I didn’t like the Inktober Prompt of “throw” so fortunately there are a lot of alternative lists out there this year. They Draw and Cook has a food list and today is “citrus” so that’s the one I chose to do.
The little dragonet, who is growing and isn’t quite so little anymore, is just like any other animal in the house when it comes to food on the table. In this case, it’s a refreshing pitcher of a lemonade, orange and lime mix.
I chose not to use color because I think it works ok without color. I didn’t color my mom’s version this time, either.
The prompt today was teeth and I almost did a shark, but then I thought it would be a cop out to my “Little Witch” series, which at the moment, is focused on the dragonet.
So how could I best represent a dragon’s teeth. Working in a 4×6 space, adding the witch to check the dragon’s teeth or something along those lines forces me to work tiny. Then I thought of kitty and a stretchy dragon yawning and showing his teeth made more sense.
I sketched two versions in my sketchbook and then I uploaded one of the sketches in Procreate, tweaked it, then downloaded it and printed it out to send to my mom. Not very Halloweenish but sometimes the story takes a life of its own.
Here are both versions:
Here is the Procreate “ink” versionThis version was printed out on cardstock and I used Arteza pens to add color. This one will be mailed to my mom.
An added note, all of these are postcards I mail to my mom, who is in an assisted living facility for memory care. She is in NJ and I live in Florida so I try to make her postcards and mail them to her as often as I can. The #342 is the number of postcards I have mailed her.
So the dragonet didn’t have a name but Sid kept coming to mind. Since the dragonet is a Pern dragon, it couldn’t be a normal name, it had to be a Pern name, so his name is Sideth.
Sideth is growing like a weed. He misses his friend, Kitty. I did this in Ink and I just think it looks fine in B&W so I left it.
Will o’ the wisp…..I got this sketchbook back in 2018 when I attended an Artsnacks Inktober outing. I came home with a lot of freebies, this sketchbook and my favorite Kuretake grey brush pen being two items from that haul. It’s a 4×6 Bee Super Deluxe Mixed Media sketchbook and I love the paper. It’s superb quality. I layered a lot of ink and it did not bleed through.
It’s nice just to take a break and play in my sketchbook. The reference photo I used was one I took many years ago.
Three weeks ago, I was starting to think about Inktober and what I was going to do this year. I was mulling ideas for my Little Witch and Kitty series and then Cleo became ill and eventually had to be euthanized. Now her ashes are in a cherry wood box.
As we said good-bye to Cleo, I was distraught. My mind screamed NO! No! This can’t be happening. It has to be a nightmare. I’ll wake up and everything will be normal. But it wasn’t a nightmare, it was much worse.
Could I ever bring myself to do the Little Witch again?! Kitty is Cleo and now Cleo is gone. I am sorry but I can’t “wing” this one. Cleo is gone. There’s no more black kitties in my work, I just can’t do it. It still hurts.
So today starts Inktober, without Kitty. The prompt is Fish so the Little Witch and the dragonet went fishing to escape the reality of Kitty being gone. I think this little vignette sums up the feeling without saying what happened to Kitty in the story. She’s gone, too.
Gina Lento is a fine artist, illustrator and visual storyteller from Port St Lucie, Florida. Her cheerful, whimsical style is full of expression and color.
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