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.

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.

Playing with Spectrum Noir and Copic markers this morning.

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.

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.

@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.

I'm gearing up for Inktober 2020 by doing some redraws of my sketches from Inktober 2018 (the first time I took part). I wanted to see how things have progressed in the last 2 years since I've developed a better drawing habit and worked with ink much more. Plus I wanted to give myself more time and space to work with the same subjects. I picked this fan art piece of Harry because the original sketch was the last drawing I made before trying and switching to a brush pen (instead of felt and technical pens). I love looking at these two and seeing how my rendering style calmed down and stopped being so busy. Basically, practice really pays off!

Final defeated the Inktober 52 color month!

Back into the contest after a year! Gonna try to do this every month moving forward to build up my portfolio.

Here's what I did for the second month of Inktober 52. What did everyone else come up with?

Week 5: Balloon

Week 6: Hammer

Week 7: Dinner

Week 8: Spider

@Gaelle-Grizzly I love how ticked off your fairy is.

I use Todoist to block out my days, and BeFocusedPro to clock my work. I really like both of them because I have them synced between my computer in the office, computer at home, and my phone, so I can stay on schedule wherever I'm working. For larger projects or series, I'll use Trello to break things down into smaller tasks, catalogue notes, and track progress.

@idid My personal take is that if you're not using ink/digital ink, then you're not really taking part in Inktober, just capitilizing off the increased exposure the hashtag would get you. I kinda see it like if there was a football art challenge, but you posted a series of baseball drawings using the #footballartchallenge tag, because you figured that "Hey, they're sports fans too, so they'll totally dig my stuff."

@Nyrryl-Cadiz This is going to be so great!

@jimsz Awesome - thanks for the clarification!

@jimsz Yes - you are correct. Other than my "copyright protected" flub, we're in full agreement. However, I still haven't been able to find a webpage encouraging the use of the logo, even using Archive.org. One thing that I haven't been able to easily clear up, but you may be able to, is whether trademarks extend backward. Meaning, would artworks for sale using the Inktober name or branding be in violation if they were produced before the filing or registration date?

Since these are a different style than I usually share on the forum, I'll provide a little backstory. This week will be the first time that my full team will be back in the office in 6 months, so this weekend, I decide to make my 4 co-workers Ninja Turtle portraits as desk-warming gifts. I've been a graphic designer for the last 12 years, so I don't really feel like I'm firing on all creative cylinders unless I'm in a groove, jumping between hand drawn and digital, Illustrator and Photoshop, design and illustration. Now that this is out of my system, I'm ready to jump back on the brush pen and knock out my Ink Fairy for the contest!

@Jacy13 Thank you!

@chrisaakins I think it looks cool. The only note I'd give is that there's a little too much negative space at the top.

@jimsz Whether trademarked or copyright protected, the Inktober site is fairly clear: "Please don’t use the INKTOBER logo, unless you have written permission or license to do so." Since the Standard Character Mark covers all uses of the word trademarked, regardless of how it looks, I think it's safe to say that extends to the logo by default.