Inktober and Linktober 2021!

WOW - it’s been a hot minute since I wrote in the blog! Let’s start with a little bit of catch up!

First of all, I started streaming!! That’s been REALLY fun, though with me being back at work these days I haven’t been doing it as much as before! I’ve been streaming lots of fun things, including art, various Zelda games, and art about Zelda games!!! If you are interested in checking out streams, you can find me here: http://twitch.tv/kbsmith34

Next, I’ve been working on turning a LOT of what I do here into videos on YouTube! When I started that I kind of let the blog fall away, but to be honest I think I want to try to keep the blog going along with the YouTube videos! Sometimes a blog post can be longer and a bit more thorough than a YT video - and so I’m going to *try* to get back to balancing both things.

So, we are currently in the middle of inktober and linktober. I’ve been trying to manage both things, and we are on day 18 and I’ve kept it up so far! Linktober gets my main attention for longer pieces, and I do feel like my work this year is much better than 2020. I will say that in 2020 my main goal was just to draw with a reference as closely as possible because I was so new to so much of it! This year I’ve done some of that (for instance, all of my little LttP scenes are pretty heavily referenced) BUT one of my main goals has been to try to make things in my own style with less referencing and more feelings. So far, I think it’s been going really well. It shows growth for me I wasn’t confident about before this challenge, which makes me really happy and proud.

Inktober was something I really wanted to try this year but with specific constraints so I could actually do it and not get too “in my head” about two art pieces every day. I decided that from beginning to end, each inktober piece would be 10 minutes or less. This is from initial sketch to final product! I chose reasonably sized paper for this, and a pencil that dissolves under wet media. I also am using simple watercolor washes and a permanent ink brush pen to do line work. I feel REALLY good about this journey also - and think this has definitely increased my skills at basic drawing and line work!

I recently made a YouTube video showing off most of my challenge art to this point, and talking about the official inktober products that I purchased to use for inktober. I will say I’m in LOVE with the Viviva Colorsheets! I bought the inktober set and the metallic set because I wanted to try the metallics. They are a wonderful “on the go” option for my sketchbook! I’m really glad I took this opportunity to try them! The full thoughts are up on YT here: 

Thanks for reading along and catching up with me today! I’m looking forward to getting back to longer and more detailed reviews of products here on the blog. Check out my Instagram and YouTube pages for more inspiration! Bye for now!