Good Enough is Enough

sketchbook: Peter Pauper Press, 8.25x11 in, hardbound (but perforated pages), 128 gsm
TLDR; 😡Would not buy again.

01 02
( 01-02 )

03 04
I was using this style of drawing to make a mood theme on my main journal, hence going to the extra effort of cropping out the background.

05
06
( 05-06 )

07 08
( 07-08 )

09 10
( 09-10 )

11 12
( 11-12 )

13 14 15

16

I figured out how to post unlisted videos to YouTube, so here's the whole thing:

(I did a much better job of holding the camera still this time, but I still struggle to turn pages. Why is turning pages so hard?)

Let me know if there's anything here you want to see a better picture of, but for the most part this book is just a lot of scribbles.

Do not watch if you are prone to motion sickness!!!!

This video is terrible and I apologize. I can't hold the camera still to save my life.

link to bad video of sketchbook 5

I'll probably try to post a few individual photos later because there really were a few things in here that I really liked.

Ugh, three versions of this and none of them are good. I would have been much better off just making up my mind (ha!) and picking a single design so I could spend more time doing it right.


One of the problems with these sketches is that I had this stubborn purist attitude that sketching anything out with pencil first was cheating. I felt Inktober had to be entirely freehand ink and I never did really get the hang of that brush pen so everything just looks sloppy. (The general idea was that the "angular" dragon and the "swollen" dragon were the same dragon before-and-after a hearty meal.)


I still own this bottle. I should try and draw it again and see if I can get the angles less wonky. For the most part, I like the look of this, but it's just slightly off.


I don't seem to have given enough thought to perspective on this one.


Playing around with ideas for the "broken" prompt. I thought a broken doll would be a cool idea, but I didn't follow through on it. You can see a tiny sketch of the one I decided to go with. At this scale, I don't think you can tell what it's supposed to be.


This was such a cool reference photo and I have no idea who the photographer was. (Found via a google image search and I don't remember if it wasn't identified at all or if I just failed to put the effort into looking.)


So there it is, 2018, my first and possibly last ever Inktober. The drawings done with the Pilot pen ended up being my favorites.

This is one of my favorite sketchbooks despite the fact that I don't think it was even intended as a sketchbook. I think it's supposed to be a journal maybe? I bought it in a Celtic-themed gift shop that didn't have any art supplies so it definitely had journal vibes at the time. And it was SO PRETTY that it was one of those things that just sat there and never got used because I didn't want to ruin it. (I don't save journals long term because I am inevitably overcome by the cringe so I knew if I wrote anything in it, I'd end up destroying it eventually.) In 2018, I finally decided to give Inktober a try after years of watching others talk about it. And I realized this was the perfect "sketchbook" to do it in. (This ended up being not only my first Inktober, but the only such challenge I have actually completed.

Here's the cover from different angles to try and convey the pretty shimmer of the embossed cover:



It even had beautiful endpaper.


You can see why it was so intimidating to make that first mark.



I desperately wanted to love this Pentel Pocket Brush Pen because I'd seen so many other artists gushing about how great it was. Every now and then I still dig it out and it does have the advantage of being very quick. If I want to loosely scribble something out, it goes much faster than those sketches where I get it into my head that I need to crosshatch every little detail with tiny lines. But ... I just never got the hang of it. I can't do anything neat and controlled with a brush so it's always sloppy (and in a way that is very much not deliberate so I can't even hide behind "it's just my style"). Oddly, I never really fell in love with the micron fineliners either. At any rate, this was mainly a lot of testing of new art supplies in anticipation of Inktober.


Trying out ideas for "star" and "spell" ahead of time.


Also experimented with ink and dip pens, but ended up mixing-and-matching a lot of different media. I love the look artists get when they specialize in a specific style and media and really master it and yet I can never make up my mind what I want to do so I'm mediocre in dozens of things instead of getting good at any one thing. I started out fully intending to have this be black-ink-only and then thought about black-and-purple, before very quickly surrendering to any and all colors. So day one of Inktober, I actually did TWO drawings just because I couldn't make up my mind.


So here's part of the thing I hate about these monthly drawing challenges and the thing I wish I had remembered before I decided to do one again in sketchbook 14. (I already hate, hate, hate sketchbook #14 and while there are reasons related to the sketchbook itself, another main reason is that I got it into my head that I was going to do one of these challenges and to "motivate" myself I pre-filled all the prompt names. I don't mean I made a list, I pre-wrote the NAMES of all the prompts on the pages in giant letters so those pages are kind of ruined if I don't draw something that at least slightly relates to the prompt. And then I was instantly unmotivated to so anything, so now it's almost a year later and I've only filled up a handful of pages.) Ahem ... here's the thing I hate about these monthly drawing challenges, you not only have to draw something every day, but there's this social pressure to be clever with the prompts. And I was all-in on this first attempt. For "Tranquil" I thought of the "Sea of Tranquility" on the moon and I was so proud of myself. But durking Inktober a gazillion other people are all drawing the same prompts, having the same "unique" ideas, and then executing the idea ten times better. I embrace the "don't compare yourself to other artists" advice, but it's hard to maintain that when a planet full of talented people are all doing roughly the same thing at the same time.


Another day of making extra work for myself because I couldn't decide between purple and black and wasn't happy with my first attempt. (I also started to regret that I couldn't stick to a theme, because I ended up doing a lot of dragons and it would have been cool if I could have thought up a way to incorporate dragons into all of the drawings, but ... hey, just glad I actually finished this at all.)




My favorite is of course just a nonsense doodle that I spent comparatively little time on.



I've always been weirdly fond of these faux-industrial doodles. I never have any idea what these are even supposed to be.



More art spam will follow, but I have errands to take care of now.

So there was this period in 2019 when I got obsessed with Rubik's Cubes. I could never do these when they were the trendy toy and in 2019, I got stubborn and decided I was going to look up the cheat instructions and memorize it. (Never would have figured this out on my own in a million years.)


I still have the 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube sitting on the coffee table and I can still solve it as long as I don't get distracted halfway through (which, y'know, happens fairly often).

I don't own the 4x4x4 Rubik's Cube anymore. It wasn't a smooth design and didn't turn easily and the labels were starting to peel up which made it scratchy in your hands. It would literally hurt my hands to play with for too long. (My boss gave it to me when he replaced it with a better one and I finally tossed it during the last move.) Someday I want to get another one.

These two are sort of self-portraits, but clearly not literally so. My sketchbooks always feel like they flow better when I stop viewing it as art and just view it as art therapy.


And apparently Good Omens was on my mind at the time as well.
I just decoded the message. It says: "I fucked up everything on this page. Everything." I was apparently having a bad day.

These are all Pilot pens, even the purple one, though I was disappointed that the purple and pink inks didn't work out as well as the black ink.

Here's the pen test to remind myself which ones work best. I'm normally all about bright colors, but for this particular effect I think the black and brown work best. I was totally in love with the caramel Pilot pen when I first got it, but I think the brown Staedtler has taken over that spot. (And the black Pilot pens will always be a classic.)

before & after adding water

Here's the squiggle this one is based on:


(You can also see it mirrored in the butterfly again if you squint.)



The drawing was with a pilot pen and the color is mostly watercolor, but I went over the purple with a Posca pen because the watercolor wasn't purple enough to suit me.

In case you are wondering about the weird random shape. This is on the backside of this page and the Sharpie bled through. (I picked this pose specifically to fit something inside that outline so the page wouldn't go to waste.)

Still haven't quite figured out what to do with the pastel ink. The lack of contrast is very limiting.



As much as I love color, I always gravitate back to plain black ink because of the high contrast. Also the black ink bleeds the strongest when I go for a watercolor effect.

The "caramel" is definitely shaping up to be a strong second-favorite. I don't think I've posted a before-and-after in awhile. The only difference between these the two following drawings is the application of water with a brush.




I'm thinking of posting that last one to drawesome as I think it's a valid fit for the "negative space" prompt and a close-enough fit for the "scribble art" prompt. (I'm still not sure I've achieved the proper spirit of that prompt as I'm not really using the scribbles as a shading effect and I think the goal is crosshatching-but-loopy instead of just messy chaos... but "messy chaos" is the closest thing I have to a style so... yeah.) Actually, now that I'm staring at it, I think there's room for more shadowy ghouls in the background, so I might not be done with this one yet.