Keeping a Sketchbook - Drawing everyday & art challenges

Every new year or every so often when I make a list of goals, one of them is always to draw more. I'm sure many artists do this too and when people ask illustrators how to get better or how to find your style. The answer is - draw a lot! Create as much work as possible. Keeping a sketchbook is great practice. Scribble, make a mess, make mistakes, that's what they are for! Try not to get too caught up on creating that perfect drawing to post on Instagram. If it's for a challenge, post it anyway, at least you did a drawing today.

I created my own art challenge last November, see the prompt list here. I post most of my drawings on my Instagram and you can see my portfolio on my website.

Here are some of my recent sketchbook pages including some from the challenge.

Feel free to drop me a message if you have any questions.

A Character a Day Art Challenge

I never had enough time to do Inktober this year, so after pondering this idea for a while I have decided to create my own art challenge, which will be to draw a character a day for the whole month of November. I thought about creating this challenge for a while because I want to get better at character design such as people and animals. 

Guidelines: Create one character a day in any medium - ink, watercolour, pen, pastel, digital or it can even be a quick pencil sketch. Each character can be human, animal, mythical or alien. Post it on Instagram or Twitter using the hashtag #acharacteraday. 

If you want to join me in this art challenge you can make up your own fantasy creatures or you can follow my prompt list. Each character design can be your own interpretation, you could put your own spin on a griffin for example.

Anyone can join in, don't forget to use the hashtag #acharacteraday or #littleinkings and have fun :)

This is my official prompt list of ideas. I will be posting on Instagram and Twitter.

Arctic Fox

It's October and most people in the internet art world are doing inktober right now. I've kind of given up on it already due to being too busy but I will definitely try to do a few more ink illustrations before the month is over!

This illustration was drawn entirely using inks and it is now available on my TeePublic shop.

Halloween is Coming

Autumn is honestly my favourite time of year, although it is quite different living in the southern hemisphere, autumn comes in Easter. I still wanted to do an autumn and Halloween themed collage style illustration. Since I will be visiting home in Scotland in a few weeks, I will hopefully get to experience it (praying it doesn't rain too much).

I used ink and watercolour for these and played about with the layout in Photoshop. I like how it turned out, it was fun!

Anne with an e

I created this illustration a couple of months ago after watching the series 'Anne with an e'. The series is based on the book 'Anne of Green Gables'. I have only read some of the book but if you like light hearted period dramas set in the country with warm childhood vibes then I would really recommend it. I really enjoyed it. This illustration was quite quick, I drew Anne from how she was shown on the promo poster and coloured with watercolour, ink and digital. Just some fun fan art!

Scene from a story

It’s incredible how quickly I lose interest in my own illustrations. I go through phases of having a good flow going and feeling really inspired. Other times I finish an illustration and don’t even like it or I look back at my work a few weeks later and I can see mistakes or I look at it and think I could have don’t this bit better or that better.

I have been trying to do a series of illustrations in a children’s book style for a story I have in my head. When I sketched this character I was trying to go for a very cute, naive style. This is not my natural drawing style. My mind always wants to try and make objects or people look realistic. But I am trying to stray away from that and draw in a more loose childlike style.

For this illustration I was trying to mimic the style of the first character. I suppose I am inspired by my own childhood as I remember always loving wandering through the woods. I love old folklore and tales of trolls and fairies.

 

This is the first version. For this I used fine liners, watercolours and pencils. I’m not so keen on the colour scheme in this one, it just doesn’t look right. I like the way the grass turned out though. In the second version I decided to change the trees and add a bit more detail, which I think looks much better. But I’m glad I decided to have another go at it. I feel like the second version turned out better although I’m still not 100% happy with it.

At the moment my plan is to keep working on my water colour skills and sketch sketch sketch!

Warrior King

This illustration is probably the best one that sums up my current illustration style. I actually did the original sketch for this about a year ago on my lunch break in work. I got my inspiration for this from some photographs of people dressed up as warriors with helmets, swords and viking style clothing.

At the weekend we went up to Yarra Valley, done some wine tasting and ice cream tasting. yum!

Life in Melbourne so far

I have been living in Melbourne for just over a month now. I'm still looking for a place to rent as well as find an area I'd like to live in.

Me at Luna Park the other week. St Kilda beach is a really cool area for drinks, food and quirky shops.

Classic Flinders street station pic with the Eureka sky deck peeking over the top.

I went to the State Library of Victoria in the centre of Melbourne. Huge building, I sat in the main reading room. It was busy but very quiet. If someone was to cough it would echo forever.

Sun Theatre, Yarraville. We briefly wandered about the main street here, it was a nice little area.

Wander round Malvern - another area with the typical small quirky style shops you will find throughout Melbourne.

Lunch, including a Tim Tam milkshake which was ridiculous but amazing! I'm definitely going back here!

One of my recent book purchases - Anne of Green Gables. I've never read it before but I thought it would be a good book to read for inspiration for future illustrations.

 Been trying out a new style of drawing with ink and adding watercolour over the top. This was a first attempt, I think it worked out not bad.

Birds

This illustration was inspired by a song. Sort of. The song is called 'Waiting for Birds' and it is about waiting til the end of the night to get with someone you like, or waiting til the birds start singing.

So I came up with this. The song has violin in it and that is kind of how I came up with the strings attached to the heart. Originally I came up with a drawing that was just the heart with the strings being played with a bow. Then some birds pulling at the strings of the heart. This was just an experimental drawing that I liked and decided to go further with it. I quite like how it turned out. 

I used a fine liner pen to sketch it out, painted it with watercolours and then finished it in Photoshop.

Suzy Bishop

I love the film Moonrise Kingdom. I saw it for the first time recently and loved it. Directed by Wes Anderson, I very much enjoy the way his films look, they are so satisfying to watch with the attention to detail in every scene. Moonrise Kingdom is set on a fictional island called 'New Penzance'. It is a love story in which two out-casts run away aka Sam Shakowski and Suzy Bishop.

My sketch of Suzy with her binoculars, which she always carries with her. I sketched it out in pencil, then I drew it with a waterproof fineliner, then I obviously used watercolour paints.

My new little art space

I went to Ikea recently to get some furniture for my 'studio' which was basically a section of my spare room that had all of my art supplies and sketchbooks piled up against the wall. It now looks some what more like a little working space for me to draw, paint, listen to music, surf the web etc.

'Why do you always use binoculars?'  'It helps me see things closer. Even if they're not very far away. I pretend it's my magic power.'

Book Review - Tinder

If a book has a pretty cover, I'm pretty much sold. I do buy books if the story sounds good but this book by Sally Gardiner, I pretty much bought it because I loved the art work.

Tinder is a dark fantasy horror, haunting and mystifying at some parts, with a tragic ending. It was a very enjoyable story with dramatic twists, horrid characters and gruesome events. Death, despair and a bit of romance included.

The illustrations really brought the plot to life, I enjoyed flipping the pages to see the next drawing. They are all done in black and white with red being the only colour.

I wont give the story away and let you read it for yourself. Definitely worth splashing out the 9.99 that I paid for this.