Prepare yourself... for my INKTOBER!

 I finally finished the month-long Inktober challenge! I've been posting the results on my Instagram account (@st.rhinoceros) but I'm going to post them here in the upcoming days with more supplemental info and better quality pics than on IG. 

So... what is Inktober? It's a recurring yearly challenge to complete one drawing every day through October, in ink, and then post it on the social media of your choice with the hashtag #inktober. It's meant to help you practice, to motivate you, and to find some community in an normally solitary pursuit. There's an official (though optional) list of prompt words like "poison" or "crawl" that are meant to help stimulate creativity (and it's fun to see what everyone else came up with along the theme), as well as unofficial fan prompt lists with themes like witches or Marvel. There's no entry, judges or prize. No rules either, but the "traditional" way is to hand-ink (using brush, pen, whatever) in black and white. It is acceptable to plan and sketch in pencil beforehand (the prompt list is released a month ahead of time). Some people add one color or many, some use another medium entirely, some work digitally. Some choose their own theme or project (like illustrating a book), others complete one single complex drawing by adding bits to it daily. Whatever helps you progress in your own goals. Many people discuss the process further on YouTube, from professional illustrators to middle schoolers making Naruto fan-art. I recommend their videos.

This is my third year doing Inktober, and my first to forego the prompt list. The previous years were exercises in soul-searching and pushing the intuitive surrealist process of trying to express real feelings with integrity, but this year I wanted to go back to basics, which for me is portraiture. I decided instead to draw a daily portrait of a lesser-known female artist and include a short bio to place them in historical context. But I quickly found there were way, way too many artists to include. So I came up with these parameters:

1. Must not be too contemporary. My cut-off is the 1920s-30s for the artist's heyday. My reasoning is that there's a myth that until the 20th century women were at home not participating in society, so I wanted to address that misconception by focusing on the 18th and 19th centuries. I'm tired of reading the phrase, "she was the only woman in the Impressionist circle," over and over about many different women. At some point you realize... the Impressionist circle was filled with women, each written about as if they were the only one. Rinse and repeat with Dadaism, Surrealism and so on.

2. Must have spent a personally significant time in Paris. Could be lifelong, could be that they just studied there and returned home, could be that they fled there briefly as a refugee. But I narrowed the focus to Paris because a) I like reading about Paris and b) it's fun to gradually discover who knew whom and what they thought of each other. I already knew a bit about Parisian social circles of the 19th and 20th century so I could build on that. 

Unfortunately because Paris didn't become a destination for artists until the 1800s, I'm missing the Baroque and Renaissance women (and they are legion!). The artistic and cultural mecca for the 16th and 17th centuries was Rome and greater Italy, followed by Madrid and Amsterdam in the 1600s. Paris was just a cultural backwater until King Louis XIV (The Sun King) initiated a campaign to make Paris synonymous with luxury craftsmen and style. The reputation gradually caught on, and with the nobility concentrated at Versailles many French painters clustered around them in the 1700s for sponsorship. Foreign artists began traveling to Paris to study or relocate in the mid 1800s.

Another significant group that this leaves out is the entire non-Western art world. This is on purpose because a) that is way too many people and I need to narrow my focus and b) I don't know nearly as much about the art of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America. I don't know where to go digging for research on obscure women artists or how to gauge the impact they may have had on movements I've never heard of, or how to compare them to their peers who I've also never heard of. When non-Western artists traveled to Paris to study and combined Western practice and ideas with their cultural artistic background, then I'm confident enough to include them, and I have. 

Finally, of course, the focus on Paris excludes all those who either couldn't afford to travel and study there, and those who simply didn't want to (I'm looking at YOU, Scandinavia! You smug homebodies).

3. Must have left behind lots of work that is available for online perusing. What's the fun of introducing people to a new artist if they can't immediately turn around and google their artwork?Unfortunately many female artists left a scanty legacy because we're not really sure which work was theirs. It was misattributed to their husbands, teachers or the nearest available male artist. Because female artists were considered unimportant or unserious, little effort by historians was dedicated to keeping track of their artistic output or where it was sold or kept, and little money was spent to preserve art by these no-names. Still more art went unsigned (for instance some output by nuns). This also, sadly, excludes many talented artists who "made it" but who left little behind because they died young in childbirth.

4. I must genuinely like their work. Yeah, it's subjective, so what. I'm not about to introduce y'all to second rate stuff when there are so many good female artists out there. Keep in mind, though, that you're missing out on genres that simply don't interest me, still life and flower painting being the most notable. 

Since women were forbidden from studying the nude figure and anatomy, that closed of many genres like history and genre painting. Add to that the stigma around anything too "unfitting for women," and there goes anything remotely sexual or violent, anything with a daring or bold composition, anything involving too much facetime with men, poor people and strangers (such as socially relevant genre painting), anything intellectual or socially daring (such as satire, social commentary or anything gritty). That left flowers, still life, portraits (mostly of women and children), interiors, mild religious stuff, and historical allegory that colored well inside the moralistic lines. Later landscape opened up as an option as well. 

Some women, of course, simply broke the rules anyway, but the consequences were not to be taken lightly. Work could not be sold, for one, if the public and monied class disapproved. The woman's security was seriously jeopardized, for another, if her moral reputation was tarnished. Without a husband and secure place in society, she had no fallback. And then there were the guilds and academies, the gatekeepers of the business of art, who wouldn't let them in if they didn't abide by the rules (and often didn't let them in at all). 

So excluding the painters of still life and similar decorative arts is Very Unfeminist of me because not only was the genre filled with women artists, but women actually dominated. They forged new styles that shaped the genre and attracted imitators. Same for women who created sentimental bourgeois genre paintings, but I just can't get past the genre's noxious blend of self-congratulatory materialism, prurience and cloying moralism. I can't deal with it in male painters either (I can never forgive Fragonard for painting The Swing, nor can I physically stop my eyes from rolling at the sight of Bouguereau's barely legal Greek nymphs, which I guess might technically be history paintings, which somehow makes it worse, but I classify them with the pretty adolescent shepherdesses and milk maids which populate the rest of his work), so I don't feel right about pretending to admire it just because the artist is female. It merits an historical mention, though, that female artists were garnering solid reputations and earnings from these genres. I will admit that just because I don't like the genre, that doesn't mean it's objectively bad.

5. Fine art only. Meaning no handcrafts, no commercial design or illustration, no cartooning and the like. I excluded photography and filmmaking too; while fitting under fine art, it opened a whole can of worms with too many names and too contemporary a timeline. Not only do I have tremendous respect for all these disciplines, I am a fan! I like them! The quilts of Gee's Bend, Nell Brinkley's comics, Beatrix Potter's children's illustrations, Coco Chanel's fashion design, it's all stellar stuff. Crafts in particular are a sphere where women creatives have traditionally dominated and the exclusion of crafts from "fine art" is an entire sexist and classist issue in itself (see Bauhaus weavers and industrial designers). 

But I needed to narrow my focus. I'm also conscious of the misconception that if you want to find female fine artists, you'd have to really reach to outside traditional disciplines. But that's just not true. You could easily fill an art history book with female names, fully covering all the "isms" and genres, without compromising on quality or venturing outside the traditional bounds of fine art. Seriously. When it comes down to it, that's what I want to convey with this Inktober project. 

6. Incorporate something of the artist's style into my own portraits. I don't want to create a faux version or pastiche of their work, I just want to take some element of their work and put it to use.

7. Write their bios like we'd write about male artists. This proved to be way more difficult than it appears at face value. When I say "bio," by the way, I mean the flashcard version, the blurb, the quick overview that a normal person might know off the top of their head. All these things I say are "unmentioned" in bios are of course covered in more meticulous lengthy books about these artists, sometimes even in their Wikipedia entries.

I didn't dwell on the hardships they faced as women, even though all these artists have them in spades. Pioneering Dadaist Hannah Höch was regarded by her male peers solely the chick who brought them snacks, while Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller's husband pressured her to stop sculpting so she could become a homemaker in the middle America ("you never should have left Paris," wrote her colleague in a forlorn letter). Nearly all were barred from proper education and then barred from the crucial tools they needed to run a business. Then came the critics and historians who either wrote about them as if they were precocious children or pets that were taught to perform a neat trick, or most frequently, erased their existence completely. The most effective condemnation of the female artist is simply not to mention her at all, or any women involved in the lives of artists, to distill the figurative beer of art history into a clean potent jigger of prominent male artists by boiling away all the teachers, wives, mothers, daughters, colleagues, lovers, writers, workers and students who watered down their lives. The hurdles faced by these female artists deserve attention, but I wanted to focus on their artistic achievement, contribution and influence, just as I would if writing a short bio of Monet or Ingres. 

I also tried to steer the focus away from the artist's personal lives and romantic attachments, unless obviously relevant to their art or the appreciation of it. Do I know anything about Ingres's personal life? David's? Courbet's? No. Maybe I should read up, but I know what each name means to the history of art without knowing anything about them because that is what historians and writers tend to present. 

Do I know about Goya's personal life, Chagall's, Picasso's, Michaelangelo's? Yeah, a bit. Goya's frustration with his royal appointment is relevant to his royal portraiture, and his lived wartime trauma is relevant to his more macabre work. Chagall's persecution as a Jew and flight from Russia is very present in his art, and so is it when his beloved wife died. Picasso's love life and epic promiscuity is, again, relevant to both the work and his legend--his legend IS part of what his name means to art history. I think most can see why Michaelangelo's sexuality is relevant to his work, and his personal gripes with authority figures show up readily in the Sistine Chapel. 

The general disregard for male artist's personal lives is partially a function of the modernist idea of art being able to stand independently (thanks, Clement Greenberg), but it has also prevented many male artists from being judged poorly or "cancelled" because of repugnant behavior. Did Gauguin abandon his wife and kids, run away to Tahiti, transmit STD's to a string of 12 and 13 year old Tahitian "wives" whom he then also abandoned and then promote a patronizing view of Tahitians as innocent savages? Yes! But his art isn't going anywhere, nor his legacy (and for good reason). The lives of the Great Masters were chock full of some really terrible stuff that won't ever affect their legacy, like abandoning their families, impregnating a string of underage mistresses then abandoning them to a life of who knows what, virulent antisemitism or racism, slaveholding, murder, rape, abuse, supporting fascism, it goes on and on. If we were to scrap everyone problematic, there wouldn't be much art left to study. Yet I see this tendency with female artists. First there were the writers of centuries past who dismissed them all as "drunken prostitutes" because they were lesbian, or unmarried or unchaperoned, they traveled, they did modeling on the side, or they met up with their colleagues at (gasp!) cafes. And then there are their modern would-be fans. Why do the work of unearthing and publicizing the work of a female racist or child abuser? We're looking for heroes! Role models! But at some point I think we need to admit that we artists just don't have our shit together and we never have. Face it, the art world is the last place to go looking for role models. It's only fair to judge women artists by the same lax standards.

So, do I need to know that Suzanne Valadon was not a very good mother in order to understand how her postimpressionism fits into art history? Do I need to know who gave Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven syphilis to understand her dadaist poetry (well, assuming anyone could understand it)? Do I need to know if Eva Gonzalès's teacher (Manet) was in love with her in order to understand her later work? No, I do not. However I do need to know that Toyen was genderfluid (or something similar, it's unclear by modern standards) because Toyen's art was about gender and sexuality. Likewise I need to know that Zinaida Serebriakova pined after her children and family home after forced exile from Russia, and that Sophie Taeuber-Arp knew everyone who was worth knowing in avant-garde circles, because they all shared ideas. 

Then there's the question of marriage and family. Quick-- who was Monet's wife? I don't know. Art historians have usually treated the wife as no more relevant to the artist's legacy as the family pet. If a wife or auntie earned money to support the artist so he could paint full time, as was very often the case even withe "the great Masters", it goes unmentioned (this is not true in the case of fathers, brothers, patrons or dealers who supported the artist, for example Vincent van Gogh's art dealer brother Theo assisting him being mentioned so frequently I didn't even have to look up Theo's name on Wikipedia). If she networked or used her social connections, hosted salons, ran his business, managed his students, typed and copied his writing, prepared his canvases, it likewise goes unmentioned. But when a female artist was supported by her husband that is usually fact #1 in her bio. If she was supported by family or used her brother's connections, it is well established. These things are genuinely relevant to a biography, and I'm not annoyed to see them mentioned for female artists, rather displeased that they go unmentioned for male artists because they are intentionally erased. There's nothing wrong with describing the assistance male artists received or describing their daily lives.

If the wife physically assisted and painted parts of the work, it goes unmentioned (it was common and perfectly acceptable for wives and other assistants to paint draperies and backgrounds). Yet the extent to which female artists painted and sculpted their own work has been extensively dissected, which is a practical measure because the first accusation against great female artists has often been, "she obviously didn't do it herself." 

Then there is the issue of "it runs in the family." Countless great artists were taught by their mothers and sisters (often going on to study under other teachers when they were older). Yet you seldom see bios that declare, "he took after her." It's rare to see, for example, that Mozart became a musician because he wanted to be just like his big sister, who toured as a child prodigy and composer, who made up secret languages to speak with him, who played musical games with him. You read only that there was a gifted little boy, so gifted he made up languages and played musical games for fun. Does it take away from Mozart to know this? No, not at all! It's relatable and inspiring. We should all be talking more about awesome sibling relationships. 

However if a female artist were taught by her father it is fact #1 in the bio, followed by "until recently many of her pieces were misattributed to him." This is extremely relevant to a biography because being the daughter of a professional artist was the only way for centuries that many women could enter the business of art or receive training. One must understand that until the industrial advancements of the late 1800s, one didn't just set up an easel in the corner, buy some paints and order business cards. Painting was so costly and labor intensive that in terms of people power, capital and effort, it was more akin to opening a restaurant nowadays than to taking up a side hustle or hobby. That's why they were often combined school-studios which trained apprentices and gave lessons. So being able to assist or even inherit a father's or husband's studio was a very big deal. 

So how, then, did so many male artists learn from moms and sisters, if women didn't run studios? Women, if they were middle or upper class, were expected to know how to draw and play music, enough to appear cultured and to entertain a parlor full of bored nobility-- but no more. So they were trained by governesses and private tutors, taking lessons at home if they could afford it, and attending the classes "suitable for ladies" which many schools and studios offered. Inevitably some of these girls became far more expert than was considered suitable (and ended up as the subjects of this Inktober series). By the 1800s a respectable lady might reasonably travel to Paris, study intensively under the best artists of her time and dedicate her life to art-- but not consider herself a professional or a serious artist (how vulgar and mannish!). To earn a living was beyond the pale. She would instead be considered "an accomplished lady." Such accomplished ladies often put their talents and education to use, then, by educating their own children, families and friends. She might even teach lessons, take portrait commissions or sell her work, so long as it was seen as "on the side." Even if a family member was an established professional artist who then taught the male artist to paint or draw, it has gone unmentioned (Jackson Pollock, for instance). 

Then, most commonly, there were the husband-wife duos (or serious romantic partnerships) where both were artists. Common practice when writing about such men is not to mention the female artist at all. One might learn about Pollock, Picasso, Hans Arp or Robert Delaunay in this manner, one independent name standing alone. When the female artist is discussed she is an extension of her husband, her art is derivative of his, and so on, although that is beginning to change in recent decades. Indeed some couples did exist in which the wife's art was derivative of the husband's, for instance if he offered her training, or if she worked as a part of his artistic brand, a "two for the price of one" kind of business. In many other cases they met while studying under the same teacher and naturally made work that appeared similar. More common still was some sort of collaboration, where they developed an idea or founded a movement together, or where they combined efforts. Such collaborations are often unacknowledged as such; for instance, the late artist Christo, who famously wrapped the Reichstag in fabric, was only one half of a duo with his artist wife. Can you name her? (Jeanne-Claude, and she died in 2009 without any media mentions that I recall. When Christo died last year it was all over the news-- as it should have been). Such collaborative marriages make sense, particularly in centuries past. 

So to write about artist-wives the same way as artist-husbands would be to let the husband go unmentioned, and in many of the bios I have. However if there was a significant collaboration I consider it relevant to the art and wouldn't want an artist to go uncredited. Not to mention such marriages are pleasant to read about. To be fair there do exist some couples where the male name is frequently attached to the female name in art history; for example it's rare to read about Diego Rivera without a mention of Frida Kahlo, or Alfred Stieglitz without Georgia O'Keefe. Robert Delaunay's name is gradually becoming more frequently attached to Sonia's. But another reason it's tough to gender-swap is that the husband is usually much more famous than the wife, or at least as famous. And his career, life and social circle usually affect the wife in a way that is difficult to explain without mentioning him. If I were writing about Michelle Obama, for example, there are plenty of her own accomplishments to fill a bio but how exactly could I explain why she lived in the White House if I don't mention this guy named Barack? 

Similarly I let kids pass by unmentioned unless they were relevant to the art or if they were necessary to explain events in an artist's life. That was a tougher choice, as parenting was a significant part of many artist's lives. On one hand, for example, I'd like to tip my hat to Baya for raising 6 kids in a war zone, but on the other hand I'd like to keep the focus on her art. It's true that you rarely see mention of children in overviews of male artist's work (unless the child became or married someone famous), but it also wasn't usually a significant part of his daily responsibility, nor did it physically compromise him, so it makes more sense that it goes unmentioned. Still, when artists were impacted by struggles to manage large blended families (like Monet) you don't often read about it. 

I'm happy to say that a lot of this "bad art history" is inherited from centuries past and that recent art historical writing and research has been top notch. Most writers make at least a solid effort to include women, and if they don't many commenters and reviewers will point it out. Most also write about women in a reasonable way, if occasionally overcompensatory with deference. The thing is, there is a major difference between writing a more conscientious version of the flawed art history we've inherited, versus overhauling what we've known and radically rethinking things. For the latter we have the feminists and other progressive researchers of the 1970s to thank. They began the herculean task of unearthing and re-researching forgotten female artists, going back to primary sources in order to question everything that had been written. The effort poured into the 1980s and 90s, and very significant artists are still being rediscovered. Most of the museum shows, books and movies that seek to cover this new ground are building on what those researchers did. Of course, the old narratives still stick to art history and are something to contend with.

So to sum up, I tried to keep the bios on point-- what kind of art they made, where their art fits into the world around them, any particularly fun facts, and roughly how and when they lived.

Spargel

I ran across this German opinion piece by Volker Heise in the Berliner-Zeitung newspaper which describes one man's psychological asparagus withdrawal that landed him in the ER, as well as his more serious struggle to cope with Covid19 stress. His reaction to having no fresh local asparagus was so "extra" that I felt inspired to illustrate the piece. I do sympathize with his anxiety, though, and I hope he feels better; we're all going through some stuff right now.

But you must understand, Germans are obsessed with asparagus ("Spargel") in the Springtime; the type and provenance of the asparagus is a big deal, something one might show off to one's coworkers for social clout. Enthusiasts will absolutely engage in shady backdoor trade to get the fresh local best if they must. Also of note: Germans peel asparagus before cooking and serving (in butter with a side of luxury). I never knew that until German YouTube served me an ad of a woman lovingly peeling asparagus in a slow motion in her rustic kitchen at sunrise.

I've translated the article as best I can. My understanding of what he said about the protesters is a little iffy.

Creators talk about their art

Here's a random jumble of creators talking about how they make stuff and think of ideas. I like how they're all pretty down to earth and direct about it. I often hear art making discussed as if it's something closer to spiritual sorcery, and while I appreciate that it is meant to be inspiring I just can't identify with that perspective. Enjoy!

Quentin Blake illustrating:

Eric Carle talking about making The Very Hungry Caterpillar:

Charles Bukowski on writing:

Lisa Hanawalt, a cartoonist or animator or...?... talks about creating the concept art for Bojack Horseman. If you've never seen the show, it's an excellent cartoon for adults about a fading TV star battling addiction. The show is both very sad and serious, as well as absurd and slapstick. Like Don Draper meets The Far Side. I've included a clip from the show below Hanawalt's speech.

and a clip from Hanawalt's show Bojack Horseman:

Sketch by me

It's been a while since I've drawn in charcoal so yesterday I spent the afternoon practicing. I pulled such a weird expression because I rarely get a chance to draw contorted faces and the interesting shapes they create. When I draw portraits professionally, of course I try to make the subjects look good, not like monster-clowns. But that can get a bit boring.

I took a few photos as I went so you can see how it progressed over the afternoon. You're supposed to work on the entire thing at once, not to go bit by bit... but I did anyway. It was just that kind of day.

This isn't finished; the left side of the page is blank, leaving room for another weird expression that I'll integrate with this on as a bigger composition when it's done.

More entertainment: Napoleon's wedding cake

As promised, more entertainment for the quarantine and sheltering-at-home crowd. This is a professional recreating an historic recipe by Napoleon's pastry chef. And it is INSANE. Prepare yourself for an epic new definition of "labor intensive."

Some Entertainment

If you're shut in your home for the foreseeable future like I am, I have some light entertainment for you. I'll keep the entertainment posts coming, unless I get distracted and forget, once again, that this blog exists.

Here's somebody recreating Monet's daily meals which I ran across on YouTube. I have visited Giverny on a rainy day in spring, I did have questionable cider at a cafe nearby, and I can easily imagine this household running like a well-oiled picturesque machine. 

Video description: birds-eye views of someone following recipes interspersed with narratives of Monet's life and his paintings.

Inktober 2019, Day 31: Ripe

I went for another grocery store still life for the final day of Inktober. It's all seasonal fall/winter fruit (except the honeydew, who even knows when that's ripe) and somewhat low-carb friendly (except the persimmon, I suspect). You're supposed to eat just a little, though, on a low-carb intermittent fasting diet, not to break your daily fast with a giant fruit salad, which is what I did before I even finished this drawing. No regrets, it was delicious. Anyway, this is what I gave up last year while dieting (an overall positive experience), and I've since added back in a little fruit and the occasional healthy carbs. Diet talk is never especially interesting so I'll just leave it at that, but suffice it to say this still life is VERY personally relevant to me. These foods have occupied quite a lot of brain-space lately. They should pay rent.
I was happy with how this turned out. The honeydew looked especially nice, and the little silver cake fork (a flea market find) stood out against it just like it did in real life. I was happy with the zig-zaggy interior and rough exterior of the pear as well. As it turns out, pomegranate seeds are incredibly fast and easy to draw. The persimmon skin had just the right value and shine. The fruit pressed against the side of the wine glass was a fun challenge in black and white.

Inktober 2019, Day 31, Ripe, by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros

After devouring the fruit salad I carved a Jack O' Lantern, since it was Halloween. And I got a Trick-or-treater! She was some sort of zombie princess I think. I ate the rest of the mini-Snickers myself.

Just a standard pentagram with some antlers for this pumpkin. Nothing too fancy.

Inktober 2019, Day 30: Catch

After so much drawing from photo references and from my imagination, I wanted to get back to some proper drawing from life. So I picked up this fish from the grocery store, and to add some interesting distortion and a bit of a challenge, I put it in a glass of water. But the fish was so long I had to add a second glass. I rather liked the odd composition, and the fish looks like it's trying to stay alive under the most constrictive possible circumstances (it was fully dead). I cooked it up for dinner afterward. My cat was extremely interested in the entire process.

Inktober 2019, Day 30, prompt word "Catch." Dip pen and marker, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: realistic black and white pen drawing of a foot-long mackerel or trout type fish. The head is resting in a cut-glass tumbler full of water. The tail is resting in a glass mini beer stein behind the tumbler. The fish's body arches between the two glasses. The distortions of the water and facets of the glasses break up the fish into several different planes. Each glass casts a shadow with scattered light across the page to the right.]

Inktober 2019, Day 29: Injured

When I was 5 (or 6 or 7...?) I had a super bossy friend who was always the best character in whatever we played, like April O’Neal or Belle and then I’d have to be Shredder or the animated clock. She had a bunch of plastic horses, like ya do, but there was one Ultimate Pony that was pearlescent lavender with mega-hair and she always got to be that one. One day I chose it first, so she challenged me, and I grabbed it and took off running. Unfortunately I tripped on the edge of the carpet and fell face-first on the hardwood floor. My nose basically exploded in blood and I had to go to the hospital (never having played as the Ultimate Pony). My nose is a bit crooked now and I’m not sure how much is genetic and how much is battle scar.

The top bit is imaginary, but the nose close-ups I sketched from a mirror. Except the full profile, for which I used a camera phone. That's a pretty accurate depiction of the Ultimate pony, as I still remember her clearly, decades later.

Inktober 2019, Day 29, prompt word, "Injured." Ink pen and marker, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image Description: black and white drawing of a little girl falling on her face, in mid-air just about to hit the ground. A tasseled rug is just under and behind her, and a toy pony flies out of her hand. In the bottom third, several overlapping realistic sketches of a nose and eyes from various angles take up the rest of the space.]

Inktober 2019, Day 28: Ride

Inktober 2019, Day 28, prompt word, "Ride." Ink pen and marker, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: black and white realistic drawing of a woman in a knit cap and scarf sitting by a dark train window. Her darker reflection is in the window. At the bottom of the page a side-view of a subway train in the dark shows three lit windows illuminating sketchily drawn passengers. The same woman pictured above with the same white cap is visible through the window. It reads a bit like comic panels showing inside and outside the train.]

Inktober 2019, Day 27: Coat

I spend a lot of time bingeing on nonsense online. For "coat" I wanted to convey that cocoon of stupor that you get with total media escapism.

Inktober 2019, Day 27, prompt word, "Coat." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: black and white realistic pen drawing of a woman's face surrounded by floating downy feathers. She looks up and to the left, out of frame, and the close-up is cropped at her forehead, cheeks. and neck. Her expression is wide-eyed, slack-jawed, dazed and entranced. A light like a screen is reflecting off her eyes.]

Inktober 2019, Day 26: Dark

I've seen a lot of illustrators create atmosphere-monsters, and I've been wanting to give it a try myself. They create a lot of atmosphere at the horizon (clouds, smoke, the haziness of distance) and slightly delineate the monster's form (usually tall and lanky, a giant robot or massive skeletal creature), but leave the eyes blank and white (or in color, if it's a color illustration) so they glow. Having the atmosphere at the horizon makes the monster look super-tall, towering above skyscrapers. Here's an example by Canadian and French illustrator Nicolas Delort:

NOT my drawing. This is by Nicolas Delort, a Canadian and French illustrator. It shows the type of bright-eyed atmosphere-monster I'm talking about.

The funny thing is, the original illustrations from War of the Worlds used the same conceit for the killer robot Martians over a century ago. Maybe Henrique Alvim Corrêa even invented it for the novel. I ran across his illustrations a few years back while illustrating for an exhibit in Scotland about the history of sci-fi and architecture. Here's Corrêa's take in 1906:

NOT my drawing. This is a 1906 illustration by Henrique Alvim Corrêa for War of the Worlds.

So I went to create my own atmosphere-monster to express how, walking down a city street in dank weather, you feel both omnipresent connection with the city at large, and simlutaneously part of a tiny huddled microcosm under your umbrella or in a cloud of light from a shop window. I started, naturally, with the atmosphere. I chose a rainy city street at twilight, a time which seems somehow even darker than night when it rains. However I got so into the foreground and rainy street scene that I wish I'd cut the monster out altogether so the focus was on the foreground. Oh, well. This might be a drawing I retool in the future.

Inktober 2019, Day 26, prompt word, "Dark." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: cityscape showing a line of pedestrians with umbrellas crossing the street over a few clouds of billowing steam emerging from manholes. Behind them is a row of cars silhouetting them against headlights. On either side are tall buildings. The sky is dark and it's raining. The people's silhouettes and the headlights create black and white striped reflections on the wet pavement. On the right side, a corner shop window is illuminated. In the background, between two distant buildings and against the sky, the outline of a humanoid monster peers at the people and reaches out. Its eyes are blank white hearts.]

Inktober 2019, Day 25: Tasty

Once again I broke my "must be personally relevant" rule. I was inching toward the end of Inktober and worn pretty thin, so when faced with brainstorming I just went for a good old portrait. Easy enough because it's my specialty, and usually a crowd-pleaser. Lots of other people chose this same subject as well, a character from Orange Is The New Black named Taystee. While not personally relevant, OItNB is a really good show, the character is extremely interesting, and the actress does a great job. It is unreal how pretty she is without makeup, but that didn't come across in this portrait. I went for an expressive film still rather than a pretty one.
The hair texture was fun. I relied on a few old favorite techniques that I developed when I drew portraits live in the park in the US. Occasionally someone with massive hair will show up and unless you want them to be sitting for hours, you need a few visual shortcuts. But it was my first time using ink pen instead of shaded charcoal, so it was a bit different.
I wasn't that satisfied with the result though. It was overall too dark (but it's ink, so what are you gonna do) and the crosshatching on Taystee's face was too rough. But it felt so good to have the rest of the day free without a drawing looming over me.

Portrait of Taystee (actress Danielle Brooks) from Orange Is The New Black. Inktober 2019, Day 25, prompt word, "Tasty." Ink pen and marker, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: black and white realistic drawing of the head and shoulders of a woman with a large afro. She wears a cotton prison shirt that looks like scrubs. She leans forward, squinting out of frame to the left, with a frustrated and exasperated expression. The mark-making on the shirt is a little chunkier and more abstract.]

Inktober 2019, Day 24: Dizzy

Inktober 2019, Day 24, prompt word, "Dizzy." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen [Image description: The picture plane is broken into several overlapping strips containing different images, like a collage. It's a black and white pen drawing. In the main center image a man and woman hold hands as the man leads her down a narrow outdoor stairway in an old city, much like a back alley. Under their hands and arms is another image strip of beer and wine bottles, and over them bisecting the drawing diagonally is a thin strip showing a winding tree-lined two-lane highway viewed from above with a car on it. On the right another image shows a fancy old apartment building with a domed roof and electrical wires with birds on them, and on the left is another image of shadows from blinds in a dark room. In a thin strip near the top is a hand and iPhone on a black background.]

Inktober 2019, Day 23: Ancient

This is about spending nice time alone. I was mostly alone over this past Christmas, and did a lot of traditional stuff by myself. I wouldn't want to do that every year, but it was actually really nice. I don't have an actual fireplace, but I think that gets the "ancient" feeling across.

Inktober 2019, Day 23, prompt word, "Ancient." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: Black and white drawing of five duplicate versions of the same woman in a striped shirt and jeans hang out around a fireplace. The perspective is from inside the fireplace, and the top of the image is smoke and sparks around the mantle. The women hanging out look calm and relaxed, drinking tea, reading books, and leaning on each other. They're all lit by the fire in an otherwise dark space.]

Inktober 2019, Day 22: Ghost

I struggle with "less is more," especially with ink, so I was especially pleased with the light markmaking in the background of this.The marks on the shirt also look sculpted, which was a cool effect. This was, once again, the effect of poring over some old Anders Zorn drawings. I used a reference photo for the back of my own head, because believe it or not I don't see it that often.

Inktober 2019, Day 22, prompt word, "Ghost." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: black and white realistic drawing of a woman walking down a banal institutional hallway, perhaps of a school or hospital. The woman is viewed from the shoulders up to mid-skull, and from behind and to the side. Her other shoulder is out of frame. On the visible shoulder sits a tiny duplicate version of her, wearing the same striped shirt and hairdo, facing backward (toward the viewer and facing out of frame). She rests her face on her hand and looks bored. In the hallway background there is a doorway, an empty metal chair, and some fluorescent lights in a drop ceiling.]

Inktober 2019, Day 21: Treasure

I spent all day trying to think of what to draw for this and I just couldn't. I treasure a lot of things and people, but home and privacy, a place of my own in which to be a raging introvert, popped into my mind first and foremost.
Keenly aware that I was almost out of time for my Inktober drawing, I stole an idea from cartoonist Sempé of two lit windows across a city at night (although his was clearly meant to convey love and was highly two-dimensional and cartoonish in style). Then I used an old photo of Paris for reference and changed it very little in my drawing, except to scoot some buildings around and of course to add the lit windows. That's pretty rare for me, as I don't usually copy directly from photographs, especially photos I didn't take myself, and super-especially photos that are meant to be stand-alone pieces of art, as this old photo could possibly have been (as opposed to workhorse snapshots for some non-artistic purpose). Drawing from life is best, then next-best is from reference photos I've made for the purpose, then from video or gif that moves, or from a collection of photos that I can manipulate and combine to create something new, and then from crappy photos that are much improved by being turned into drawings. Anything else honestly feels like cheating. Stealing ideas, though, I'm okay with, as long as I have something of my own to add. Though I do prefer coming up with my own ideas entirely.
However, the Instagram public has spoken, and my least proud drawing turned out to be everyone else's favorite. Isn't it always that way? People are never impressed by what they ought to be.

Inktober 2019, Day 21, prompt word, "Treasure." India ink pen and ink wash, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: black and white ink wash drawing of a street corner in Paris, seen from above and to the side. Several fancy old apartment buildings with turrets, bay windows and wrought iron crowd the image, all lit from a street lamp below, and mostly in darkness. The horizon is dimly visible across the city's rooftops and chimneys. A window in a rooftop apartment is brightly lit up in the foreground, and in another building around the corner, a window in a middle floor with a balcony is also lit. The piece is overall very dark and moody and the lit windows jump out at the viewer.]

Inktober 2019, Day 20: Tread

This one seemed to have universal appeal on Instagram. Apparently everyone's cat does this.

Inktober 2019, Day 20, prompt word, "Tread." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: realistic black and white drawing of a cat standing on a woman's face as she lies in bed. The woman's face is all scrunched up where the paws are pushing her skin, and she is mostly expressionless with her eyes open and looking at the cat's face. The cat is black and its back and head are cut off beyond the edge of the page, except its nose and muzzle, which are pointed at the woman's face. The nose and whiskers are silhouetted against her black hair.]

Inktober 2019, Day 19: Sling

Inktober 2019, Day 19, prompt word, "Sling." Dip pen, ink wash, wax crayon, and gel pen, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: a view straight down a grocery store aisle at waist-level. Fluorescent lights shine overhead at regular intervals. Instead of a ceiling, there is a black galaxy full of stars with a cloudy milky way running down the center. The shopping cart flies off into the galaxy behind the fluorescent lights in one direction and a woman in jeans and a tee flies off in another, upside down in a limp position.]

Inktober 2019, Day 18: Misfit

Inktober 2019, Day 18, prompt word "Misfit." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: black and white drawing, slightly cartoonish but mostly realistic, of a homeless man. The perspective is from slightly above and almost fish-eye. He's sitting on the ground on some cardboard boxes, while a meaner, more aggressive duplicate of himself stands over him, grabbing his lapels and yelling. The duplicate is slightly see-through, with the tiles of the wall behind him showing through. Foreshortened well-dressed legs walk past in bottom quadrant of the drawing.]

Inktober 2019, Day 17: Ornament

A "Belvedere" is any structure that is designed to provide a nice view, from a gazebo to a castle. In warmer Italian climates they were usually open for ventilation, but as the trend moved North, they were purely ornamental. This is the Belvedere at a local Rococo palace. It looks across a wild field to a pond, across which lies the main castle. A flock of sheep still graze in the field.

Inktober 2019, day 17, prompt word, "Ornament." Ink pen, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen [Image description: simple, realistic black and white line drawing of an ornate three-story Rococo building surrounded by grass and trees. It has a large domed roof.]

Inktober 2019, Day 16: Wild

Another imaginary pseudo-Classical creature. I don't know where all this Classical influence came from this Inktober, since I'm not an especially big fan of ancient Greece or Rome. I think it might have been the day at the art museum in Barcelona that did it.

Inktober 2019, Day 16, prompt word "Wild." Dip pen and ink wash, 8 x 11 in., by Ciana Pullen. [Image Description: realistic black and white pen drawing of the head of a roaring lion. Instead of a mane it has hair-like snakes, like Medusa. The snakes are coiled in a way that echoes the movement of the lion's head as he roars.]

Inktober 2019, Day 15: Legend

The idea for this drawing popped into my head fully formed, apparently straight from my subconscious with no provocation. I'd like to see these creatures in motion. They seemed like they should be vaguely Viking or Celtic, so I did a little research on how those folks looked. Then I looked up weight lifters so I could get an idea of fat(ish) but strong bodies. The Vikings from TV and movies all had Hollywood type bodies, but I just couldn't imagine someone with Megan Fox's physique popping out of the top of a walrus. This is actually an issue I have with The Little Mermaid as well. Every other sea mammal has a nice thick blubber layer, and so should she.

Inktober 2019, Day 15, prompt word "Legend." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image Description: A crowd of walrus centaurs (human on top, walrus on bottom) holding lit torches crowds a beach. The atmosphere is darkish and misty. They appear to be rallying. A male is in the foreground with a beard and man-bun and a few markings painted on his chest, face and shoulder. A female is just behind him with a shaved head except for a braided mohawk. The figures behind them are blurrier. Two centaurs holding torches recline on a rocky outcropping in the background.]

Inktober 2019, Day 14: Overgrown

I recently visited Barcelona and spent the day at the Museo National de Catalunya; I think the armless classical statues stuck in my mind and produced this drawing.

Inktober 2019, Day 14, prompt word "Overgrown." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image Description: black and white pen drawing of a Classical Greek style bust of a woman. Her arms are cut off at the shoulders, as many sculptures are, and a cluster of around six extra hands is growing out of each of her shoulders. She has a simple crown or headpiece, like Diana. The background is blank.]

Inktober 2019, Day 13: Ash

I was a bit tired from doing landscapes and complex compositions at this point, so I just wanted to bust out a fun portrait. I broke my "personally relevant" rule and drew Ash from the Evil Dead, as did quite a few other people. There is no meaningful or symbolic link from Evil Dead to my life and I won't try to make one, but I did watch the first season of the recent TV series reboot Ash vs Evil Dead. It was great, I was impressed that they managed to recapture the B-movie magic after so much time had passed, Ash was considerably older, new characters were added, the format was different, and they had a bigger budget and the expectations of "cult classic" to fulfill. I didn't watch the second season though, it was just SO gory and I'm not a fan of horror in the first place. Plus there was an evil puppet in the Season 2 trailor, so I took that as my cue to leave.
This is drawn straight from a film still, though I did add the blood spatters. It seemed a little naked without them. There just wasn't enough room for his chainsaw-hand.

Bruce Campbell as Ash from Evil Dead. Inktober 2019, Day 13, prompt word "Ash." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image Description: Black and white pen drawing of Bruce Campbell's head and shoulders. He's grimacing or straining very intensely as blood spatters fly past his face. The background is blank.]

Inktober 2019, Day 12: Dragon

Inktober 2019, Day 12, prompt word "Dragon." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11. by Ciana Pullen. [Image Description: black and white pen drawing of a subway train plunging underwater. The front of the train reads, S41 Ring. Its headlights illuminate the dark bottom third of the image. Bubbles flank the train, up to the surface of the water, where the ripple effect of the water's surface viewed from underwater is drawn in wavy groups of lines. Another section of the train dips into and out of the water further back, like a snake or the Loch Ness Monster.]

Inktober 2019, Day 11: Snow

I saw this exact scene while walking in Berlin last year and managed to recreate it exactly using photos from The Weather Channel and memory. It was fun trying to create the "flurry" effect of snowflakes in front of car headlights. I think the drawing ended up "sounding quiet," like real snow does. It's my favorite from my Inktober drawings.

Inktober 2019, Day 11, prompt word "Snow." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: black and white pen drawing of a cityscape and traffic with heavy snowfall. The viewer is positioned at the edge of a sidewalk looking down a tree-lined street. Two cars and a bus drive in the viewer's direction with headlights illuminating snowflakes. The background is blurred out in snowflakes except a few glowing street lamps. The entire composition is made of little groups of lines that mimic the snowflakes.]

Inktober 2019, Day 10: Pattern

I drew this from a snapshot of my husband traveling in a dangling cable car. The crosshatching on his skin turned out more humdrum than I'd have preferred, though still perfectly satisfactory, but I did achieve some fun pattern with his beard, hair and shirt collar.

Inktober 2019, Day 10, prompt word "Pattern." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image descripton: black and white realistic pen drawing of a man peering upward, shown from his shoulders up. The line of his collarbone to the crown of his head cross the page from bottom left top right, and his shoulders create an X shape. The background is blank.]

Inktober 2019, Day 9: Swing

This image popped into my head as a result of wanting to portray "chaos." Astute readers may be realizing that, after the giant floating cat and bust of Victory, my rule to "keep it personally relevant" was not something I took literally. I'm sad to say that actual goats on actual trapeezes are not a part of my life, while chaos is. I did break my rule, though, at least twice toward the end of the month-long challenge out of exhaustion and unwillingness to do any more brainstorming or emoting.
For this drawing I'm pleased to say I learned to draw goats from every angle. I'd never tried drawing one, I simply assumed I could. I failed the first time, and much goat Pinteresting followed. Now my Pinterest feed is full of goats.
Still high on the atmospheric linework success of the previous drawing with the balloon, I added the shaded circus ring below and immediately regretted it. It took forever and looked worse, obscuring the black goat's butt, which was one of my favorites of the goat butts. So, I might pick this drawing back up at some point with the goats only, swinging through negative space. 

Inktober 2019, Day 9, prompt word "Swing." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image Description: black and white pen drawing showing an aerial perspective of six goats in a disorganized jumble swinging on a single trapeze, one goat swinging from a rope by its teeth, one goat on the ground below and one either falling or jumping. In the background is one corner of the edge of the circus ring. The goat swinging by its teeth is a direct reference to a favorite painting by Degas of an acrobat swinging from her teeth at the circus.]

Inktober 2019, Day 8: Frail

I was very satisfied with the way the background linework turned out in this. I tend to go high contrast and get the darks to be very dark, but I was looking at some drawings (or etchings?) by Anders Zorn and wanted to try some more hazy, atmospheric effects with ink. I used a few photos of a local Rococo building and some hazy photos of New York in the early 1900s to cobble together some references but I didn't draw this from a photograph.

Inktober 2019, Day 8, prompt word "Frail." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: realistic black and white pen drawing of an outdoor scene at night or twilight in a hazy rainy atmosphere. In the foreground is a dirt or gravel path with a big puddle, and a leafless tree branch with two tangled balloons dangling near the ground and blowing around. One is popped. In the background is a hazy domed Rococo building with lit windows reflected in the puddle. A formal hedge and row of trees, stretches from the building toward the viewer.]