Topic: Inktober/Artober/whateveryoudigtober

tl;dr: did digital painting every two days for a month, selected results below

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Most of you have probably heard of Inktober. If not: Inktober is an online challenge seeking to help people improve their artistic skills and habits. The basic rule is one drawing a day during the 31 days of October, following a different given keyword as a theme each day. The prompt list changes every year.

I'd been following the trend for some years, thought it was really cool, and this year I decided to give it a shot. Problem is, I don't really do ink drawing, and was not that interested in committing to do that for a month. However, I've always wanted to improve in digital painting as a means to express ideas, and thought I could give it a try that way. Because the great thing about Inktober is that it gives you rules as a proposition, but in reality, there are no rules. It's just a trend and you can make anything you want with it. The core principle its original creator wanted for it was for artists to have a way to improve, find inspiration, and develop healthy habits.

So I made my own rules. Digital painting, a coherent artistic style, and one drawing every other day. I thought one entry a day would be too difficult for me to maintain, and I also wanted to be able to choose between two prompts, as some in the list didn't inspire me at all.

Long story short: it was an absolute delight, the learning curve was insane for me, and it's given me confidence in that particular field. Forcing myself to find inspiration quickly and efficiently felt like true creative development and I really think it's going to make a huge difference in my artistic life. I think the best thing about it is I actually expressed deeply personal stuff, in more or less abstract ways, which is 100% what my artistic endeavors are about.

I'm definitely doing it again in the future, and I highly recommend doing it for yourself. Whether you do a drawing a day or a week, whether it's a complicated or a simple one, whether you've drawn all your life or absolutely never tried it, whether you display it on your Instagram or on your fridge, it doesn't matter; the whole thing is just a love letter to Fuck Yeah Make Stuff. You can also do the same thing with photography, poetry, calligraphy, music, anything you want! The Internet is full of sub-trends (I chose Artober as mine, but kept the Inktober prompts) and the only limit is your imagination and what you want to work on.

Here are three entries I consider my best ones, but you can also see the rest on my Instagram as a permanent story ("Artober 21"). There you can really see the learning curve as I gradually found my style and tools.

Oh look! Too much text again! Who would have thought.

https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/043/218/292/large/sebastien-fraud-09-10-pressure-003-sq.jpg

Day 9 - Pressure


https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/043/218/300/large/sebastien-fraud-27-28-spark-003-sq.jpg

Day 27 - Spark


https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/043/218/295/large/sebastien-fraud-25-26-connect-003-sq.jpg

Day 26 - Connect

Last edited by Saniss (2021-11-17 12:50:45)

Sébastien Fraud
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Re: Inktober/Artober/whateveryoudigtober

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE







SPOILER Show
[requisite lowercase letters]

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Re: Inktober/Artober/whateveryoudigtober

All three are incredibly good — the first and third are most compelling, for some geographical-feeling reason, and I'm obsessed with the lightning in the second one.

I think the bottom one is my favorite, but all would look right hanging on the wall.

Great stuff.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Inktober/Artober/whateveryoudigtober

Abbie > I love you.

Teague > I love you.

Yeah I might get them printed to see how it looks on good paper.

I'm on the same overall feeling as you, first and third are my favourites, especially because they're representations of my relationship with mountains, and incidentally go well together as an attraction/repulsion diptych, which is a very strong aspect of said relationship.

Second one exists mainly because I couldn't see "spark" as a theme and not go for one of my most beloved aspects of nature - storms. It's not as much an abstract representation of an idea as the other two but I'm glad I did something with lightning. Bonus, the mountains being struck are heavily inspired by actual mountains I love in my home region, and this scene is basically the photograph I would love to make one day.

You have no idea how much I'm grateful for your responses. People generally have seemed to react well to this thing and I still feel like a impostor but at least I'm an impostor who's feeling good, and that's a step forward.

Sébastien Fraud
Instagram |Facebook

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Re: Inktober/Artober/whateveryoudigtober

https://i.imgur.com/4CXbOE8.jpg

This totally works.

These are great. I bloody love 'em. What's your technique?

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Re: Inktober/Artober/whateveryoudigtober

1) Seriously love the cover.

2) YES. WHAT'S YOUR TECHNIQUE. AS THE DAD-LAD SAID.

3) Sorry: 'Dad-Lad' rhymes, and so I wrote it. It's not fair. It's a stereotype.

4) It rhymessssssss. I'm sorry.

5) The War of the Ring is compelling; I'm not sure if it's the art doing it.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Inktober/Artober/whateveryoudigtober

That's incredibly rad, Owen.

I use charcoal and oil brushes in Photoshop, and a variety of cloud brushes. With some finer texture work I can achieve a decent oil painting feel. Then there's a general texture overlay that brings the paper grain and some grading, and a final sharpening effect to give everything a nice crisp look.

Not much more to it really. Photoshop's mixer brush really does well at mimicking real paintbrush behavior, and of course I use a pen tablet.

EDIT: I would add that lightning is more of a pencil type brush, and that several layers with different blending modes are a great help to shape light the way I want (e.g. overlay mode with soft light and dark brush strokes to highlight or tone down areas).

Last edited by Saniss (2021-11-18 10:40:47)

Sébastien Fraud
Instagram |Facebook

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