No sooner had I claimed the four drawings a week goal but I fell off that cliff. Tomorrow is the end of Inktober 2018, and while I may find more drawings appear at my fingertips, here are the three I’ve managed so far. None of these was inspired by a prompt. More they each came from a flash of inspiration. (Click the image to see a larger version.)

I keep toying with creating a steampunk costume for events, but I’m not much of a costumer and haven’t been since I used to make Halloween costumes as a kid. I can be pretty creative when working on something for someone else, but my own costumes just don’t inspire the same creativity. I had a thought to get around that by using this drawing challenge to sketch out a plan, starting from a pair of goggles. Umm, unless I plan to paste a false beard and mustache on, what came from my pen has little value as a costume…but I like it anyway.

When I was a kid, my grandmother challenged my sister and me to memorize a poem. Hers was longer as I was pretty little at the time. Honestly, I can’t remember if this is from my sister’s poem or mine, but one line stuck in my head: /Under a toadstool sat a wee elf/Out of the rain to shelter himself/. I looked it up, and the 1863 poem is slightly different and has a meaning I have no recollection of, so I’m guessing it’s from my sister’s poem, but here’s the illustration it inspired.

Finally, I wondered what to draw next, closed my eyes, and saw a straw thatched roof almost white with the reflected sun. I know that isn’t quite clear here, but that was the starting image. If I were better at drawing, perhaps I could translate the pictures in my head more clearly, but then the more detail required the quicker the image fades before I can put it to paper.

If you read the first Inktober 2018 post, you might remember part of this exercise was about learning to use my Bamboo Slate. I’ve certainly become more comfortable drawing with it. I’ve learned how to separate two consecutive drawings without needing to split them afterwards, how to split out an unintentional line, and how to keep the pad from slipping so half the drawing is codge to the rest. (Edited to clarify: though you draw the new elements in the same place on the paper, they are added to the digital version shifted with the paper.) I’ve also discovered that the mechanism to track the movements and record them is a bit unsophisticated, so shading with a light press ends up very dark, as you find with the leaf held over the elf’s head above.

Ultimately, it’s a good tool and useful for quick jots, but anyone attempting to create something spectacular would likely be frustrated at the differences between the drawing and the digital copy. Since the notebook paper I have has dots presumably to help guide you, even taking a picture of the original wouldn’t get what you’d intended. Still, for my uses, it’s perfectly reasonable and a lot easier than photographing or scanning the image afterwards. I’m considering continuing this practice at a much slower pace, to see what I come up with.