The Fly

Inktober Challenge, Day 29, 11th Drawing. Halloween is a perfect excuse to draw something creepy!

Sweet Somethings

Inktober Challenge, Day 28, 10th Drawing. My new Strathmore toned mixed media paper arrived today, along with a new white gel pen. Love my new toys!

Mugwump

Inktober Challenge, Day 23. Spent a little more time on this sketch/painting of Billie.

Turning

Inktober Challenge, Day 17. A secondary challenge I set for myself today was to stay away from local color and play with tone. Had to sneak a little color in at the end tho.

All the Leaves Are (Not) Brown

Inktober Challenge, Day 14.

Another leaf that I found yesterday. Although it's a little the worse for wear today, it is still beautiful to me.

Fall

Inktober Challenge, Day 13. The neighbors must have thought I was nuts, sorting through their leaves for the "perfect" one, but I found it! :)

Baby of the Family

Inktober Challenge, Day 12. Our little Billie, who won't be little for long. She's just 13 weeks now and as I sketched her, I took note of what will be some impressive musculature. She's a pit bull and already bigger than her fully grown brother, a Boston Terrier.

On the Maple Trail

Inktober Challenge, Day 9. Had a wonderful time with my kids and granddoggies at Hoyt Arboreturm today. I haven't done a lot of plein air drawing or painting since I moved back to the mainland, so it was a treat to sit on a rock in the sun on this beautiful, sunny fall day with my favorite ink pen and sketchbook. A truly perfect day.

Plan Ahe...

Inktober Challenge, Day 7. I took a workshop many years ago with watercolor legend Irving Shapiro, who taught "Fail to plan, or plan to fail." It's so important, yet I so often just plunge in, like I did today. Although you may not notice at first glance, these are my two grandoggies battling over a stuffed toy. I ran out of page before Billie showed up. Oh well, next time. 

Grasshopper

Inktober Challenge, Day 3. This little guy was camped out on a nearby chair while the cat and I enjoyed the early fall sunshine on the patio this afternoon. The photo I snapped was pretty poor quality so I did a lot of guessing. I just googled it and see that I missed his mouth parts completely. Woops. Left off an antenna too. Then I ran out of ink. Done.

Pensive Cowboy

Inktober Challenge, day 2. Cringing inwardly as I post this, but I do want to post whatever daily sketch I come up with on this challenge, good bad or ugly. A perfect sketch isn’t really the point. So, here goes. On this day, we awoke to the gut wrenching news that a deranged shooter murdered 59 people in Las Vegas and injured another 527. I wanted my drawing to reflect the somberness of the day. The attitude in this old cowboy speaks of reflection and heavy thoughts to me.

Birthday Pirate

Today is day 1 of the Inktober Challenge, which I'll try to do, but no promises to myself or anyone else. It coincides with my brother's birthday and since I had dug out a picture of him from small kid time to tease him on Facebook, I decided to try a quick sketch of it. Such a goofball, sitting on our old kitchen counter in his homemade pirate regalia. The skull and crossbones flag and the torn, raggedy jeans were a nice touch but I really love the mustache and sideburn, penciled in with Mom's eyebrow pencil. He has a grandchild about this age now. Hard to believe how quickly the years have passed. He may be a grampa, but he's still the same ol' goofball.