inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 15: legend.
as you probably noticed i’m behind. and skipping around.
inspiration for the giant book that link consults is the lindsfarne bible, which i’d never heard of before doing the research for this strip.
this is the first day this year that i used a wash.
i got lazy and tired this strip. it shows in the final two panels
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 12: dragon
made some changes to the way i worked on today’s inktober and it really helped.
the final piece looks more like i imagined.
here’s how it went down. (if you find this sort of thing just mindnumbingly boring, here’s the color version, colored digitally, of today’s piece
here is the initial sketch
then i hunted down a bunch of reference of alex honnold climbing el capitan
i didn’t really use any one image in particular, but it helped me refine my early sketches
for the dragon’s pose i just did an image search for sleeping dogs.
all of that reference helped me refine the drawing and make it more convincing…
i think the sketch, done digitally, has a lot more energy than the final inks.
the biggest change to my work came in the next step.
i haven’t been happy with my inking at all, this inktober, so i decided to draw bigger. i’ve been watching a lot of cartoonist kayfabe lately and somewhere in there ed piskor said ‘pencil small and ink big.’
i’ve been drawing each panel at 4 x 4 inches all inktober. last night i decided to go bigger.
i resized the panels to be 5 x 5 inch and worked on 11 x 14 inch bristol instead of 9 x 12 inch bristol
inking at the larger size made all the difference for me.
i was able to vary the line weight more than in every previous inktober. it took way longer to work, but it was worth it.
it felt like a breakthrough.
now i just have to do it again tonight…
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 11: snow
i’m pulling a swerve and giving day 10 a miss because i have an idea for pattern that i need a little more time on.
so here’s today’s:
it works a lot better in color
the way i drew these snowflakes makes them look like potato chips, don’t you think? maybe i’m just hungry
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 9: swing
(i know it’s the 10th. i’m behind.)
i also did a digital color version
lately i’ve been doing the sketch digitally, and inking over that
here’s the sketch
my sketches are better than my inks, but i guess that’s the whole point of inktober, right?
i did splash some watercolors on the page
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 8: frail
view the color version, where color reveals a little more information about one of our characters…
forgot to ink in her boots, and squandered link’s pose in panel 2, but this effort felt much stronger than day 7’s
the main thing i need to remember when working is just to slow down. all of the pressure is imagined…
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 7: enchanted
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 6: husky
as i continue to struggle with the drawing of day 5: build, i’m moving on to day 6. only a day late.
for all of you inktober purists out there, here’s today’s strip in glorious black and white
if you’d like to see the comic in majestic color, please click here
i think the gag is solid, but man, panel 3 was a lost oppotunity
i should have pushed the pose more
(hangs head in shame)
(shuffles solemnly back to the drawing table)
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 4: freeze
can you spot what link is missing in panel 3? seems like i forget to draw something every day.
i didn’t have any ideas going in to fit the the prompt, but i read about the freezors, and once i started getting the pencil moving the gag came to me
i’m a little more satisfied with the gestures today
i also realized i’ve been casting my little guy as link this whole time
i didn’t love link’s poses in yesterday’s comic, so today i tried to push them a little bit more – make them more natural
here is today’s comic with a little color
even more importantly, when posting my comic to instagram yesterday, i discovered that linktober was already a thing!
you can follow linktober on instagram or visit them at their website
linktober continues
jake parker’s inktober 2019 official prompt: mindless
penciled this piece 2 days ago
felt less than confident about it
inked it late last night after my soccer game
hated it. told myself i’m going to throw it out in the morning
in the morning i looked at it again and accepted it. (after adding a lot of correction fluid)
added watercolors. felt better about it
but if the original is too pricey, you can check out the cleaned up, digitally colored version where i remembered to color link’s hair pink (WHY IS LINK’S HAIR PINK IN ‘LINK TO THE PAST’?)
jake parker’s inktober 2019 is here!
and i’m pretty excited because i’m adding a few wrinkles to make the challenge of doing an inked drawing every day even more challenging for me
here’s the deal, coming at you in 4 parts:
if you’ve been following the blog the past few days, you’ll have noted that i’ve been playing the super nintendo game, ‘link to the past’ for a few minutes before bed
i decided that this year my inktober theme would be zelda, so that i could count playing video games as research:)
once again, i’m using jake parker’s official prompt list as my jumping off point. this time in the world of zelda. Day 1 is ‘ring.’
to further raise the stakes in 2019, i’ve decided to do a 4 panel inked comic every day
and to raise the stakes even further i’ve decided to clean the comics up digitally, add a little color, and post them so you can read them straight through.
i’m calling this year’s legend of zelda themed inktober: Linktober
I’ll be selling the original strips in the store. They’re done on 9 inch x 12 inch bristol board.
Free inkstains with every drawing.
And if that’s not enough inktobering for you, feel free to visitinktobers of years past.
old snake from metal gear solid 4
eating some watermelon in a bombed out building
this ones a bit of a hot mess
you can tell its a hot mess because i had to explain the drawing
here’s the sketch
inktober 2018 is over:(
its been a…slice
a little metal gear solid 3 action with volgin giving snake a jolt
you even get the sketch
where else can you get deals like this
day 29: double
so here’s a little paper, rock, scissors between twin snakes; metal, and liquid
its hard to believe that this inktober is winding down already…
it’s been so much fun, and somehow, less stressful than last year
i don’t know if my results have been any better, but the schedule was easier to keep for some reason
hopefully  i can keep it up because i’m going to head right in to 30 days of comics in november.
what’s in the box?
it’s a cardboard box!
very useful in the metal gear franchise
had no idea, but according to the metal gear wiki, raiden translates to ‘thunder and lightning’ or ‘thunder god’ in japanese… so today, a raiden sketch
day 26 stretch
forgot my waterproof ink so no washes today
drew snake’s left leg way too long in the sketch but corrected it on the inks
i may have mentioned this before, once or twice, but i haven’t played mgs5 so i can’t say for sure that there isn’t a porcupine suit in the game.
and since this is the third one of these i’ve done, i guess this makes it a ‘running gag.’
hoo!
…
i’ll just show myself out…
took a bunch of sketches to get here but here we are.
a little 4 panel action with raiden and a gekko from mgs4 for day 24: chop
update: maybe it helps to see this piece like this:
muddy.
day 23.
a sketch i didn’t ink.
a sketch i did ink but didn’t love.
a third one i just went ink on. no pencil sketch underneath. its pretty frank miller-y.
im not crazy about any of them but…deadlines.
Inktober continues with prompt: expensive.
Snake caught with an empty wallet at the Metal Gear Store.
It didn’t occur me until after my first sketch that I needed to emulate the original metal gear solid inventory system.
Then I had to decide who was going to be manning the shop – the funniest and least likely choice felt like Psycho Mantis.
It’s also a good thing that this isn’t how equipment procurement worked in the original Metal Gear Solid. All those items would have been expensive for sure…
day 21. drain.
here’s a look at the initial sketches.
In the first sketch you can see that I thought I might need the jungle setting behind Snake.
On the second sketch, once I had just the figure of Snake, the life gauge, and the blood trail in there I realized those 3 elements were all that was needed.
At first I had the trail just going from left to right, but then I tried to give the drawing a little depth by having the trail come in at an angle.
Thanks for reading, and if you’ve missed any, you can catch up on all of my 2018 inktobers here…
the fury and snake again from mgs3
we revisit the fury and snake from mgs3 and day 3
to anyone with more inking experience than me: its getting increasingly difficult for my brush to keep a fine point, making it very frustrating to use – does that mean its time to get a new brush?
Ketchup bottle
“Italian-tomato-based food condiment.“―Ketchup description in Metal Gear Solid
