Inktober 2019 - Part 1

I was super excited about "Inktober" this year. It is a whole global event where artists are given idea prompts against which they create an "ink" drawing. It is a fun activity that requires daily creativity and effort. It truly pushes you as an artist and challenges your dedication to the profession. As an emerging artist, this activity is a call out to see if you have the stamina for daily creativity and ability to produce. For established artists, they have to balance this "not-for-profit" activity against their other commissions and activities. Nevertheless, it is great to see establish artists do this challenge and observe their creativity.

Inktober is half-way done. As for myself, it has been a bit difficult due to traveling for work, Canadian Thanksgiving, watching sports, and spending time with the family. So I am a bit behind, but I have been able to do 8 of the 15 drawings. And will finish all 31 (even it if spills into November). This will create an interesting portfolio for myself and really see my own development in a short interval.

My Inktober theme is "ballerinas." It is a theme in my artwork that started in January as I was trying to practice the human form as well as cloth material drawing. It is fantastic to draw dancers because of their fantastic body positions including hands, feet and head. I have been searching for more reference material that also either shows the ballerinas wearing interesting clothes, doing interesting positions, or the photography adds something extra to the shot. It has been very interesting to research and stumble across some very talented dancers and photographers.

The three pieces that I have attached to this blog are my most recent pieces and most unique. So I wanted to spend some time talking about the genesis and results of each.

"Swing" - Inktober Day 9

This prompt can either make you think of an actual swing or the verb swing. The verb likely provides more interesting creative content as compared to the object. I decided to stick with the object and try to identify a picture of a ballerina whom I could put on a swing in an interesting position. Instead, I stumbled across this picture of a screaming ballerina. The photo had tremendous emotional energy being released by the ballerina that just resonated with me. I thought, "Wouldn't it be interesting to have this woman sit below a swing?"

I began to sketch her sitting and realized that I couldn't quite reproduce her scream on such small scale. Her face looked more in anguish than scream when I drew it. Furthermore, it felt off. But then the pain it showed reminded me of Derek Hess's artwork, which made me want to do her in his style. His style is very hard to mimic as it requires very specific and measured but chaotic lines. Nevertheless, it felt the right technique to further expand that emotion and add a sense of chaos to the ballerina.

Her dress and the swing though were done using the standard lines and flows without the chaos. I wanted to represent the fact that many times it is us who is in chaos and not the world and inanimate objects around us. I think the swing which is a positive representation of childhood, can also conjure feelings of deep emotional pain and suffering for those who had traumatic childhood/adulthood.

An empty swing reminds us of something missing. Swings should have a child or adult in it. There is always that image in post-apocalyptic worlds where there is an empty swing being blown in the wind. When looking at the image, you may wonder why the ballerina is not in the swing. You may wonder what has caused to scream in agony beneath it. You may wonder what has happened to her to cause such pain ...

"Fragile" - Inktober Day 8

Fragile is an adjective to describe inanimate or animate objects. The idea for the drawing came immediately - I just needed a picture of a ballerina looking vulnerable and fragile. When I found her, it was perfect. She looked pensive, fragile, vulnerable. Her body language of pulling close into a cocoon with her head bowed down looking at the ground is the ultimate defensive position.

Drawing her surrounded by a giant white space really put her in isolation. Finding the right position in the white space was important, and the top right felt good. However, something was still missing. The image of blood dripping from an "unknown wound" would further add to her fragility and explain her defensive position.

When I finished the outline, I knew that I could not just finish off with cross-hatching because her shadows were not right, which is why I colored her. The blood of course needed to be colored red anyway, but this way it gave her more life. (Definitely will need to practice shading with markers due to their poor ability to blend).

Once she was done, there was this moment of "whoah!" because she reminded me of this other painting that I did 10 years ago of a similar woman sitting and bleeding. How interesting that after all this time passed that the image of vulnerability was captured again with the exact same subject matter. I have not yet fully unraveled what this means from a development and mental perspective. Maybe it's like other famous artists who have specific motifs they keep going back to or that keep recurring in their paintings.

"Inner Beauty" - Inktober Day 7 - Enchanted

I love fantasy. Anything with knights, fairies, magic, dragons, and so forth is awesome. The term "enchantment" lies in this arena, and is always associated with the concept of magic. In the real-world, "enchanted" can be a synonym for beauty, e.g. she looks enchanting, the night is enchanted - well, beauty that puts you under a spell, so I guess kind of like magic. This is why this prompt had me picture a dancer being transformed. The most magical enchantment is the frog prince or princess enchantment.

What I really like about this piece is actually the fact that the reference ballerina image did use smoke but only as a cool photography effect ... so taking it to one level deeper was super easy. The image already had 90% in the photo, and I just took it one level deeper. But I think that going one level deeper is what art is about. It's about standing on the shoulders of others and leveraging your own creativity to take a subject where you want it to go.

One of the things that I have been realizing recently is the need for something deeper in artwork. A lot of photography and painting is about technique, reproduction, and simply capturing something "beautiful." But then there are million pictures of subject matter: nature, of ballerinas posing, emotions, etc. But as Jerry Saltz asks, "what is the content below the subject matter?" This has made me think for each piece of art - what is that one more message that needs to come out from the content of the artwork.

So in this piece the subject matter is a woman transforming from or into a frog (I will leave that up to you). The content in this case, is the following: "No matter how we transform our exterior, what truly matters is our inner self." The ballerina is a princess no matter if she's green or pink. But it makes you wonder as does all enchantment spells, what is the cause of her transformation. In fantasy it's probably a wicked witch, but in reality where we transform between our beautiful and ugly exteriors there is a host of reasons ...