Tony Chua (our USK SG Sketching Mascot)

The annual Inktober 2016 social network drawing event to encourage everyone and anyone to try commencing a drawing project in ink and finishing it with a daily inked drawing done has ended about a week ago. I meant to post this sooner but I was caught up with preparing for the illustration festival and many other things (I talked as if there are a lot of people following my blog and are eager to see an update). Anyway, the Illustration Festival has been a blast, so I heard from many other artists and participants who have followed the entire programme. I was only at the Artists’ Market but I had a great time drawing caricature and portraits for just $5 each. It was only meant for the festival but usually I don’t charge so low for a portrait done. A BW drawing like the one on the left (Tony Chua) would cost about $150-$200, with colour would be another $100 to top it up. However that said, I don’t really accept commission like this because I don’t usually put a price tag over my drawings. Maybe one day, I will do this more professionally and if it becomes a routine it will be easy. For now I am just drawing for fun as and when I feel like it. Now back to INKtober. Honestly I did not finish all 31 days, but comparing to last year, I did it without a theme given to myself, just drawing random stuff, but the challenge I took on was to draw bigger and subjects that I am not familiar with, eg. wolf. I revived the Ackerman Pump pen in the process though I made a mess while trying to refill the ink into the barrel and refitting the feed and the nib. Well no pain no gain I suppose. I actually replaced the steel nib with a titanium g-nib i bought from a local art supply stall. It has better ink flow and not so scratchy on the paper.

One of the topic I tried was to take something that is familiar and convert it to something else. For Vermeer’s paintings, I gave a modern take by adding stuff from the pop culture. It was a lot of fun doing this. Ideas simply pop up randomly and sometimes I was surprised myself too with the results.

These were all done with the Ackerman Pump pen. I was using Hero sumi ink with it. The ink did not bleed and ink flow through the feed was good. Having said that I should have cleaned out the pen since the last time I used it. The Pentel brush pen is also another tool I used very often for sketching and drawing. I love the medium size one that offers a good control. However the bristles on mine are already frayed but it gives some quite interesting lines in this manner.

No matter how you draw it, the wolf always looks cool! 😀