Inktober 2018

For the first time, I participated this year in the annual Inktober challenge. Everyday for 31 days, we are challenged to draw a word listed on the official prompts provided by original Inktober creator, Jake Parker, in inks. It was quite a commitment to draw everyday and — having no time to do it on a daily basis — you could say I somewhat ‘cheated’ my way through it and instead of producing a drawing a day, I drew as much as I could during the P’Chum Ben holiday in October.

I produced 31 drawings in total, but you will find a couple of days missing some drawings because they’re just not post-worthy and were done in such a rush that I took no pride in them. You may see the full coverage of my work at the Drawing gallery in the menu above.

In any case, let me post a few of the said drawings here that I either enjoyed doing or really found challenging. Here they are:

Day 1 – Poisonous

For the 1st day of Inktober, which is “poisonous,” it was easy enough to look into the pivotal moment of Snow White’s poisoning. It was a subtle hint towards a bigger story, and I hope I achieved that by drawing just these two simple items in the frame.

Day 4 – Chicken

Day 4 is probably the most difficult to understand for those of you who are not familiar with the person in the drawing and his relation to the prompt. “The Chicken” is a title piece composed by bassist extraordinaire, Jaco Pastorius. That’s him in my drawing, based from that famous video of his playing this very piece. Take the time to listen to it. You can find it on Youtube. It may just make your day!

Day 7 – Exhausted

With the word “exhausted,” tiredness often comes to mind. But I did not want to illustrate that that all, knowing that everyone else on the planet had the exact same idea. I wanted to challenge myself to come up with a more ingenious way of representing the same word. After racking my brains in my finding its association to another word, a scene from Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax” came to mind. In the book, there was this particular moment when the very last tree was felled and everyone could hear it, marking the beginning of a long devastation of the land for years to come. Immediately the word ‘exhausted’ came to my mind — “exhausted natural resource” — which is a very timely issue particularly in Cambodia with its unmitigated deforestation and increase loss of natural resources to pave way for …malls.

Day 8 – Star

For those who are not familiar (and I apologize for failing to accurately capture the portrait of this person), I drew RuPaul for this day because he recently earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — and he’s a big star himself in the drag community.

Day 11 – Cruel

It took me a long time to find the best representation of Day 11’s ‘cruel.’ It’s not an easy word to illustrate, and I definitely wanted to stay away from any actual visualization of cruelty, say, the likes of those paintings at the S21 (Tuol Sleng) Genocidal Museum. Those were terribly gory and gruesome, and not at all something I’d like to even venture doing. After coming upon an old painting of mine from years back, I was incredibly overjoyed to finally have a good subject to draw without being utterly morbid — a handsome and fit matador gracefully instigating the already-maimed bull to attack his muleta, with a saber in the other hand hinting of awful things to come. The idea of cruelty, of course, is a political one — people from PETA do not only condone this, but they are adamant that this ‘tradition’ of cruelty ends for good. Personally, I do find it fascinating that there is a level of athleticism and ballet-like beauty within the movements of the matadors, but the act of poking the bull with a number of those sticks does disturb me a whole lot.  Honestly, this is probably my favorite drawing of the lot.

Day 12 – Whale

This illustration proved to be popular of my Inktober posts on Facebook. It is based on a famous book (and whale) written by Herman Melville.

Day 15 – Weak

I am going to repost the caption I wrote for this illustration:

Image reference is from “Band of Brothers,” when Easy Company was confronted with poor visibility in the Ardennes Forest due to heavy fog, and this placed them at the greatest disadvantage against the Nazi Germans and inflicted upon them (one of) the heaviest of casualties in WWII.

Weak, in this context, does not refer to their characters as soldiers nor does it question their capabilities as highly-trained paratroopers. Rather, I illustrate the aftermath of a shell bombing.

Day 16 – Angular

I just wanted to say that the lady I drew here with a very angular face is Tibetan model, Tsunaina. One thing I did omit though (rather, many) are her facial moles. I just didn’t feel confident enough to pull off drawing moles without turning them into mere black spots without form.

Day 17 – Swollen

For “swollen” (another prompt which proved very difficult to illustrate), I chose to draw a very swollen seal and the swell of the sea (a play with words), and for the very first time I tried using drawing inks to paint it. This meant I actually had to buy a bunch of drawing inks with varying shades of reds, yellows, and greens in order to pull this off. It was a truly magnificent experience and I immensely enjoyed the vibrancy and ease of use of inks in painting. Expect to see more of my works in this medium in the future.

Day 25 – Prickly

Day 25’s “Prickly” is a scene from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” which features the Red Queen demanding the beheading of a poor soldier caught ‘red-handed.’ This drawing is based from iconic “Alice in Wonderland” illustrator, John Tenniel’s drawings, and I just added the accused painter-soldier from another of his illustration for the book. I had a lot of fun doing this drawing because I learned a lot about Tenniel’s drawing style by studying his linear techniques and very clean ink strokes. Once again, I opted to go for the other meaning of a word, which in this case, is exactly what the Queen of Hearts is very much so.

Day 27 – Thunder

Finally, to finish off my post I bring you Thor, god of the Norse mythological thunder. It was my every intent not to draw Marvel’s very famous Thor character for this day and so, I had to recreate my own version of what Thor probably looks like. Being a fan of the hit TV series, “Vikings” I had a lot of material to resource from and so I knew he had to wear some fur, being royalty and god to a land where it’s always cold (or so I imagine). He is wearing a Viking tunic underneath his armor, and he dons a long beard with a pair of braids, and lets his hair long. He does not wear helmet with horns because if history taught me anything, it’s “Vikings didn’t wear them.”  Of course, he also carries in his hand Mjolnir, his mighty hammer …which has what looks like a Celtic knot to me. I am not sure how accurately Viking this symbolism is, but I based it from online illustrations of Thor’s hammer. This was painted with just a black drawing ink and the outlines were drawn with a brush pen.

There you have it, a few samples of my Inktober drawings, which I am proud to say I finished in time. I learned a lot through this experience and I had fun in really digging deep inside me for other ways of visualizing the same word that everyone else on earth is working on. It was also a real pleasure use (and try) a great number of different drawing media from technical pens, brush pens, calligraphy pens, and markers to drawing inks and painting with them.

It does inspire to keep drawing and I intend to do some from time to time. Nope, not everyday. Cannot.