It's been awesome seeing everyone's entries! Here's mine. I wanted to approach this illustration as an extension of my Inktober 52 series - just my brush pen and linework (with a little digital cleanup right at the end ;))

Oh, and I forgot to share my favorite piece that I worked on this year. It was this Adventureland poster, because it let me define a new detailed, retro style for myself in vector, while limiting myself to 7 colors. Also hippos.

The first time I did Inktober, I did daily sketches and stuck to the prompt list, so this year, I wanted to try something different. I chose to challenge myself in multiple ways: create one scene for the entirety of Inktober, make it so that all the characters have to interact with each other, and work traditionally (meaning that I wouldn't have the option of drawing the characters separatly and pasting them together, or undoing my way out of layout or rendering mistakes). Since that seemed like a difficult enough task, I decided to make it a fan art piece, and went with the Battle of Hogwarts. Maybe 3 Point Perspective's running gag of using a civil war battle scene as an example played some part in that decision.

I like Jake's rule of planning 3 uses for each piece of art, so 1) this is my piece for Inktober, 2) I will be painting it for Slowvember (I'm drawing it on 300 lb watercolor paper), and 3) I'll used a scanned version of the final drawing and the traditional painting as a guide to paint the piece digitally as well.

Here's the progress for Week 1, Days 1-4:

Painted this piece for an exhibition this coming weekend at a local gallery in Dallas. Love working traditionally, and I'm focused on finding more avenues to do so this year.

Here's my first time posting to the forums! I made this little big guy in response to the "breakable" prompt for Inktober. I had a blast getting away from the computer and getting my hands on real ink and watercolors.

Playing with Spectrum Noir and Copic markers this morning.

The final drawing!

Finally able to get to a project where I need to create groups of animals for 9 posters, and just completed the first group tonight. Also, I think sometimes you just have to illustrate a happy pig.

Alright, things are starting to fill out and come together. Here's the progress through Week 2, Days 5-11.

@NessIllustration This video from Moloch is excellent, and features a straight-forward, level headed analysis of Alphonso's accusations, and ultimately previews (in my opinion) the arguments that Chronicle will make if this matter ever ends up in court. This whole situation has been disheartening and frustrating, not only for the specific issue (an inappropriate and premature accusation of plagiarism), but for these general points as well:

• It seems that most artists and fans don't understand what plagiarism, copyright, and trademark actually are in legal terms (especially when you add in the previous uproar over Jake's trademarking of Inktober).
• The desire to feel righteously angry is more important to a large amount of people than the desire to take the time and study whether your anger is actually right.
• How quickly some will play the race card online.
• And, unfortunately, how so many artists lack a firm understanding of art education, art history, graphic design and book layout, and just business in general.

None of those points are particularly shocking, but, like I said above, that makes them no less frustrating and disheartening.

@Kyran-Weir Oh, I think etchy-broken linework is great, and definitely fits with the style. If I was to tweek anything in this piece, I'd take a look at the collar area. The neck kinda flows into the collar on the right side, and I'm not exacely sure how the tie is supposed to be overlapping itself (at the end where it is bending up). I think they style is fun and solid, and I love the energy and stress in the character.

@Kyran-Weir Welcome! You've created a really fun character here. Are there any specifics that you'd like feedback on, like construction or rendering?

@Lee-White Fantastic, and thanks for the info!

I wanted to make a purely hand-pencilled piece in a kid lit style for my portfolio and I'm happy with how she turned out.

Done! This was really fun to make. If I were to make this into a print, I think I'd go in with a digital pencil and get some more of the darker lines in there. But for a purely hand-drawn piece, I'm really happy with it.

Linework and details are done. Now I just need to lay in the shadows, the water, 6b pencil to reinforce the dark ends, and a little white pencil for highlights.

@Asyas_illos Thank you! I’m aiming to finish it tomorrow (fingers crossed).

Taking my time and enjoying filling in the linework and detail, which will give me the opportunity to figure out what racoon back legs look like before I get to them

Update! The last week was much busier than I expected (plus I think I'm being overly cautious because this is the first time I'm finishing a piece in graphite in forever), but I finally got some time this morning to focus. I've finished lightly sketching in the the main forms/details over an even lighter sketch of the underlying structure. I've been using a dulled HB pencil to keep myself from going too dark and definitive too early. Next step will be going over this darker and sharper to get the line work down.

@ChrisConnor This is such a great idea!