Daily sketch

Inktober 7: fan

| Caryn

INKTOBER 7: FAN

Another tough one to come up with this morning, but eventually went with the hand fan in a traditional fan dance. Fun to research a tad, fun to add to the map.

Also, I’ve been bemoaning how hard it is to keep scale accurate with daily additions; and then I spent some time scouring my map inspirations some more and realized that no one tries to get scale perfectly. It is not a picture. It’s a hand-drawn map. It’s quite common for people to be huge as they play a role in places, not perfect interaction. So relieving to realize. Still trying for close scale, but also shows that emphasis and placement is more important.👌

inktober 6: spirit

| Caryn

INKTOBER 6: SPIRIT

Was quite stumped this morning when I sat down with the prompt. Had to get up and do some house things for a bit to brainstorm out what I was going to do with it and the map. Quite happy with my forest spirits in the end!

Inktober 2: Suit

| Caryn

INKTOBER 2: SUIT

Get out the magnifying glass, and I may need glasses after this one. There are two suits of armor around that gate. And it was all incredibly fun, though not as successful as I would have liked at keeping those suits identifiable up against the wall.🤔

Inktober 1: Crystal

| Caryn

INKTOBER 1: CRYSTAL

The key to daily goals is keeping them tiny… right? This is such a fun personal project already. I dove into some research over the weekend about illustrated literary maps and wow, they are a thing! It was a bit difficult to pull myself out of research and start my own. And then I stayed up way too late unearthing this crystal city.✨

I have no idea how this will turn out, but I’m off to discover an imaginary world with my pen and can’t wait to see what it holds!

inktober 2021

| Caryn

Inktober has begun! Like many people, I cannot believe it is already October. With October comes a yearly renewed drive to attempt a month-long commitment like #Inktober. I came prepared this year and have come up with a simple, fun, enjoyable plan that so far I have successfully executed for 5 days. This bodes well, thus I am posting.

My big plan is to make an imaginary world map, something I have always wanted to do, but never tried. I started on an 8.5×11 sheet of paper and using the official Inktober prompts (swipe to see them), I will add a piece to the map somewhere. Some of the pieces are tiny, like already a couple are way too tiny, but they are totally there and they count, so maybe get a magnifying glass! I thought about making a big plan for the map itself, but honestly, half the fun is just adding to it each day and seeing what comes with the prompt and my daily creativity. It’s like a puzzle! Some days I will draw a lot, and some days I will just add a smidge. 5 days in and I love it so far. Approachable, unpredictable, intriguing, and finishable – which isn’t a word but feels like one that I need for daily projects. I’ve got other stuff in the mix of working, cause I am actually working every day thanks to in-person school! So other things will be posted but I’ll try to pop on for some inktobery updates now and then. Though I don’t plan to reveal the whole map until the end because I am mean like that, or smart perhaps. Hope you’ll follow along! Here we go…

ink warmups

| Caryn
Little Island detail

Getting ready for Inktober to start by warming up with some ink drawings.

Printer Matter, Inc. window
NYC building detail, observed from a playground