I love the idea of Inktober - 31 days of drawings done with ink. Using watercolor or colored pencil is allowed but the idea is to do mostly with ink. I never seem to get my way all through the month drawing every day, but I try. There is an official list of prompts below.

For my Inktober challenge, however, I came up with the first 31 or so animals mentioned in the book Life of Pi by Yann Martel. All of those were acquired by page 14 in the book. There are lots more animals mentioned!

I may or may not get to completing this challenge but I have done the first 10 days. A drawing technique that I like to use when approaching a new subject is to do a blind contour drawing of the picture. This means that while I have my pen on the page, I only look at what I want to draw and don’t look at the page. Blind contours are great for getting practice seeing. Drawing is all about drawing what you see and not what you think you see.

Here are my first few inktober drawings with their blind contour drawings next to them. It’s kind of fun to compare the blind one with the later sketch. Sometimes they match really well, sometimes I’m channelling my inner Picasso!

#inktober #inktober2019 #lifeofpianimals #penandink