what it’s called as it’s obviously not in english).
A cuter photo of my supplies! haha! featuring my pencil (no idea what brand, it says Sakura?), and the Kuretake Fude Brush Pen, which I like almost as much as their ZIG Cartoonist pen! (I’ll probably use both).
So it’s time to get to work!
Thanks for reading!
P.S. – Don’t forget! You can support my work (and get cool stuff!) by shopping prints, shirts and more at INPRNT and TeePublic!
(I’ve also re-opened my Patreon, but like, don’t make a big deal about it. 😅)
Bee Sauls Art 