Inktober 52 - 2021, 16

I mainly thought, might as well, you know? Occasionally I do feel the need to sketch something, but usually I contain it to the rough and kinda messy pencil sketches I've already shown once, but rarely ever get to the details, or colours. It's been a while since I've touched coloured pencils. I've never really had the patience for anything more than shading, so no colours needed, but I always thought working on details is actually kinda fun, once the surplus lines I need to get my proportions right are erased. I just never liked erasing things, as stupid of a reason as that is. Either way, there's this thing called "Inktober", something like an annual challenge that provides one keyword for each day in October. I'm unfortunately a little slow, so one piece a day, even for a month doesn't really work for me, also October to me is usually exam seasons, so time is scarce. I think the idea is pretty fun, but Inktober proper is a little too stressful for me. Instead, Inktober has provided an alternative, presumably for people like me. Inktober 52 provides one keyword per week to serve as inspiration and how delighted I was to see that for this week, the word was "Stand".

Now, I've yet to really get into JoJo, but as a moderately online person, it's still the most iconic immediate association I have with the word Stand. So JoJo Fanart it is.

I distinctly remember Super Eyepatch Wolf's video essay on character design, wherein he deconstructs Jōtarō Kūjō's design elements, and that hat/hair thing seems fun, so I thought I might do him along with Star Platinum. It's one of the less outlandish designs running around in the world of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, so it'll still be more or less in my ball-park. My personal art style is however not particularly close to Araki's, but I'm not above borrowing certain signature traits, specifically the lips and lines indicating cheekbones. I myself am probably not going to use them much, but it just doesn't look like JoJo's if they're left out.

This is the pencil sketch I got so far. It's a lot cleaner than most sketches I do, and in exchange I've made a mess of my desk. Oh well. I guess I'll have to remember to put down some paper next time. That month of hands I did previously also paid off, considering hands feature quite prominently here. This rendition of Jōtarō seems maybe a wee bit slender compared to the original, but that's not getting corrected this time. Shading and clothing texture still need to be done, and if this Inktober thing shakes out well, I might convince myself to use inks for the line-art eventually - and maybe even some colour.

Okay, so looking at the Inktober website, I notice that I've looked at last year's Inktober chart. I really like the prompts on that one though, I think I'm gonna stick with those. Also, for some reason the prompts are now only available via Instagram. I don't love that decision, but it probably helps them build a social media presence, and if that helps, I can't fault them for that. Either way, things being as they are means that I will either have to look for reddit posts keeping me updated on prompts later than November 2021, or do some of my usual internet stuff to maybe sneak a peek at their Instagram. I'm not making an account for this though, mainly because Facebook can suck something non-descript.

I may or may not have mentioned that sketching and drawing are very occasional hobbies of mine, far behind other activities. It follows that I don't really carry a lot of utensils in service of that hobby. Specifically, I carry one pencil. Specifically specifically, this mechanical pencil.

I do occasionally get more advanced stuff from friends and family, but I keep misplacing them, because using them is such a commitment on my part. That being said, my shading does somewhat show the stroke direction.

In general, I think I'm reasonably happy with this. I did kinda cut corners with Star Platinum's amazing hair. What I do think is a little regrettable is my very rarely paying attention to clothing in my drawings. I do want to eventually get to the point, where the clothing doesn't look as stiff, and the fact that Star Platinum wears very little was quite beneficial to the overall composition on my part. Either way, this was a positive experience and took two decently lengthy sessions, well within reasonable time for me to fulfill. I guess regular Inktober would have been no issue, if I were prepared to put four hours of my day into it. Which, for the record: I'm not. I'm too bad at studying to be prepared to do that, paradoxically. Maybe if I can speed my line-art and shading up to twice my current speed, I might attempt it, but until then, I'll stick to this version.