For the past two years, my month of October has been filled with ink drawings.
Inktober was designed to create good artistic habits through the act of drawing every day for a month. The reason for using ink is its unforgiving nature. There’s no erasing, so the process can be difficult knowing every stroke of the pen is permanent.
I decided to go the portrait route last year and took suggestions for subjects that I later drew on the pages of a book. This year I wanted to combine daily drawings into one large piece of art by the end of the month. All I needed was the subject matter, which got me thinking, what influences me?
Music. I love all sorts of music. There’s something about the singer/songwriter music from around the 70s era that resonates with me though. It has a way of bringing to life the emotion that one can only hope their visual art will incite. Faces also resonate with us as humans because we can connect with them personally.
So for the month of October 2017, I created a collage of sorts featuring the faces of 42 of my personal favorite musical artists. All of which are songwriters that I have great respect for. I wanted to limit it to 31 people so I’d have one for each day, but it was hard enough to get it down to 42. I had to leave out so many great songwriters, but I tried to get a good group that share a common musical style and that I personally enjoy hearing.
I tried to include a variety of emotions expressed by different faces. I also posted lyrics written by each artist every day with hopes that it might bring a memory of the tune to the minds of those who recognize it.
I hope you enjoyed seeing glimpses of my life though my artwork this October and that the repetitive posts didn’t get old too fast. Big things are in the works for the near future. Thanks for following along and stay tuned!
- Nathan