Oct 2, 2021
Inktober Challenge 2021: Crystal
It’s a sudden experiment, prompt by prompt
Artist in Writerland
First, what a fun, unexpected discovery Art Tales is! I hadn’t realized there would be publications on Medium dedicated to art when I got here a month ago. I’m a visual artist as well as a word person, yet this is my first-ever Inktober Challenge.
I was suggested to join the challenge the day before it began, so this really is flash “art.” Not much time to plan! For me, this is all about the process and seeing where it takes me. I can’t guarantee that you’ll like anything I make. I can’t even guarantee that *I* will like it. I’m very much an experimenter in many areas of life, and my art practice is no exception. I hope that I’ll identify better ideas as I go along, and we’ll see where I end up.
Whine and cheese
Confession time: I’ve been focusing on other things recently and not so much on my art practice. What better way to get back in touch with it by throwing myself into a public arena where the idea is to post a drawing every day for a month? People, it’s not necessarily going to be pretty.
All of my work for Inktober will be on paper, and every piece will start with some kind of ink marks.
I haven’t decided yet whether there will be other common threads or not. My pieces could work together or just fly off in different directions. I’m taking a wait-and-see stance.
The first prompt of the challenge is the word “crystal.”
Parallels of Inktober Crystal and the writing and editing process
Inktober Crystal is acrylic ink, acrylic (paint), collage, and graphite on paper. 8.5" x 11".
As I was making this, I thought about how the process paralleled creating and editing an article.
Roughly, I began with inking some radiating red and blue lines through a plastic sheet I had cut, allowing them to bleed through in places. This was like making an outline, creating an initial structure for an article.
I added some painted collage paper as if building out paragraphs on the outline and editing down some of the bleeding lines to clarify the structure. Graphite helped define the “paragraphs” a little more, and stray smudges were toned with more collage bits.
A black background helps set off the angles of the cut-out “crystal.”
Any color scheme echoes between Inktober Crystal and the Art Tales icon are purely coincidental. The classic combination of primary colors plus black I’m sure will remind some of Piet Mondrian’s best-known paintings, though it’s not a palette I usually work with at all.
The mixed media drawing is simple, spare, and flawed, without worrying about concealing evidence of its messy process.
And that’s what Inktober is for, for me. I’m just running experiments and reconnecting with my art supplies. Oh, and seeing what all of you are making!
Thanks to JS Adam for welcoming me to Inktober and to Art Tales.
