Drawtober process days 1-4 (+high res) (Patreon)

Phew...thats a lot of pictures just for 4 finished inks! I've included a lot of my planning and initial sketches, I know it's easy to think people can summon ideas from nowhere, but often there's a heap of mess behind each piece :P.

On the big sketchbook page there's a little Red amongst the Sylvias and Jerrys, that was when I figured out how I wanted to ink the lines- which I started doing from piece 2 onwards. They're more sparing than the 1st piece, where I outline everything. I think putting the tone first helps a lot with this method, I can see what needs defining and what can hold it's own (Like the legs in piece 2 have no outline, which I quite like). This is basically how I make comic pages too XD I really struggle with lines first approaches.

I'm really hoping to get more confident with my sketchbook by doing this. I usually stiffen right up, and only draw very simple poses or portraits or studies. This has been so good so far, since I've drawn out a sequence how I would in a digital sketchbook. I think with traditional I need to just have a mess notebook on the side, or accept the chaotic pages for planning, where with digital you can just keep erasing, moving, or deleting things until you have the right pose. It feels like...more stressful and more like a Final Piece when the planning is a separate part of the sketch, but I'd absolutely wear through the paper with erasing otherwise!

For all of these I'm using carbon platinum ink in a pilot kakuna pen (the cartridge doesn't fit, heads up...I had to messily try and squirt it into the old cartridge XD), and windsor and newton ink for the wash. I like that the kakuna pen is mostly fixed width, it matches my digital sketching/painting brushes.