Is it InkTober yet?

In 2009, Illustrator Jake Parker set out on a mission to refine his inking skills and develop positive drawing habits. For the month of October, Jake challenged himself to create a drawing every day using only ink-based products. This has grown to become a worldwide phenomenon. Follow the link for more information. 

I'm doing this for the third year in a row this year.
Anyone can do InkTober, just pick up a pen and start drawing.

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The Official 2016 Inktober Prompt List:

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Inktober rules:

1) Make a drawing in ink (you can do a pencil under-drawing if you want).

2) Post it online

3) Hashtag it with #inktober and #inktober2016

4) Repeat

Note: you can do it daily, or go the half-marathon route and post every other day, or just do the 5K and post once a week. What ever you decide, just be consistent with it. INKtober is about growing and improving and forming positive habits, so the more you’re consistent the better.

That's it! Now go make something beautiful.

When does Inktober End?

 

Thirty days hath September,

April, June, and November.

All the rest have thirty-one,

Except for February alone,

Which hath but twenty-eight days clear,

And twenty-nine in each leap year.

And then, of course, there is Inktober

With as many as it takes me 'till it's over!

So, obviously, I am still catching up on random days I missed for Inktober 2016. Never fear! I am determined to finish up all 31 "daily" prompts. Procrastinators, soldier on!
Here's a tree for Day 14.

So here's one for Day 21 and Day 22, from the prompt for Big and Little. I thought it would be fun to draw a big baby elephant and a small adult mouse.

And then, here's another for the prompt "One Dozen" conveniently provided by my butterfly collection. These are all supposed to be Pacific NW varieties. I usually do all my InkTober sketches in black and white, but it just seemed wrong to rob these butterflies of their color. Besides, by Day 24, I am absolutely DYING for color!

TA DA! Finished 31 drawings, ink and watercolor in 31 Days, Inktober 2017

So, initially, I thought I would interpret "Mask", the prompt for the last day of Inktober, with a drawing of my masking fluid collection. I left it too late on Oct. 31 to post before midnight, so the pressure was off.

Life continued to interrupt until after having visited the Seattle Art Museum and the Andrew Wyeth Retrospective Exhibit; I glanced over at the light on this old abandoned house this afternoon. Filtered through my recent experience of Wyeth's metaphor, it seemed as though the house was looking out through mask-like windows at the world passing it by. In a way, the exterior of a house masks from the outside world the lives that are lived inside. Sometimes, we get a glimpse through the windows, but in this case all their secrets have disappeared along with those who formerly lived here.

Mask-Day 31

Inktober Days 24-31. See my Instagram feed for "United"-Day 29

Ship, Squeak, Climb, Fall

I couldn't resist giving an Acme Sketch Kit to the sketcher out on the precipice. :)

I love the soft, filtered light that comes through the pleated fabric blinds in our bedroom.

From my reading chair. Day 24. Coziest, most comfortable sketching spot yet!

And that's a wrap until next Inktober! Thanks for the inspiration, Jake!

Having fun with Inktober

This being the first week of Inktober, I thought I would offer a few more bits of encouragement to my students and sketching friends. It's not too late to join in! Catch up and keep going!

If you feel too much stress committing to a daily sketch for 31 days (it's still only one day at a time!) how about committing to once a week? or every Saturday and Sunday (that would be 10 for the month)?

Jake Parker, the founder of the Inktober Initiative, has some good suggestions and all sorts of helpful pages on pens, ink, how to draw. He says:

"Note: you can do it daily, or go the half-marathon route and post every other day, or just do the 5K and post once a week. What ever you decide, just be consistent with it. INKtober is about growing and improving and forming positive habits, so the more you’re consistent the better."--Jake Parker

Here's my sketchbook with Days 4, 5, & 6 for 2015. I upload each day on my Instagram

One way that I'm pretty sure will get you started is to buy a new pen/ink/sketchbook. You know you want to play with it! Ready? Set? GO!

Inktober Sketchbook Spread

3 more days of "Inktober"

We've returned from attending a family wedding in California recently. I wasn't sure how I could do it, but I managed to keep up my daily ink drawings for Inktober* while we were away. Here's a page from three days.

1. An early morning view from our hotel window.

2. A bottle of Scotch from our son-in-law's collection.

3. The strawberry jam that our daughter made. We brought home two jars. Should have sneaked a few more into the suitcase....it's scrumptious!

*Counting down from today, there are three days left and I will have completed 31 ink drawings in 31 days of Inktober!

A House Made of Wood

Inktober 13, 2015--A House Made of Wood

I'm on Day 13 and the second in a series I'm doing for Inktober this week. Yesterday I sketched a "house made of straw". In my quest for something a bit different while still qualifying as a "house made of wood", the driftwood structures that emerge on the beaches here in the Pacific NW came to mind.

I have taken photos whenever I encounter them, but my goal for today was to do this Inktober sketch on location. I spent an afternoon prowling along Marine Drive near where I live, but all the beaches I wanted to visit were private or on tribal land and not open to me. So I ended up at Livingston Beach on Camano Island. (The teepee style driftwood structure in the upper left section of this photo collage was also on the beach where I was today, but it was on private property.)


I wanted to wait for a sun break at the end of my sketch so that I could catch some dramatic shadows. But the tide was coming in so I had to be satisfied with the light I was given. (Progress shot lower right.)

Can you guess what the third subject will be in this mini-series?

Inktober in Snohomish

I spent the morning with Seattle Urban Sketchers at Craven Farms in Snohomish. Right there at the main gate was a great spot to make my Inktober 18 drawing.

Each gate post along the exits and entrances to the farm has a distinctive finial made of metal.

Everyone was already in the main farmyard, but rain was expected at any time, so I wanted to be sure to capture this before any drops fell. My water soluble ink would smudge and smear if it got rained on, and not in a good way.

Inktober finished for the day. Now I'm off to join the others in the farmyard for more sketching.

inktober 2019, Day 22-31

Dark, coat, ride

I wanted to play with three values: dark, medium and light. For dark, I have Noodlers ink “Dark Matter”. The eggplant is often darkest in a still life, but this time it’s the middle value with the lemon being lighter.

Rolling on a second coat of paint.

Toys R Us used to carry this vintage wooden Radio Flyer Scooter but the lettering was more like children’s printing.

Injured, Catch, Ripe

I just had to draw one of the fishmongers at Pike Place Market catching a “flying” fish.

I don’t know about you but I have the hardest time judging the right time to open an avocado.

Yay! Finished!

My personal time has been very limited this month. Although I knew that I would probably have to play a game of catch up this time and post late for much of this year’s Inktober, I love the challenge of daily sketching and the way Inktober generates involvement around the world. How could I resist? So here I am posting my last six drawings with one page left at the back of my sketchbook.

Thanks again, Jake, for another set of inspirational prompts.

Inktober 2015

Whoa! Almost forgot! Today is Day 1 of Inktober 2015. I'm going for the marathon-a drawing a day for the entire month of October. I enjoyed this so much last year that I want to do it again.

What's Inktober, you ask?  Follow the link and scroll down for the very lenient rules and an illustrated list of ink pens for your drawings and sketches. Come on, it's going to be fun!

A Special Day to Catch Up

After a super busy week or two on our own projects, my husband and I took the day off to catch up......with each other and for me to catch up with my Inktober project. We took advantage of the beautiful autumn weather drive up to Anacortes.

The prompt for the 29th was "United". Since I was teaching a workshop yesterday, I took today's opportunity to "unite" all my sketching tools in a single sketch. I thought the idea of a ferry crossing that unites the mainland to Guemes Island was a nice little extra touch on the theme.

The quietude, time to listen to the waves, seagulls and wind soughing through the grasses......what a restorative time we had. AND I'm all caught up until the last day of Inktober tomorrow!

As I placed the rose hips I "Found" on the weathered picnic table, I also found that their round shapes were repeated in the round knothole and bolts. Inktober, Day 30, "Found"

Catching the Leaves as they Fall

I pulled over for a tree today. I needed my Inktober Day 16 drawing and I caught a glimpse of it in the rear view mirror as I was driving home from my watercolor class in Kirkland. So I parked and stood on the sidewalk across the street from my car to sketch.

Market Street is quite dangerous for pedestrians, so the city has provided crossing flags for you as you prepare to use the crosswalk. Add that plus back lighting, no pockets, no chair, no color and leaves falling as you paint them and you've got a pretty thrilling 10 minute Inktober sketch. *James Bond music playing in the background.*

Inktober, Day 16--Lamy Pen, Waterbrush, Bee Sketchbook

Catching up with Posting Inktober, Days 10-14

Inktober Day 10-Gigantic (See my Instagram for caption)

Inktober Day 11-Run, that's what you do if you see this! My parents had a pair of geese that terrified our 4 year old son.

Day 12 - Shattered  (Condition of the cell phone and the owner who just realized the damage)
Day 13 - Teeming (The coral reef is teeming with life. May it ever be so.)
Day 14 - Fierce (Fang toothed Moray eels are truly fierce...the way they look, their fangs and the fact that they anchor themselves in the reef, latch on to their victim and don't let go!)

For high resolution photos of these and other work not shown here, please visit my Flickr photostream.

It’s Inktober-Are you In?

Every year, people from around the world make a promise to themselves that they will work to improve their daily drawing practice during the month of October. They make an ink drawing each day and then they share the results on social media with the tag #inktober and #inktober2018.

I'll usually be posting my daily ink drawings on Flickr and Instagram. Go to https://linktr.ee/michelecooperart and select the link you want.


How about it? Are you in? Here’s where to get more information if you’ve never done this before.

For those who want the official daily prompts, here’s this year’s list.

In honor of the first day of Inktober 2018, I sat down at my drafting table in the studio this morning and drew a collection of my watercolor tubes, pans and pencils. All those in this photo are considered toxic, which fits the prompt for the day, "Poisonous".

Oct 1, 2018--Prompt is "Poisonous"

The pigments used in all media, watercolor, colored pencil, oil, acrylic, etc. may contain toxic materials. Most, but not all, of the toxicity issues are associated with heavy, or toxic, metals such as copper, cobalt, cadmium, lead. Caroline Roberts has written a comprehensive article about toxicity in artists' pigments here.

These are some of Caroline's suggestions on how to handle your materials safely:
 How to handle toxic paints safely

1. Do not use the same containers for paints that you do for food or drink. Well, duh, but thought I'd put it in anyway.
2. Do not put paint brushes in your mouth! Use a brush holder or a piece of kitchen towel.
3. Wash hands thoroughly after each painting session.
4. Even better, wear latex gloves whilst painting, or at least whilst using the toxic pigments. I hate wearing gloves but after researching this topic I will be wearing them. Simple as that.
5. Wear a dust mask if you handle pigment powders. Make sure it's the right one and keep it clean!
6. Do not have food in your studio and use covered drinks containers.
7. Since we don't want heavy metals in our rivers either, wipe up paints with kitchen towel and dispose of in the trash, not down the drain.
8. If you sand your paints at all (as an acrylic painter, yes I do) then wear a respiratory mask. Keeping the paint surface damp as you sand also keeps the dust down.

Author: Caroline Roberts

Inktober Big vs Little

You know me, I always like a little bit of a twist when I interpret the prompts for Inktober.

How about a baby elephant for the prompt "big" and an adult mouse for the prompt "little"!?
Inktober Day 21 and 22. 

Inktober 2017, Day 19-22

For some reason, I've been inspired lately by animals to represent the official Inktober prompts.

Day 20 - Deep (There are several pods of Orca here who swim the deep channels up the coast to the Canadian Pacific)

Day 21 - Furious (I have no idea why he is so upset, but it's hard to take infuriated squirrels seriously)

Day 22 - Trail (Ewwwww. We have snails AND slugs leaving lots of trails in this rainy season.)

Day 19- Cloud (You can hear the geese flying south above the clouds)

Although I am surrounded by glorious autumn color, it is still immensely satisfying to draw something with ink every day. Thanks, Jake Parker, for the inspiration!

Inktober Day 6 - Hidden, a Live Periscope Demo

In case you wanted to see a demonstration of how I do my Inktober sketches, I did a live broadcast
on periscope.tv/michelecoopart this afternoon. If you missed it, you can still see the replay.

There's a birdbath in a hidden corner of my garden. A favorite bathing spot for birds.

Inktober starts tomorrow!

 Every year, people from around the world make a promise to themselves that they will work to improve their daily drawing practice during the month of October. They make an ink drawing each day and then this year they share the results on social media with the tag #inktober and #inktober2023.

I'll usually be posting my daily ink drawings on Facebook and Instagram. Now and then I will make a short YouTube video of my daily drawing.


How about it? Are you in? Here’s where to get more information if you’ve never done this before.

I post my art on various social media platforms.

Go to https://linktr.ee/michelecooperart and select the link you want. 

Windows, Looking from the Inside Out

At the beginning of the month, the weather was as lovely as fall can get and I drew windows from the outside looking in. Now at the end of October, it is windy and raining in earnest. I decided to draw the last three days of Inktober from the inside looking out of windows.

One day to go for my Inktober challenge!

I drew this one from inside the gallery where I teach my Thursday watercolor classes. Then I went out to get a photo from the street side. Mark A. Ellinger's blown glass is too beautiful to leave in black and white.

All 31 of my Inktober 2015 sketches

After enduring a rough nine days with the cough, cold, fever yuck that's been going around, I finally feel like scanning all my Inktober 2015 sketches and posting the collection. (Tap or click to zoom)

Bee Super Deluxe 6x12"sketchbook, Lamy pen, watersoluble ink & Aquash water brush.

My faithful Lamy fountain pen lasted until the very end. In fact, I think I could possibly do one more sketch with what's left in the cartridge. Wouldn't want to waste any ink now, would we?

Fun with Leaves

I gave my demo as a door prize

I had a great time with brand new watercolor students today. It's Day 1 of my two day Introduction to Watercolor Workshop.

One of the lessons was practicing several color mixing and watercolor techniques while painting leaves. During lunch we picked up leaves outside and then came in to have some fun.

Here's what they did! Aren't they amazing students! Thanks, Kate K, for the photo!

After everyone left, I made my final Inktober sketch while cleaning up the classroom for tomorrow.

Inktober Day 31-Finished! Yay!