What’s the Inktober alternative? Prompt O’Ween! I originally was calling it Promptober, but accidentally put Prompt O’ Ween on the first prompt list and here we are… still randomly generated with *slight* editing to make sure there are no duplicates. The 2023 list is here to smash all of your spookiest creative blocks. So let’s art!
Ohh and one more thing… my list needs updating! What are some of the Halloweeniest words you can think of? Let me know in the comments!
Art. Deco. Prompts. When the idea hit me I thought it was brilliant! Then I asked myself what kind of masochist I really am… but that’s how it is with prompts. My poor little brain rides a rollercoaster every single time. In the end it was the perfect solution to the lack of a project I had for Art Deco month.
I don’t think I touched on what Art Deco is enough when I wrote about Tamara de Lempicka earlier this month. She was an Art Deco painter, but Art Deco was mainly an architectural and decorative movement, and here we are making digital Art Deco. For the sake of making sure there’s a real definition this time, here’s a blurb from Britannica:
“Art Deco is a popular design style of the 1920s and ’30s characterized especially by sleek geometric or stylized forms and by the use of man-made materials.”
The Britannica link there has a good overview of the style. Now let’s move on to the thing I did…
If you haven’t seen one of my streams where we do prompts, I have a handy little command that grabs a random adjective, noun, and verb and posts it to chat. Whatever comes up, I have to draw. Sometimes the verb requires another prompt, like grabbing. What is the subject of the prompt grabbing? So we run the command again and things start getting weird(er).
Usually I don’t keep track of the prompts after they’re done. It’s fun to see what viewers think they are and to go back to the old ones and try to remember what I was supposed to draw. There are some that I really have no idea what they were supposed to be!
This prompt is different because it has a record. But this is the only time and place I’m going to put what it was.
skinny clown thinking, strong house mowing
At least I’m pretty sure that’s what it was…
I knew I wanted to work with black and gold lines for the background. If you do an image search for Art Deco you’ll see gold with either black or dark blue quite a bit. So after a quick sketch I started laying down lines, starting with a diamond in the center to frame the prompts that would be put on top. From there it was all intuitive – I just kept placing gold lines where I thought they looked good. It was sooooo relaxing. Seriously, try it. It’s so zen!
Then came the clown, house, and mowers. At first I wasn’t going to shade them, but they really needed it. If you look at vintage Art Deco advertisements, the figures generally are lightly shaded, so that’s what I did. It was very love-hate toward the end there, but looking at it now I’m really happy with how it turned out! What do you think?
When I decided to do the Artist of the Month project, Berthe Morisot was one of the first artists I thought of. Her talents as an artist could have easily been tempered by the male-dominated art world and societal norms of her time, but she was in a unique position to contribute to the rise of the one the most recognizable and well-known art movements – Impressionism.
The founding members of Impressionism are names most of us know – Monet, Degas, and Pissarro to name a few. Although their individual styles varied, as a group their work rejected the established styles typically shown at the annual Salon de Paris. (The Salon was an exhibition that was considered to be essential to the success of an artist.) From its beginnings in the 1860s, Impressionism brought new ideas, genres, and advancements in the art world.
The style is comprised of loose brushstrokes, described by conservative critics of the time as sketchy and unfinished. Others saw it as a modern take, noting the bright, unblended colors that stood in contrast to the more traditional contemporary works seen at the Salon. Shadows were rendered in color rather than neutrals, and old yellow varnishes were traded in for unvarnished works that allowed newer, brighter colors to shine.
This new way of painting also changed the way the subject matter was viewed. Earlier works were carefully composed, static images. Impressionist pieces captured a moment, as fleeting as each brushstroke that created the composition. The subject matter itself was also different. Where contemporary pieces were often religious-themed, Impressionism depicted everyday life and traded the controlled environment of the art studio for plein air (open air, or outside) painting.
By Theodor Josef Hubert Hoffbauer – This image is available from the Brown University Library under the digital ID 1189455725390625., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24755293
Berthe Morisot was born on January 14, 1841. Her father was a wealthy civil servant and her mother was related to the well-known Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Morisot and her sister Edma showed a talent for painting and studied at the Louvre under painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (women were not allowed to pursue a formal arts education). Although Edna gave up her artistic ambitions to marry a naval officer, Berthe continued to paint. She met Édouard Manet during her studies at the Louvre and they formed a lasting friendship.
As a result, she was uniquely positioned to pursue her art career. She was not able to frequent the cafes and studios where male artists could congregate and exchange ideas because women’s roles in society were so strictly defined. However, her friendship with Manet and eventual marriage to his brother Eugène gave her access to the art world and connections with other artists that most women didn’t have. She became friends with some of the major players of the Impressionist movement including Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, and Monet.
Berthe Morisot With a Bouquet of Violets. Edouard Manet. 1872.
It wouldn’t be fair to reduce Morisot to her status and connections. She was a talented artist that went under-recognized even until the last few years. Much has already been written on how gender and society shaped her career and how it’s been perceived over the years. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll do it the justice it deserves in this little blog post. Rather, let’s look at the work itself.
Under the tutelage of Corot, Morisot learned to paint landscapes and earned herself a spot in the Salon starting in 1864. Despite having this prestige for the following decade, she ended up destroying many of her works dating before 1869. (If trashing old work isn’t relatable as an artist, I don’t know what is.)
The Mother and Sister of the Artist. Berthe Morisot. ca. 1869
In 1874, Morisot participated in the first independent Impressionist show along with Degas, Renoir, and Monet. By this time her work had become looser, with the short, quick brushstrokes that came to define the style. The show was described by a critic as consisting of “five or six lunatics of which one is a woman…whose feminine grace is maintained amid the outpourings of a delirious mind.” She would go on to show at the Impressionist exhibition every year, except for the year her daughter was born, for the rest of her life.
Hanging the Laundry out to Dry. Berthe Morisot. 1875. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., online collection, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3732827
Female artists of the time tended to paint depictions of what they had access to – daily life. Women were not allowed to work from models in studios as men did. Berthe Morisot was no exception. While this was limiting, the female point of view offered an intimate look into the domestic lives of women. Whether it was a mother cradling her child, women taking tea, or a girl brushing her hair – the Impressionist viewpoint such personal scenes was the perfect application to capture the moment. It implies the movement of the sip of tea or a twinkle in the eye, sometimes with a single stroke of color.
Morisot was particularly talented at capturing energy of the fleeting moment, where the thick strokes of paint create additional depth with their texture, still appearing wet – something that can only be appreciated in real life.
Woman at her Toilette. Berthe Morisot. 1875-1880.
Over the course of her career, Morisot worked with oil, watercolor, and pastels. Her start was in drawing and she gravitated back to it later in her career, experimenting with colored pencils and charcoal. Her work as a whole also began to take on some of the definition seen in her early work. In 1894 she painted a striking portrait of her daughter Julie that stands in stark contrast to the loose brushwork of her other paintings. The definition of the young woman’s face is made all the more apparent by the simple background.
Julie Daydreaming. Berthe Morisot. 1894.
There’s no way to know what direction Berthe Morisot’s work would have taken next. She passed away on March 2, 1895 at the age of 54. It would be over 100 years before the public would begin to truly recognize her contributions to the art world, and even now she is still written about as a “female artist” rather than simply an artist. While the impact society had on her progress as an artist cannot be ignored, the truth is that even critics of her time acknowledged her work as being better than her peers.
Sources:
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/artists/berthe-morisot-who-is-she-why-is-she-important-1234581283/
https://www.biography.com/artist/berthe-morisot
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. https://www.amazon.com/Women-Art-Society-World/dp/050020456X/
Success! We did it! Every drawing done on the day! Not one missed! Considering past years where I’ve ended up several days behind (or the one year where I dumped over a week of drawings at once), let’s just call this year a big win.
I also took the opportunity to try some different techniques for lining, coloring, and adding effects. The colorize feature in Clip Studio Paint was a quick and dirty way to get a drawing done when time was short. When used in grayscale it contrasted really nicely with a pop of color.
There was also the a-ha moment where I finally accepted that I can’t draw digitally the same way I draw traditionally. The first few drawings I tried to “stay true” to the traditional versions of the Inktober challenge – sketch it, use the ink brush, don’t erase because you can’t erase ink. Well that was dumb, because all it did was make the art take longer! By the end of the month I circled back to some sketchy, inky drawings and they went much quicker and still had the same style. Again, success! I’m better at what I do now! 🙂
I’m debating whether to make the prompts a little simpler next year. The challenge of making things that don’t go together work is fun, but maybe not 31 days in a row. There’s a whole year to think about it though, so let’s have a look at all 31 drawings together! (If you want to see the time lapse videos of them, they’re all on TikTok!)
Inktober. Drawlloween. Promptober, Prompt O’Ween! (Wait, what??)
The season is upon us! It’s time for the best drawing challenges of the entire year and I’m 100% on the bandwagon. Not only am I putting a full list out ahead of time this year (last year I posted the prompt each day), but I made it all kinds of FANCY!
So why is it Prompt O’Ween and not Promptober this year? WELL… when I was making the graphic that’s just what I put on there. Seriously. I completely forgot it was Promptober last year. Anyhoo, I like them both, so I’ll post it with all the tags!
The one thing I haven’t decided yet is if I want to do these traditional or digital. Last year I think I said I was going full digital this year, but I truly love scribbling away at these in black ink. This is the time of year to finish off those old microns and bring on the fresh ones! Sling. That. Ink.
We’re less than two weeks away – What are you gonna draw??
The lists are out!! That’s right kids, Inktober (and Drawlloween) are less than a week away! Last year I combined the *official* Inktober list with Mab Grave’s Drawlloween list to make a double-whammy drawing each day. Some combos worked out better than others (and you can pretty much tell which days were “catch up” days), but all in all I was looking forward to doing it again this year.
Was.
The thing is, I was diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome years ago. I had some handy dandy steroid injections and things were good for a few years – until those pesky symptoms started coming back. The past six months have been *really* bad and the pain in numbness has been getting rapidly worse. It took a very short appointment for Doc to recommend surgery and guess when it is… Right smack in the middle of Inktober!
So I’m left with a choice. Cheat, and get it all done with ahead of time (with a wonky hand), or try to do the second half left-handed. After perusing the lists, I really want to do it justice and take the opportunity to get it all done ahead of time.
There’s another little hang up I have with this year, too. The Inktober and Drawlloween lists match up in a really sucky way. Like I don’t even want to combine them! I know I should see it as a challenge and blah, blah, blah, but we all know that if we force it that much the art is just going to be bad.
So what do??
Did you know there’s ANOTHER Drawlloween list? Camilla d’Errico also does a list (I wish I knew sooner!) and it is THE ONE! Not that the other two aren’t good, but the Camilla list just speaks to me. It has more prompts that I haven’t done and fewer duplicates from last year.
Soooooo, I’ve decided to just do this list:
I might pick and choose a few days from Mab Graves’ list… maybe… if there’s enough time in the day, which there rarely is. But given all that’s going on, it’s probably best to keep things simple this year.
UNFORTUNATELY I’m really bad at keeping things simple… Wanna hear the rest of the plan/decision/ramble?? The Inktober list is still in play, just not in combination with the Drawlloween list. You see, I’m going to be out of commission for at least two weeks post-surgery, and there’s no way I’m not making some kind of art!
Why not do the Inktober list left-handed? The prompts are more open to interpretation (and gorked-out terribleness), so it’s the perfect opportunity to push myself in a different direction… or something… right? It’s more abstract and it will be funny, right? RIGHT?!?
Ultimately it’s going to depend on how much of my other stuff I get done, the planetary alignment, and my list of potential excuses on any given day. But for super serials, I’m getting that Drawlloween list done and it’s going to be amazing! (No pressure)
Thanks for reading! Please check back to see the drawings if you have sec or catch them on Insta. <3. Until next time!
Well, it shouldn’t, but it did for me and not for the reasons you might think. I started my handmade sketchbook adventure back in January when I decided that I wanted one with all different types of paper in it. That’s not something you can zip over to the art store and buy (why not??), so I took it as an opportunity to make something really personal. I thought I did that last year when I converted an old (and meaningful) art book into a journal, but after a year of filling it up it still isn’t quite what I want.
So I started the book months ago with plans for three types of paper (drawing, multimedia, and watercolor) and a cover made from my son’s old jeans that were too holy to donate. Of course, it all had to be filmed so I could make a video out of it! Everything was all set up – lights, camera, computer, and bookbinding supplies took over my dining room table. During the first session I cut all of the paper to size and gently creased and stacked it into signatures of one of each type of paper.
And there it all sat. The whole time I wondered what it was, why I wouldn’t just sit down and work on it. It’s pretty obvious now though, right? It was that extra step of making the video. Rather that just sit down and put all the effort into making the book, the video was what really had priority. My excuse was what a pain it would be to get set up and get going even though most of what I needed was left out. And because of that dinners at the table didn’t happen for months. Family crafting didn’t get done at the table. There was an eyesore in the middle of my house!
Last week I finally took the camera set up down and put the bookbinding project away in its own special box. Guess what happened? We ate some food at the table and did some projects together. Then I finished the book – in two days. Mistakes were made, but I feel like since they’re baked into the book already that there’s no point in worrying too much about what goes into it. That first page of a sketchbook is always the toughest!
The tutorial I followed can be found below. It’s really easy to adapt your own measurements and I found the whole process to be very relaxing, except for the very end where I realized the cover was too big and I already put glue down. I snapped a few pics along the way, because it still needed to be documented, so rather than make you read more of my rambles, let’s go on a little photo journey together!
This is a beautified version of what my table looked like for MONTHS, except without holes punched in the signatures. How long did it take to measure and punch those holes? Maybe 10 minutes. At least I was able to get any bitterness about it over with right away. 🙂
I thought sewing the signatures together would be tedious, but it was very relaxing! It was kind of my favorite part. <3
I have no control over where glue goes. It’s a miracle that none of it got on the pages! That’s a paint stirrer cut in half and two-inch clamps to keep it all together.
I set them out to dry like this. I forget why. Maybe to make sure they dried evenly? It must have worked because they did. 🙂
The cover is made out of my son’s old jeans and chipboard.
The tutorial I used: https://thepostmansknock.com/bookbinding-tutorial-by-jessica-of-greenleaf-and-blueberry/
If you don’t know him, now you know him. You’re welcome. 🙂 http://www.alexpardee.com
Thanks for reading! Until next time!
Over on my YouTube channel I posted a review video of some knock-off Body Kun figures and later another for the most recent run of Figma Archetype figures. Someone commented on one of them asking if there were any other figures out there similar to Body Kun that have more manga-style proportions. The Figmas are great, but they have more superhero builds and that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. If you want manga proportions from Figma, you either need to track down an earlier run of figures, which will be more expensive, or wait and see what the next run will look like.
All that aside, I responded to that user’s question with what amounted to a shrug. I really haven’t seen anything else comparable, but I also haven’t been looking that hard. I’m happy with my Figma Archetypes!
About a week after I received that comment, I coincidentally came across some art reference models on Dick Blick. Pretty sweet, right? I really wanted them to be good because I get most of my supplies from Blick and I include affiliate links (at no cost to you) whenever I list materials. Unfortunately, the figures look… wacky. The proportions are wacky, the joints are wacky, and counting all the wacky things about them won’t make the wackiness go away. They’re so wacky that I’m almost willing to waste some money to get them. Almost. 🙂
One set is called the Manga Manikins and it looks like they are no longer made (bummer!). The product page is still live on Dick Blick if you want to read about them and here’s a screenshot to check out if you don’t. They were kind enough to include two versions of the female model with different sized boobs, because I guess that’s a thing that some people needed.
If ever can find these (for some sort of reasonable price) I’ll get one in a heartbeat. Please, please give me a heads up if you see one. If Hollywood is using them (like the description says), there must be something great about them!
Now for the ones you can get. These are the Art S. Buck Anatomical Models that are described as “anatomically proportional one-sixth scale models have over 30 points of articulation”. These figures are wacky, too. They have wacky joints and big wacky heads, but are they $35 each wacky? I might grab one if I catch it on sale, because judging these things from afar really isn’t fair, right?
Pretty soon I’ll have a new one to review because, *GASP*, I found a REAL Body Kun for a decent price ($38)! More specifically it’s a black Body Chan (the female model) and I’m 95% it’s legit. If it’s not, you can expect a pretty awesome rant where I swear I’ll never make the mistake again (i.e. a THIRD time), but eventually I will and you can all laugh at me.
Thanks for reading! Until next time!
The review video is live and the figure is real! Aaaaaaand there’s a special guest! Pop on over to my YouTube channel to check it out or watch here:
Yupo paper is pretty amazing. It’s a synthetic (read: not made from trees), waterproof, recyclable paper that comes in white and translucent finishes. Because of that, you can’t treat Yupo paper like regular paper. I sort of knew this before I tried it, but rather than read all about the do’s and don’ts I jumped in straight away with a Micron and some markers.
**I have a few affiliate links in this post. A quick click helps me out at no cost to you. Thanks for stopping by!**
I started out with a sketch of the little cutie Pino from Ergo Proxy. It’s a pretty simple line drawing – perfect for tracing a bunch of times and experimenting!
I used a .01 Micron to trace the line drawing onto computer paper. Normally, I draw lots of sketchy lines when I use pens. This time I went for long, smooth lines and regretted it about half way through. I grip the pen too hard, my hand shakes – it’s not me and it shows. So I switched to a .005 Micron and used shorter strokes on some cheapo marker paper and the Yupo paper.
One thing I did read about Yupo paper was that you could use watercolor on it, pretty much wash it off after, and the paper would be fine. Knowing this, I tried (SO HARD) not to drag my hand through the ink or touch it at all. Knowing this, I used a super-secret technique to strategically place archival fingerprints all over the drawing.
I used Prismacolor, Copic, and Winsor & Newton (W&N) brush markers to color the line drawings. Keep an eye on the big art supply websites and every once in a while you can catch a good deal on a set! For the computer paper drawing I used a #2 cool gray W&N marker to map out the shadows, then colored it in.
I liked the effect of doing it this way, but for some reason the W&N marker didn’t play nice with the other two brands. It created a strange edge, even after giving the first layer plenty of time to dry. I also noticed that the W&N markers don’t flow as well as the Prismacolor or Copics.
For the marker paper I used a lighter gray because I thought the other one was a little dark. As it turns out the W&N #1 cool gray was too light, but the effect was still nice.
When it came to the Yupo paper I had a decision to make between the lighter and the darker gray. Since the permanent, archival Micron smeared so much already, I figured the lighter gray would be better. Let’s be real, I had no delusions that the markers would blend on the Yupo paper. But I really wanted to see how this would work. Spoiler alert: it was a mess.
Not only did the colors not blend at all, but they picked up the permanent, archival Micron ink and smeared it all over! I wasn’t super surprised by this, since drawing on this stuff is kind of like drawing on plastic. The paper is not absorbent at all, so layering isn’t really an option.
Side note: the translucent version does give you the option of using both sides to add layers/colors/etc. Mab Graves does amazing work with Yupo paper and if you don’t know her, you do now. You’re welcome!
Yupo paper is pricey, but the good news is that you can play with it and wipe it pretty much clean if you don’t like the result. Obviously some media and colors will stain, but that just adds character, right? The flip side of that is if you want to preserve your masterpiece it will need to fixed properly – both to protect the work and to keep the paper from yellowing.
I’m super excited to keep playing around with Yupo paper. If there’s something you want me to try, let me know in the comments.
Thank you so much for reading! Happy New Year!
October has just flown by! After the past few weeks of doing Inktober and Drawlloween and staying (roughly) on track, I realized that I haven’t done anything with jewelry, painting, or the site. Sorry about that!
It also got me thinking. I’m really loving drawing again. Not that I ever didn’t love it, but I’m rediscovering all the “behind the scenes” things that happen in art that make the experience of creating so robust. It’s deciding on concepts, looking at reference images, quick sketches to see if something will work, and starting over again when it doesn’t. It’s all the things that happen before the final piece is even started.
I’ve also been thinking that I don’t miss the fluid art. There’s only so much time before and after work and in between family activities. Every day is a choice of what to make – if there’s even time (or energy) to make anything at all. For me, fluid art was a stepping stone to bring art back into my life. It was something I could just make without having to worry about it too much (plus I learned how to make videos, which was super fun!). Then I started working on an old painting again. That got me thinking of ways to revamp old pieces and ideas for starting new ones – so the “fluid art phase” did what it was supposed to do.
Now that my walls are covered in trippy paintings, I’m ready to move on. Of course, with Inktober I’m drawing every day again. So the natural progression seems to be to shift gears and focus more on that. I’m not going to make any more fluid art videos, but I do want to start recording my drawing and painting.
As for jewelry, I know I haven’t posted much about that here, but I’m going to keep going with that. I won’t be making any more Pebeo pieces, so I’m working on using up the Pebeo paint that I have left. For jewelry I’m going to focus on copper pipe necklaces and the “doogle” pins. There’s been enough experimenting and wasting supplies “in the name of science!” And it’s time to get the craft table under control. Seriously, it’s a mess. Time for some fall cleaning!
All of the Inktober stuff is coming as soon as the month is up! I feel like this year is miles better than last year, but we can talk about that in a few days when the pics go up. 🙂
But for now, thanks for reading! Until next time!
BTW, if you want to check out last year’s Inktober/Drawlloween fiasco, click here. 🙂