Fen the Bonebreaker

new side blog for my arts and crafts

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Days 5-8: the theme was Seasons.

Day 9-12: Nocturnal Animals

Nibling #5's contributions

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Santa put a sketch-a-day book in my stocking (and the stockings of my sibling and niblings #3, 5, and 6), so I guess I'm doing that this year. Can't let Santa down. Nibling #5 is the artsy one and is my accountability partner and person I cheat off of when I'm uninspired.

Day one was cardinals. Day two was a woodland scene where I did a closeup of the snail she drew on her toadstool. Day three was a red salamander. Day 4 she cleverly extended her woodland scene into the next panel and added a tail onto her mushroom eating beaver. I also drew a beaver butt.

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#96 Cane Toad (Rhinella marina)

Despite the fact that I tweaked the pencils twice, this dude is neither broad nor warty enough. Ribbit.

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#95 Pastel Mushrooms

Needed a change from all this monochrome, so I dug out the oil pastels that someone gifted me last year and gave them a whirl. Definitely a medium that will take some practice to get nice results. I really should have worked on this at my desk instead of sitting in a recliner, because I couldn't get the pressure to get really thick layers.

I found it hard to switch to working in color and even harder to work without a outline. Even when I use watercolors, I mix them with pen. Color art without outlines is probably something I should work on.

The oil pastels didn't really catch me, but since I own them, I'll probably loop back to using them at some point. But I have so many other media to try first!

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#94 Sea Sponge

Like this one. :)

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#93 Squash and Pumpkin

The kids and I were experimenting with speed art, so I gave it a whirl. Quick sketchy sketch with technical pen and a pretty simple layering of inkwash on top. Not really a fan. ¯\(°_o)/¯

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#92 The Second Worst Way to Wake Up

So my Halloween movies this year were Alien & Aliens (it's been a stupid amount of time since i've seen the first one) and I did this over the next two days.

I originally titled it "The Worst Way to Wake Up", but the I woke up the morning of November 6th and checked the news and had to change the title. Some things just make you wish you lucky enough to be waking up in a Xenomorph nest. :(

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Inktober followup that I meant to write ten days ago... Fun month, very educational, and my hand seems to have fully recovered from it's sprain.

I liked learning to use the dip pen, and using inkwash (though that's still kind of unpredictable for me). Did NOT like relying on the pen for shading. My crosshatching skills are just not up to snuff and I keep getting frustrated. I think I also need to be bolder and use a deeper range of greys. I kept having to use multiple layers to build up darker tones that I should have been able to get in one go.

Biggest annoyance was actually the paper size. I've run into this problem before and the 5"x8" dimensions were seriously cramping me at time. I'm going to complete the remaining 17 pages of the notebook (with more ink work), but after that I'm going to have to source some 6"x9" or even 8"x10" sketchbooks.

Favorite pieces I did this month were baobab, crow, underground, beaver, rhinoceros, and catacombs. I felt a definite improvement over the course of the month, so yay!

I'm going to try to keep up doing art regularly, but probably not on a daily basis. Trying to keep that up was just fucking with me. So I'll aim for three to five illustrations a week. And maybe start up an actual sketchbook to do actual sketches and doodles in.

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Inktober #31 Catacombs

And done!

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Inktober #30 Violin

Following the official prompt list for the penultimate day! Definitely overworked it with the pen, but I feel like the scroll came out okay anyway.

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Inktober #29 Platypus

So one of my niblings drew a Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) for Inktober (although her picture started out as a blue whale... something, somewhere went dramatically wrong) and I thought that would be a great subject to draw.

Came out a little funky, but then he's a funky little dude.

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Inktober #28 Rhinoceros

Figured it was time to do another one of the official prompts. This one was from day 21, but I was too busy illustrating Bag End at the time to fill this.

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Inktober #27 Beaver

Every single time in my life that I've seen signs of beaver activity, I've thoroughly checked the area for an actual beaver (Castor canadensis). All to no avail.

Until this month.

I finally had a beaver encounter! It was an incredibly exciting 10 seconds and it made me disproportionately happy the rest of the day (my niblings were making fun of me).

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Inktober #26 Zest

And I am done with my alphabetical prompts! Now on to.... something. Hm. (¬_¬")

This picture reminded me of how much I loathe still life drawing. I smudged the lines pretty badly, and ended up shading the lemons with a much darker wash than planned in an attempt to cover it up.

It sorta worked?

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Inktober #25 Yellowstone

I've used Yellowstone as a prompt before, but at the time I had a hard time picking what to paint as there were so many wonderful vistas! So Yellowstone gets a second whirl around. (i really need to find a way to visit one of these years)

Canary Spring, Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA.

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Inktober #24 Xeric Shrubland

This was actually the first prompt I can up with when I decided to use alternative prompts for Inktober.

Me: Let'd do an alphabetical set of prompts!

Also Me: ****. X. **********.

Still Me: x... x... x.... XERIC SHRUBLAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mojave Desert, USA.

Need to edit this with a better picture.

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Inktober #23 Water

Water Bear!!!!!

Used a brush except for the claws. That one leg I messed up is driving me nuts.