Slightly Off Center

One thing that doesn't rely on relative humidity, fortunately, is my Inktober drawing. I'm still setting aside 15 minutes after breakfast every morning to do a little drawing. It's a surprisingly refreshing way to start my creative day.

I've come to the end of the month, but once again have extra pages left over, so I'll be continuing until sometime in mid-November. Meanwhile, here's the rest of October.

It's ten days into October, and I'm keeping my drawing-a-day challenge.

Here are the first fruits of Inktober.

...for once.

Last week's book arts group meeting featured a demonstration on insetting a small piece of artwork into a book cover. Didn't have anything in particular I wanted to use, so I made up a little 2" square drawing, ink and colored pencil, to practice on. I wanted to actually use the resulting cover on a book, which meant I needed to also stitch up a text block, so I'd know how wide the spine needed to be. What could I use for pages?

How about drawing paper, for next fall's Inktober sketchbook?

Here she is, ready to go. I discovered that the faux-finished painter's kraft paper is both tough and flexible enough to burnish down into the inset, and I had a small scrap of paper batik, also on the painter's kraft, that made a nice spine. I managed to mount the cover board upside down, so what was meant to be an upper-right image is actually lower-left, but it's kinda growing on me.

And it mean's I'm not throwing together a sketchbook at midnight September 30!

Still continuing my daily drawing. There's something quietly centering about sitting with pen and colored pencils for 15 minutes every morning after breakfast. Though this morning, I dropped them all into my water mug when I finished, rather than the empty pencil cup next to it. Didn't notice until I sat down for lunch.

As in previous years, I have extra pages, so I'm continuing into November. 

Got my first week's drawings for Inktober/Octob6r. This my sixth year of the challenge, so I decided to mix things up a little. Digging through my art supplies this summer, I found an unopened box of colored pencils. So this year, I'm doing a drawing a day in color. No theme, as usual, just a mix of things I see around me and things I found interesting photos of online. As with previous years, some of these may end up on pottery. In particular, I've been needing to update my butterfly pattern for a bit, and I just got a commission for some Stellar's jays, so that one's good practice.

I should really just make a two-signature sketchbook for Inktober. That would give me 32 pages, enough for one page per day, plus a title page. I'm always concerned I'll mess up a page, though, and at least a couple of times, I've done two-page drawings, or multiple drawings for the same day, like when Denise took me to the Cascades Raptor Center for my birthday.

In any event, I'm glad I ponied up for a paid membership here at Dreamwidth, or I'd have blown completely past my photos quota. Here's the end of OctoVer 2023.

So apparently, November is just an impossible time for me to keep up on social media. I did manage to post the last two weeks of my 2022 Inktober challenge to Instagram, but never got them here. Fortunately, I never clear the photos file on my phone...

It's October--well, it's been October. Practically November, at this point. But I'm once again doing an October drawing challenge, my fifth. Hence the Roman numeral V on my title page.

Because I've hardly gotten out to go anywhere except Clay Fest and the studio, most of my drawings are from online pictures of birds and animals. Good practice, I suppose, for my pottery decorating. As before, I made my own sketchbook, this time using a faux-leather effect cover from a technique Denise learned last spring at Newport. It's actually brown kraft paper, crumpled and stained black on the back side, then colored with successive washes of acrylic on the front. The spine is an old silk tie converted to bookcloth that I picked up at a materials exchange some years back and wanted to put to use.

Here's week one and two:








More to come!

While I was in frantic production mode, I also managed to keep up with my October drawing challenge. Here's the next series, taking me through the end of the month. They've already been on my Instagram, but I'm catching up here. There's still fourteen days yet to post--I ran out of pages November 15--but they'll have to wait until after we're set up for Market.



You'll note I did actually use the mountain goat pattern in glazing the last batch. Sold two tall mugs right out of the kiln, too.

In other book news, this is my Exchange Book for our last book arts group meeting. The signature covers were gelli prints from a workshop we took several years ago. They weren't exciting as prints, but cut down and matched, made a really nice graphic statement. They're both pulled off the same plate, positive and negative, using buckeye leaves.

Trying to juggle making pots (firing pots, glazing pots) for my December firing, redoing ads for Clayfolk, making arrangements for power and lighting for Clayfolk (there won't be power drops to the individual booths, so I'm improvising. More anon), I've gotten behind in my scanning. Here's Novpenber week 2.