Inktober is the perfect excuse to explore ink as an artist's material and develop your skills with this wonderful medium. This week, I'll be sharing the drawings for the final two IOMNJ ink-drawing prompts, celebrating the value of being brave and making mistakes, and sharing some of the latest artwork to make its way onto the IOMNJ map.
One of the worst and the best things about ink drawing is the difficulty in removing or changing marks if you make a mistake. Sometimes, this can make you feel scared to draw and I often struggle to get the first marks down, even with a light pencil drawing underneath. In fact, starting is often the hardest part of creating an artwork so the added pressure of using a permanent medium can be quite disabling. Learning to be brave and finding success with those initial marks helps you gain confidence, and dealing with mistakes makes you a more creative and adaptive artist. In this way, being brave and learning to embrace mistakes is an important part of developing in art, just as it is in any area of life.
In the Glen Maye waterfall drawing below, I spent much of the early part of the drawing fighting the urge to stop as I was scared I would make a mistake. This is despite having drawn this subject in a previous ink drawing and been successful. I think it's in our nature to doubt ourselves and to achieve much in life, we often need to ignore this inner, negative voice. At times, I did feel I had made a mark in a place I wasn't happy with, but as this picture needs quite a lot of shading, I was able to either hide the unwanted marks, or balance it with marks elsewhere.
Visit the IOMNJ Facebook page to see the video of this drawing being created.
The Ramsey Bay drawing (for the 'beach' prompt, set in the blog post here) was much more difficult to deal with mentally, as I'd never drawn a beach in ink before and was very unsure of how and where to add shading. The drawing also didn't require heavy shading and so there was less opportunity to hide mistakes. My initial marks were quite light and tentative and it was only when I became brave and let my creativity flow in a more confident way that the drawing really started to take shape. I was drawing this picture next to the Glen Maye drawing with the aim of creating a larger work but I was only able to become more confident by telling myself that it was a practice piece and that it didn't matter if I messed it up.
An article by ArtsHub (click here) discusses the importance of courage in creative artists in a wider sense. It's interesting to see how people working across a range of art careers all fight similar psychological battles and the article even argues that courage may be one of the most important qualities for success in the arts. I know I'll continue to battle self-doubt but will reap the rewards when I'm brave.
We've been very lucky to have some wonderful artwork sent in by both brave and talented artists, to include on the IOMNJ map. Susie Heckles certainly isn't scared of a challenge as she created a collage of Glen Rushen using pages from the local paper. It worked out wonderfully and is a great example of how setting ourselves a challenge can lead to great creativity and beautiful successes. Debra Tracey works in the medium of glass, which is a challenge in itself. She achieves great beauty in her work by being brave enough to take on challenging subjects with intricate shapes, like the gorse flower in the piece below. Debra also took part in Inktober by drawing a picture for each prompt throughout the month. This is quite a feat but has generated some wonderful art, such as the ink drawing for the 'map' prompt, in which she drew a picture of her favourite place in the world - the Isle of Man, of course! Take a look at the gallery below or see if you can find them on the IOMNJ map here.
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