Pen & ink

Inktober Day 28

| Gina Lento

Inktober Day 28 and today’s prompt is “camping.”

I got the idea for this sketch from the season.  What do we do when we are camping? Usually a campfire is one of the evening activities that people do while camping. A campfire brings light to the dark.  It can be used to cook food, marshmallows, s’mores, it can provide warmth, or it can provide ambiance for an evening of socializing…..or the setting for storytelling by the fire.

 We have seen a lot of movies from Hollywood where the purpose of a campfire was a location used to create suspense to scare the crap out of the people sitting around it.  I get it it.  There’s that primal thing going on where our ancestors used a fire for cooking, warmth, possibly storytelling and for security. We still have that primal basic human instinct where sometimes logic can lose control. Fire kept dangerous creatures away and other dark beings that walk in the night.  We still seek the fire and light….to feel safe.

The first thing I thought of when I saw the word camping was the universal tent icon. I have fond memories of tent camping and if you are reading this and you have never tried tent camping, try it once.  The tent segued into a guy telling a story by a campfire with just a ghost in the speech bubble pretty much summing up what’s going on.  That idea just popped into my head to simplify that he was telling a ghost story.

I added the tree with the owl and moon for mood.  I was thinking of adding a coyote howling at the moon.  If you have never heard a pack of coyotes yipping and howling near your bedroom window in the dead of the night, I can tell you it’s unnerving.  Exciting that we heard coyotes! Maybe even beautiful in a way…. But again…deep down, there is still that instinctual survival “thing” that kicks in and maybe you experience a little twinge of….panic? The house has concrete block walls but you still listen to ensure that the coyotes are gone….and try to go back to sleep.

Inktober Day 28 "camping" Pen and Ink Drawing of a couple sitting at a campfire in front of a tent. There is a tree with an owl behind the tentand a full moon in the sky. The husband/man of the couple is telling a ghost story indicated by a ghost in a speech bubble.
Inktober Day 28 “camping”

Inktober Day 27 and THANK YOU!

| Gina Lento

Before I start the post with my Inktober sketch of the day, I just want to thank all of you for following me. I really appreciate the “likes” and comments (If I missed your comment, please let me know!). I don’t want to overwhelm you with a ton of blog posts or emails, so I really appreciate the patience and support during Inktober, when you are getting the daily posts. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Today’s prompt is “SNACK” and I almost posted the wrong prompt!! LOL. I have Plumchester square sketchbook from Artsnacks that I have been sketching my ideas in first, before I do the final. I sketched an apple and did a couple of “ego” ideas, then I moved on to another page and did more “ego” ideas and a sketch for tomorrow’s prompt. Without thinking about what I was doing, I completed tomorrow’s prompt in my Inktober Sketchbook, LMAO. I was like “Oh crap!” when I caught it before posting the wrong one. So now they are out of order in my sketchbook.

Oh well, glad I caught it.

I sketched an apple for today’s “snack” prompt. Partly because I am telling myself I should eat more natural snacks, and partly because our elderly neighbor gave us a bag full of Red Delicious apples. The problem with Red Delicious apples is they aren’t good for cooking. Although I may try in order to get them out of the fridge. Any ideas?

My son and I were just discussing apples the other day. He likes Sweet Tango and Cosmic Crisp. I can’t find those here in Florida. But I can find my favorite, the Pink Lady. Which is indeed, pink. Wonderful combination of sweet and tart. Try one if you can find one.

Enjoy today’s sketch!

Inktober Day 27 "Snack" Pens and ink drawing of an apple with leaves.
Inktober Day 27 “Snack”

Inktober Day 26

| Gina Lento

Today’s prompt is “ego.”

I was totally uninspired by this prompt. There are some prompts, like this one, where I want to go off the reservation and just draw something else. The nice thing about a subject I don’t like, it forces me to be more creative and just do it. The more I tackle prompts I don’t want to do, the better I get as a creative.

When I first graduated from college with that degree in Art, I didn’t push myself to draw all subjects. I didn’t sketch as much as I should have but I did paint, sometimes plein air. However, my painting skills got better when I began drawing in my sketchbooks. My friend, Jenn Danza, showed me her sketches and explained why sketchbooks were so important and a lightbulb came on.

The one thing that I have observed over the years is that artists that have the best drawing skills are the ones that do it every day. I have heard various artists complain over the years that they can’t do this or that, but the common denominator I observed among the complainers is that they don’t have a daily drawing habit.

I am a fan of James Gurney and his wife Jeannette. They have a daily creative practice. I wondered why they used sketchbooks instead of boards or canvases until I realized that painting in a sketchbook has a TON of pluses. Painting in a 7×5 sketchbook is small and portable and they only require a small storage space. James paints on one side of the page which makes removing a page painless. Using sketchbooks instead of boards and canvases saves a TON of space and MONEY on materials. A sketchbook doesn’t require an easel, although James has made a custom easel for his sketchbooks. A sketchbook is small and convenient and makes a daily painting practice less intimidating. If it sucks, you turn the page and you didn’t waste an expensive board or canvas. Genius!

I tell kids aspiring to be artists to draw in their sketchbooks every day. It’s the same thing as soccer drills. Practice makes it look easy but like sports, practice gives you muscle memory of your eye/ hand coordination.

Practice made me think of a pumpkin head for EGO. LOL.

Inktober Day 26 Ego Pen and Ink drawing of a pumpkin head character with EGO spelled out on his shirt. The head is large to emphasize EGO.
Inktober Day 26 “EGO”

Inktober Day 25

| Gina Lento

Six more days left in October. It’s always amazing how fast October whips by. Then Christmas goes into high gear, pretty much skipping over Thanksgiving. I think that Thanksgiving has been turned into the Memorial Day of the Holiday Season. It’s a shame because it really is nice to enjoy November for the beautiful month that it is. You can get some bitterly cold days, maybe even some snow, and you don’t quite get Indian Summer anymore. However, the crunchy leaves and the pumpkins, Indian corn and corn stalks left out to celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving have their own charm. Thanksgiving is the holiday to be thankful for what you have been given during the year and to celebrate with family and friends. No gifts. No annoying fireworks. Just good food and spending time together, maybe watching a parade, football or some annual activities.

My kids love Thanksgiving and my daughter tells me that it’s her favorite holiday. She says it is the food. I can see why. Thanksgiving, at least in my family, was all about homemade food. Everything from scratch. I even use a Food Network scratch recipe for my biscuits, which I make the day before and then reheat them on Thanksgiving. (I use spelt flour instead of white flour.) The joke in our family is that it takes days to make the meal, then everyone seems to wolf it down in about 15 minutes on Thanksgiving.

The favorite Thanksgiving food? Stuffing, hands down.

It seems fitting that today’s prompt is “tempting.” Especially as October winds down. We are coming into the season where healthy eating goes flying out the window. Halloween with the excessive candy, Thanksgiving and the holidays with the rich foods, wine and desserts, and cookies; it’s the season of food and calories.

Speaking of today’s Inktober sketch; this is a pen and ink version of a watercolor sketch I did several years ago, when Cleo was still alive. I swapped out what was originally on the plate for the fish.

OK, someone please tell me why cats are associated with fish? Cats are domesticated from the African wildcat, a species that still exists today and they eat mice, rats, insects, birds, lizards and sometimes baby mammals. Where’s the fish?

Inktober 2022 Day 25 Tempting pen and ink drawing of a cat sitting on a chair so all that you see is her eyes and ears as she is contemplating the fish on the plate on the table. Which is most likely going to be poached by the cat,
Inktober 2022 Day 25 “Tempting”

Inktober Day 24

| Gina Lento

Today’s prompt is fun! It is also one of my favorite things; “fairy.”

I drew a bunch of sketches in my sketchbook of various different approaches and didn’t care for my initial sketches. It is October and I wanted to do something along the lines of an Autumn Faerie. I wanted to create a faerie that doesn’t follow the normal sex diva stereotype of faerie. The sex divas are everywhere and I find it hard to believe that a faerie would be wearing a gown with a crown or a slinky “sex kitten” goth outfit while flitting out and about in someone’s garden. Or going into a nursery to swap out a changeling with a human baby. (I picture a hooded faerie for this swap.) Faeries, for the most part are less likely to call attention to themselves and a “goth” outfit sure isn’t going to help them lure a child into a faerie ring. On the contrary, a child would be lured more by a non threatening pixie-like costume. Any child today knows to run the other way when seeing a goth dressed witch with a tainted treat. We’ll all up on our faerie tales these days.

My faerie is an autumn faerie who’s job is to dress trees in their autumn finery. She and the other autumn faeries take their outfits from the leaves and sew them into whatever fiber material they find to create warm clothing that is climate controlled and functional. They reserve the more beautiful leaves for the end of the season when they have their autumn Ball where they do make dresses out of the leaves and party before they go into winter hibernation. No humans are invited to the Autumn Ball, but the woodland creatures and other beings are more than welcome. If you see a fox with leaves braided into his fur, you’ll know he has been to an Autumn Faerie Ball.

Inktober Day 24 Fairy Pen and ink drawing of a fairy sitting on a spotted mushroom. She has monarch butterfly type wings because she is an autumn fairy. Her costume is made of leaves and fibers and she is taking a break from her work changing the color of the leaves.
Inktober 2022 Day 24 Fairy

Inktober Day 23

| Gina Lento

Day 23 and today’s prompt is “booger.” Ok I almost thought this was gross until I decided to look up the definition of the word. Low and behold, “booger” is actually another word for the “boogeyman.” And a slang word for mucus. Yuck.

The new “Ghostbusters” has been on TV the past couple of weeks for October. I like the original best, but all the versions have Slimer, the green slimy ghost. Upon researching the definition of “booger” I can see how they came up with the original idea for Slimer being a booger, mucus-y creature; boogeyman and booger all in one.

I sketched a few versions of “boogeyman” and one wound up looking more like the Grim Reaper and another was a cat with a Michael Myers mask, sort of like the one that I did in color, several years ago. Then I sketched my own Slimer type booger. The nice thing about sketching in pencil first is that I can make marks with abandon. No rules, no one sees these and the spontaneous marks create something that I probably would not have done if I used ink first.

I used to just go right to ink but James Gurney showed me the error of that thinking and mechanical pencils are now part of my “tool kit.”

On a side note: For those of you who think Florida is always hot, sunny, void of season definition and that Floridians are always in shorts and flip flops… News Flash….we have had a few cold snaps recently where we needed long sleeves and jeans, and it actual LOOKS like October here. My husband put the heat on this morning and that’s saying something!

And the seasons DO change here, the license plates change in October from Florida to NY, PA, NJ, IL, MA, CT and many more.

Inktober Day 23 Booger Pen and ink drawing of a boogeyman type of flying creature with fangs and a gaping mouth with a bit of an angry face.
Inktober Day 23 “Booger”

Inktober Day 22

| Gina Lento

Ooooo, today is a fun word. Heist. One movie came to mind, “Tower Heist” with Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy. I cracked up through that movie and was especially delighted when the Tower staff was distracted from their duties by the Thanksgiving parade. Adults that are young at heart, I loved it. The woman hitting on Eddie Murphy cracked me up, too. It was just a movie but it was fun and entertaining.

Thinking of that movie made me think of how I could represent the word “heist” for today’s Inktober drawing. I was watching a bunch of seagulls and my husband and I were commenting about how laughing gulls steal sandwiches right from human hands on the beach. Always a hilarious sight. Some poor unsuspecting human, usually a child, is eating a sandwich and holding it in a way that it won’t get sand on it and the laughing gulls will power dive to steal the sandwich. Always cracks me up.

Gulls are the ultimate thieves. In the summer, when my kids were younger, I would come home from work, scoop them up into the car and we would drive to the beach for the evening. We would stop at Blitz’s in Sea Isle and get hoagies. The kids would pick out 2 bags of some sort of snack food, usually Doritos and something else. We would take it all to the beach and sit and have sandwiches and snacks on the beach. One evening, we had put the food down to walk to the water first. We came back to a large gull flapping down the beach with our large bag of Doritos. It was already open and he was fighting off a bunch of other gulls of all shapes and sizes and before we could blink, the bag was shredded and chips were everywhere. So were the gulls. The gulls definitely know that red bag. There’s a video out on the internet about a gull that would walk into a beach front store in NJ and walk out with a snack sized bag of Doritos. It cracks me up every time I watch it. It’s so true that they like Doritos.

FUN FACT – Doritos were invented at Disneyland! I just found that out the other day on Aaron Mahnke’s Cabinet of Curiosities “Well Seasoned” Podcast.

I was going to sketch the Dorito gulls for today’s prompt, but then I thought of cats. My daughter’s cats are the ultimate thieves. If you leave any carbs out, her cat, Piper, will steal it. Piper and Lili are the inspiration for today’s heist of fish.

Inktober Day 22 Heist Pen and Ink drawing of a cat stealing a fish from a vendor/fish stand. The stand has a sign with "fresh fish" on it and there are other fish left still on ice but it looks almost like kitty got the biggest fish!
Inktober Day 22 “Heist”

Inktober Day 20

| Gina Lento

Eleven more days to go! Whoo hoo!

Today’s prompt is “bluff.” I thought about sketching people playing cards or a game. I also considered poker or Texas Hold’em, you know, games where you have to bluff. I bluff all the time when we play “Cover Your Assets.” This is a great game that I highly recommend but you need to be devious with the high point cards. It’s not a game that you play with sore losers because it’s a little ruthless, LOL. You steal other players cards during the game to build your own pile for points so sore losers whine a lot during the game. You can find it on Amazon and occasionally in a specialty toy store.

That would have been the obvious choice but as I was doing my sketches, I thought of that canyon out West that keeps showing up in movies. You know the one. It was used in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” when Indy goes over the cliff and that same cliff was used in the new “Star Trek” with the young James T Kirk speeding in his stepfather’s antique ‘Vette to the tune of Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” and sends it over the side, quipping to the police officer who chased him, “Is there a problem officer?” Now THAT’S a bluff!

I then pictured a cowboy who brakes to a stop on his horse because they both realized that they were at a dead end at the top of a bluff. Two eagles look on annoyingly at the disturbance. There were a bunch of children’s books illustrated and/or written by Glen Rounds that had these quirky cowboys and horses and those inspired this sketch. I have picked up one or two of his used books over the years because I like to have old illustrators on hand for inspiration and I was fond of his quirky western characters. It’s funny how things you learn or read as a child still have influence as you get older.

Inktober Day 20 Bluff Pen and Ink Sketch of a cowboy and his horse skidding to a stop at the top of a bluff, overlooking another cliff that has a nesting eagle who's a bit annoyed at the disturbance above. There is a hazy sun overhead and another eagle flying over to investigate.
Inktober Day 20 Bluff

Inktober Day 19

| Gina Lento

Wow, 13 days to Halloween and 13 days left in the Inktober Challenge. Today’s prompt is ponytail and I decided to have a little fun today with…..a pony!

Yeah, I could have done a girl with a ponytail but I thought it would be more fun to draw a pony. A happy little thing with a big flippy tail. Usually I am trundling along, trying to make the prompts fit my Little Witch series. I was going to do my Little Witch series but then I just started playing with different things in my sketchbooks and I moved on to other ideas. I have to say I have been having fun pulling ideas from my head but that’s part of the whole Challenge.

Being since today is the first day of the 13 days of Halloween, I am playing with working on a side project to the Inktober posts. I have a prepped sketchbook but since I only want to do 13 days plus maybe Dias de Los Muertos, I may just make one just for this quick side project. The prepped one I have has more pages than what I want for this side project. I also have to run our truck to the dealer for it’s 15,000 mile maintenance today so we’ll see how far I get with that.

Our sweet little Chloe had her oral surgery yesterday. She needed her teeth cleaned but since she’s getting older, some of her teeth needed to be pulled, too. She came through the whole procedure like a champ. The vet we are using now is very good and said that Chloe did very well. Their process is very safe and the vet explained that if there were any issues, they could pull them out of the anesthesia quickly. I feel much better that she had her teeth cleaned. We tried to do the “awake” cleaning with Chloe but she gave the techs a tough time. Maybe now that the bad teeth are out we can try it again. It takes two people to do Chloe’s nails so we’ll see. As tiny as she is, she’s tough and wears you down. She’s such a diva.

Mack did the “awake” cleaning with no problem at all. They said he was a very good boy. He also gets his nails trimmed like a good boy, too.

Inktopber Day 19 Ponytail Pen and Ink drawing of a prancing pony with an elegant flippy tail ie ponytail
Inktober Day 19 – Pony Tail