Inktober 2018, Day 1 "Poisonous"

I mentioned that I wasn't able to scan the first Inktober image because it was too large. So I photographed it and I'm finally posting it now.

Day 1 of Inktober, prompt word "Poisonous." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 1 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Poisonous." Dip pen and ink. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: a black and white ink drawing with ink washes. A black rectangle covers most of the page, set to the bottom left of center. Inside that frame is an ambulance with open doors, viewed from the back looking straight in, slightly from below. A stretcher sits halfway out of the ambulance. A man floats or flies out of the ambulance slightly above the viewer and his head extends out of the black frame at the top left. He has two heads; one looks back at the ambulance, troubled, and the other looks straight ahead, determined. He holds a backpack. The interior of the ambulance is very brightly lit, and one door opens beyond the black frame. The dual light sources make the face very high contrast.]

Inktober 2018, Day 19 "Scorched"

Day 19 of Inktober, prompt word "Scorched." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 19 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Scorched." I drew this to look like a solarized photograph (I drew from a normal cell phone photo which is grainy enough to leave something to the imagination). To make a solarized print in a photo lab, you expose the film onto paper, then put the paper in developer. Just as the image starts to develop you take it out and scorch the photosensitive silver salts with bright light for a few seconds, then continue developing the print as usual. You end up with a psychadelic quicksilver negative effect. Dip pen and ink. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: black and white shaded portrait of a man leaning and looking intently out of frame. Where the darkest areas of his face would be, they are instead flipped and a bit marbleized.]

Inktober 2018, Day 18 "Bottle"

Instead of a finished piece for Day 18 I made a video. "Einwegsflaschen" in German means disposable bottles that cannot be recycled. Literally, "one way bottles." The drawing is of Bernini's famous "The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa," and the story is a Buddhist parable but I can't remember the source.

Day 18 of Inktober, prompt word "Bottle." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

[Video description: Title reads, "Einwegsflaschen (Disposable Bottles)." A bottle is picked up off a piece of paper and then, in fast-forward speed, a close up of a pen nib draws a loose sketch of Bernini's famous sculpture, "The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa," which is a sculpture of an angle holding a cloaked woman as she reclines and holding an arrow that is poised to pierce her heart. Her face looks orgasmic and/or overwhelmed. The pen writes the words, "The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa," then draws an arrow into her heart. Then a dropper drops water onto the image, causing the ink to run. A hand then smears it all over and the result is a drawing with a messy ink wash over it. The pen begins writing over the image, and superimposed script reads "Once upon a time there was a rain drop who was afraid to fall because when he hit he would be obliterated. But he discovered that when he fell into the ocean it did not swallow him up. Instead he opened up and swallowed the ocean." Then a little bottle shape is torn out of the page and the paper is held up to the light that shines through the bottle-shaped hole.]

Inktober2018 Day 17 "Swollen"

Day 17 of Inktober, prompt word "Swollen." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 17 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Swollen." Dip pen and ink. By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. There is ALWAYS this guy on public transport (and on a few memorable occasions, this woman). Still, overall Berlin has public transit has felt safer than Washington, DC., and Charleston, SC., public transit. Beer is allowed and commonplace in public, so there's more of a gradation between "normal" people, those traversing a particularly belligerent stage of puberty, sports fans, and That Guy. In Berlin the fights and shadiness almost never involve others so long as you stare at the wall pretending HARD that nothing is happening (and of course everybody does that). Whereas in the US the first thing the trouble-maker does usually is try to involve everyone around them. Though we did have a few knife-ings throughout Germany and a group of dudes kicked some lady down the stairs here in Berlin; but let's be real, that wouldn't have even made the local news in the US it's so common.  [Image description: black and white realistic drawing of a long seat on a subway car viewed face-on. On the right sits a big slovenly man with a beer leaning against his duffle bag taking up a lot of space on the bench seat, looking out of frame to the right and shouting with his mouth wide open at nothing in particular. On the left is a smaller woman cramped into the corner as far as possible away from him, looking away and to the lower left through a glass partition. Her ankles are crossed and her purse is bundled onto her lap; her hands are clutched. Windows, hanging loopy straps that you're meant to grab onto when the train is moving, and several bars are also visible. The scene is lit harshly with overhead lights and the drawing is high contrast; the linework is scratchy, giving it an overall gritty, slightly cartoony feeling.]

Inktober 2018 Day 16 "Angular"

Day 16 of Inktober, prompt word "Angular." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 16 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Angular." Drawn in the mirror. Dip pen and ink. By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: black and white sketch of the head and shoulders of a woman (me). Her head is turned to the left in profile and the viewer's eye level is collarbone height, so the neck is central to the image. A big neck muscle is central to the piece, drawn as a big black vertical line traversing most of the piece. The linework is very sketchy and bold. Angular measurement lines break the piece up into planes. The planes of the face and neck are also geometrically simplified, and the directional shading lines also are planar and angular. Round facial features, head hair, nape of neck hair and shirt collar intersect the straight angular lines of the skeleton and neck. Not a cartoony style; realistic but sketchy.]

Inktober 2018 Day 15 "Weak"

Day 15 of Inktober, prompt word "Weak." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 15 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Weak." Drawn in the mirror (except the goat head and bottomless abyss, obviously, those I image-searched online). Dip pen and ink. By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. This is meant to capture that feeling in the throat and chest when you feel like you want to cry, but you either don't have the energy or privacy to do so. [Image description: black and white finely shaded drawing of a woman's head and chest. There is a goat head awkwardly squeezed under her chin emerging from her neck, stacked like a totem pole. There is a black hole or nebula filling the space of her upper torso. The top of her head extends off the top left of the page and she looks down at the viewer with a slack face. There is blank white background space in the upper right and mostly blackish space around the nebula filling the silhouette of her chest and shoulders.]

Inktober 2018 Day 14 "Clock"

Day 14 of Inktober, prompt word "Clock." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 14 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Clock." Text reads, "Heliotropism-- Sunflowers turn toward the sun as it moves across the sky." by CIana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Dip pen and ink. [Image description: In the upper left corner are two standing bare legs visible from the back, from the calves down. Radiating from the feet are several overlapping shadows which extend across the upper page, diagonally down to the lower right, and straight down, all ending out of frame and differently proportioned like shadows on a sun dial. In the bottom third are three sunflowers, one on a stalk with leaves facing away from the viewer, the middle sunflower without a stalk facing skyward and tipped toward the viewer, and the third facing the viewer almost full-on. The placement implies it's the same flower on a stalk changing position throughout the day. Superimposed over the stalk and leaves is a white rectangle outlined in black containing handwritten cursive script that reads, "Heliotropism-- Sunflowers turn toward the sun as it moves across the sky."]

Inktober 2018 Day 13 "Guarded"

Day 13 of Inktober, prompt word "Guarded." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 13 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Guarded," showing a minotaur in a labyrinth. By Ciana Pullen. [Image description: black and white ink drawing with light sepia brown washes in a realistic comic style. A bored naked woman with hairy legs and giant horns sits in a massive armchair reading a magazine and drinking tea. The chair has a shaggy fur hide draped over the seat, bull's hooves for legs, and the front of each arm is studded with a massive taxidermied animal paws (lion? demon?) clutching a human skull. The minotaur has her legs crossed and the magazine which she is thumbing through is balanced on her knee, her legs are crossed and she's absent-mindedly dangling a human skull from her toe by the eye socket like people do with sandals. Her other hand is lazily holding a big tea cup sitting on the arm of the chair. The scene is dramatically uplit from an unseen light source in the bottom right hand corner and a sliver of backlighting. In the upper left background a few corners of the maze are visible and a faraway second minotaur figure is walking, not toward the first minotaur.]

Inktober 2018 Day 12 "Whale"

Day 12 of Inktober, prompt word "Whale." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 12 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "whale," after a painting by Mary Cassatt. This was my second attempt, at first I sketched out an interior scene of my own invention but it didn't have the right mood and looked too... invented. When I realized I wanted it to have the feel of Mary Cassat's painting, I decided to simply copy the painting and add my whale under the watery floor. I always thought the big blue sofas looked like they were floating in an ocean in the original. [Image description: black and white ink wash painting of a living room with several overstuffed skirted sofas and chairs in it at odd angles. In the chair closest to the viewer sits a little girl, bored and slumped back with her feet dangling. Instead of a floor, there is the surface of water with little ripples. The black shadow of a whale swims through the living room toward the viewer and underneath the chair the child sits on.]

Inktober 2018 Day 11 "Cruel"

Day 11 of Inktober, prompt word "Cruel." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 11 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Cruel." By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Dip pen and ink. [Image description: a black and white line drawing on a white background. On the left is a large figure that appears as if it's assembled out of several pieces collaged together. It's head is a giant screaming infant head, it has one naked beefy arm and muscular pectoral clenched in a fist, its body and other arm is in a black cartoonish business suit, and one of its feet is a white foot in a sandal that looks like a Roman sculpture. To its right on the bottom of the page is a black square with a small upside-down figure drawn inside with its extremities extending outside of the black frame. It has a baby's body and an elephant's head that is turned to look toward the screaming baby figure. Standing en pointe on top of the black square is another figure with a large baby's head (or doll's head) in profile looking calmly at the larger screaming figure, with 5 ballerina legs attached directly to the head. Each leg wears pointe shoes and is lifted in ballet attitude except one which extends down and balances on the black square. Four diagonal lines stretch across the top of the piece over the screaming baby's face and converge in the eye of the ballet feet figure, like rays of light refracting from a prism or lines radiating out from a central point. The overall look of the pieces is clean and graphic.]

Inktober Day 10 "Flowing"

Day 10 of Inktober, prompt word "Flowing." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 10 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Flowing." by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Dip pen and ink. [Image description: a black and white line drawing of a bathtub in the middle of some ocean waves, with a person in the bathtub looking out. The waves are medium-large, made up of flowing black lines that are loosely drawn. The bathtub is full of soap foam, with a dollop of foam on the bather's head. Only her head and shoulders are visible as she clutches the bathtub. Her facial expression is dismayed and confused. The bathtub and bather are also somewhat loosely and simply drawn. Above the flat waterline at the horizon near the upper edge of the image are little puffy clouds and a flock of birds.]

Inktober 2018 Day 9 "Precious"

Day 9 of Inktober, prompt word "Precious." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 9 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Precious." by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. I drew this out in black ink over a light yellow-orange mottled watercolor wash, then digitally reversed the colors so it was bright lines over a dark mottled blue/purple background. Then I made the bright lines a bit more yellowish than white to make it look less like an architectural blueprint. The eyes in circles I left un-reversed, but changed the colors slightly to blend with the rest of the image. [Image description: a mystical tarot card-like design drawn in pale yellow over a blueish black background. The linework is spare with little shading. In the center frame a large pomegranate sits on a dock that stretches symmetrically away from the viewer into a body of water. A section of the pomegranate is peeled with the flesh and seeds exposed. Directly above the end of the dock are two cupped hands with three circles lined up vertically superimposed above the hands. In each circle is an eye; the up looks up and to the left, the middle looks down and to the right, the bottom is closed. To the right of the hands superimposed above the waterline and sky is a glowing set of abstract symbols including wings, a moon and some dangling mobile-like circles and lines. Glow lines radiate out from the symbol a short distance. On the left of the hands a towering wave rises out of the water and curls up over the hands. The stylized wave design is reminiscent of the famous Japanese woodcut print by Hiroshige. In the outer rectangular frame are, the wave extends beyond the inner frame. A string of stars and stardust on the bottom left and upper right outer frame areas bookend the middle framed area.]

Inktober 2018 Day 8 "Star"

Day 8 of Inktober, prompt word "Star." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 8 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Star." by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Dip pen and ink. I'm pretty happy with this, but if I had this to do over again (and who knows, maybe I will), I'd make it at least twice as large so that I could get a finer gradation of black and white. I wanted the figures to pop less, to blend into the night sky a little more with the direction and texture of markmaking setting them apart rather than a distinct white outline. I'd also make the faces a little less cartoony. I wanted to capture that wild-eyed look that prey gets in the last seconds before its capture, but instead I got more of a "ruh-roh!" expression. This might be one to try again if I'm ever in a particularly obsessive mood for hours on end. [Image description: Black and white drawing of stars in the night sky. Stars are small white twinkly shapes, while the black space in between is a flowing texture of black lines very close to each other. In the center part of the black space between the stars, a lion is closing in on an antelope. The antelope is running toward the viewer with the lion right behind it, looking back at the lion in horror. Both animals are made of the same linework texture as the rest of the black space. But the eyes, teeth and claws are white.]

Inktober 2018 Day 7 "Exhausted"

Day 7 of Inktober, prompt word "Exhuasted." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 7 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Exhausted." I was happy with the previous two drawings, but I felt my actual drawing was too uptight. So for this one I drew laundry because it doesn't need to be exact or precise like a human figure, and tried to just have fun with markmaking. I'm especially happy with the socks on the top and the hem of the jeans on the bottom. By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Dip pen and ink. [Image description: black and white line drawing of a teetering pile of folded laundry. Some of it is loose contour drawing, some is a variety of markmaking and patterns.]

Inktober 2018 Day 6, "Drooling"

Day 6 of Inktober, prompt word "Drooling." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 6 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Drooling." Dip pen and ink. [Image description: black and white realistic line drawing of a woman in a striped shirt dragging a much larger version of herself. The small woman is straining. The large woman is limp and drooling profusely; her slack face is visible in the foreground.]

Inktober Day 5 "Chicken"

Day 5 of Inktober, prompt word "Chicken." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 5 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Chicken," by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Ink with dip pen. [Image description: black and white realistic style drawing with shading and crosshatching. The top half is a man's face, turned 3/4 toward shadow and looking back over his shoulder in horror with bulging eyes. The bottom, where a mustache would be, is instead 8 or so human legs attached under his nose, running to the right and away from the viewer, kicking up a cloud of dust.]

Inktober Day 4 "Spell"

Day 4 of Inktober, prompt word "Spell." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 4 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Spell," by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Dip pen and ink wash. I'm happy with the image, it's basically what I envisioned; but I realized at this point in the challenge that drawing in this style is the biggest time investment with the least amount of visual payoff for me. I always think cartooning will make me draw looser, but in fact it's the opposite. My style is loosest, simplest and most honest when I'm aiming at realism. Good to know, and just one reason I'm glad I participated in Inktober this year. [Image description: a cartoonish black and white drawing with ink wash in the style of The New Yorker cartoons (that was an accident). It's a view straight down the hallway of a bland modern hospital, from slightly above eye level. A bored nurse in scrubs walks along the ground pushing a cart. Meanwhile patients float near the ceiling. In the close foreground only a man's belly, feet, and one hand holding a cup of tea are visible. In the middle-ground a woman in a wheelchair floats with the top of her head pointed toward the viewer. Just behind her a man floats with his back to the viewer looking at the ground, like a pathetic version of a famous heavenly figure in the Sistine Chapel. They float just under fluorescent lights and are in shadow; they also cast shadows on the shiny floor that stretch toward the viewer. Extra shadows hint that there are more floating patients behind the wheelchair lady, out of view.]

Inktober, day 3 "Roasted"

Day 3 of the Inktober challenge which I previously wrote about here. The prompt word is, "roasted."

Day 3 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Roasted." Sadly my scanner struggles to reproduce the color of the highlighters I used; the original is black & white ink with neon orange (pink and yellow) highlighter ink. [Image description: realistic-cartoonish drawing with ink wash of a man and woman walking down a street. The man has his head down, the woman looks at him worried, they're holding hands. They walk in front of a wrought iron fence and residence with a window. It's black and white with a grid-like appearance because of the architecture. Superimposed and offset at a -30 degree angle is an orange line drawing of a nuclear bomb exploding and the man covering his face. The drawing extends beyond the borders of the black & white image.]

Inktober, day 2 "Tranquil"

I'm participating in an online drawing challenge called Inktober, where you challenge yourself to complete one drawing per day in ink throughout October and post it online. There is an official list of creative prompt words which people can choose to use, and I am, because it's fun to see what everyone else did for that prompt. Participation is completely casual and chaotic, so judging from Instagram I think around 4,000 people are doing it. The point is simply to improve your skills and motivation while finding community in an otherwise lonely discipline.

I've been posting low-quality phone camera pictures on my Instagram account @St.Rhinoceros but I finally scanned some drawings in and edited them. I'm starting with Day 2 here because I stupidly drew Day 1 so large that it won't fit on my scanner which means I have to photograph it with perfect ambient light that won't leave a gradient (and it ALWAYS leaves a gradient). I'm not in the mood to do that right now. So here is Day 2, prompt word "tranquil":

Sketch for Day 2 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "tranquil." This is my husband and I relaxing in the Schlosspark in Berlin, a huge garden behind a restored Baroque palace called Schloss Charlottenburg. The garden adjacent to the palace is strictly formal in the Baroque style, while the rest is a wooded area around a winding river in the Victorian style of Frederick Law Olmstead with the occasional Italianate formal area around a sculpture. A resident flock of sheep move from field to field and keep the lawn areas under control without mowing them. It's in the middle of the city but so quiet. [Image description: a black and white pen sketch of a landscape with a large tree on the left with sunlight filtering through its leaves, a ribbon of river in the middle with a reflection of the trees and shrubbery, and a riverbank on the right with trees and a sculpture that are illuminated by rays of sunlight flowing diagonally from left to right. A row of formal evergreens cuts the composition horizontally at the waterline in the bottom third. Under the tree on the left in the mid-foreground a couple of people lie on the ground on a blanket sleeping or looking up at the sky. The style is somewhat academic but looser.]