Inktober + The Magicians

Inktober is an annual tradition for artists across the internet, wherein every day of October they more or less produce an inked drawing. Ink + October. You get it.

In the past I've done my daily drawing around a theme like octopuses (OCTOber) and Lady Lovely Locks (LOCKtober - although if you Google that, you may want to have your Safe Search settings on because the majority of #Locktober participants are not, in fact, 1980s rainbow-haired princess doll enthusiasts).

I already knew I wouldn't have the time and energy to produce a fully inked drawing every day this month, but I still wanted to participate in my own way, so I came up with this:

Over the course of October, I will draw a screenshot from Season Two of my beloved TV series, The Magicians.

So, I am real bad at drawing backgrounds. I never actually learned perspective? I fake my way around it when I have to draw it in comics. People and organic shapes are the subjects that I care about! Environments and symmetrical objects in perspective for me are :( :( :(

What better way to spend my October than by studying the backgrounds and compositions from a pre-existing source? At last, I can put my many (many) folders of The Magicians screenshots to use!

Episode 1: Knight of Crowns

I leaned on hatching with my pen to create a third tone between black and white and... it's janky and noisy. So I challenged myself to only use black and white going forward. Be brave, Erika!

Oh, also, to get me over the intimidation of drawing environments in perspective, I gave myself permission to trace the screenshots directly from my screen onto my sketchbook page that I held up against it, so the light from my laptop acted like a lightbox. Except even with the curtains drawn and the lights off, there was too much ambient light in my house to get a clear image shining through my paper, so I had to create a dark space from which to trace.

I did not warn Matt ahead of time how I would rectify this situation, so he walked out of his office and found.... this:

MOVING ON!

Episode 2: Hotel Spa Potions

This one I approached with the mindset of sticking strictly to just black and white, none of that creating-a-third-tone-through-pen-hatching bullshit. It was hard! And it is the one I am most proud of.

I am learning a lot and I'm improving with each piece! This project is the perfect balance between being pushed outside my comfort zone and still being a fun challenge.

I've got a handful more of these already finished, but I'm trying (trying) to not make these updates so friggin' long so I'll parcel 'em out over the coming weeks.