red

Coloured pencils

Lindsey's prompt: Vampire. This was inspired by a Mitch Hedberg joke

Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) Cornell worked nights at the kitchen table, sorting and assembling materials for his boxes. It was not easy going. Some nights he felt too fatigued from his day job to concentrate on his art and would sit up reading instead, switching on the oven for warmth. In the mornings, his quarrelsome mother would scold him about the mess he’d left at the kitchen table; without a proper workroom, Cornell was forced to store his growing collection of magazine clippings and dime-store baubles out in the garage. In 1940 Cornell finally mustered the courage to quit his job and pursue his art full-time—and even then his habits changed little. He still worked nights at the kitchen table, while his mother and brother slept upstairs. In the late morning he would head downtown for breakfast at his local Bickford’s restaurant, often satisfying his sweet tooth with a Danish or a slice of pie (and lovingly cataloging these indulgences in his diary). - From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey #dailyrituals #inktober #JosephCornell @masoncurrey

Reflecting on the first week of this new year we’ve entered…

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) By the 1950s, too much work on too little sleep—with too much wine and cigarettes—had left Sartre exhausted and on the verge of collapse. Rather than slow down, however, he turned to Corydrane, a mix of amphetamine and aspirin then fashionable among Parisian students, intellectuals, and artists (and legal in France until 1971, when it was declared toxic and taken off the market). The prescribed dose was one or two tablets in the morning and at noon. Sartre took twenty a day, beginning with his morning coffee and slowly chewing one pill after another as he worked. For each tablet, he could produce a page or two of his second major philosophical work, The Critique of Dialectical Reason. The biographer Annie Cohen-Solal reports, “His diet over a period of twenty-four hours included two packs of cigarettes and several pipes stuffed with black tobacco, more than a quart of alcohol—wine, beer, vodka, whisky, and so on—two hundred milligrams of amphetamines, fifteen grams of aspirin, several grams of barbiturates, plus coffee, tea, rich meals.” - From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey #dailyrituals #inktober #jeanPaulSartre @masoncurrey

Sega flavoured fan art time! Of course I had to go with my favourite character from the Sonic games, heheheh :-)

Flying dream inspired…

Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–1975) Shostakovich’s contemporaries do not recall seeing him working, at least not in the traditional sense. The Russian composer was able to conceptualize a new work entirely in his head, and then write it down with extreme rapidity—if uninterrupted, he could average twenty or thirty pages of score a day, making virtually no corrections as he went. But this feat was apparently preceded by hours or days of mental composition—during which he “appeared to be a man of great inner tensions,” the musicologist Alexei Ikonnikov observed, “with his continually moving, ‘speaking’ hands, which were never at rest.” Shostakovich himself was afraid that perhaps he worked too fast. “I worry about the lightning speed with which I compose,” he confessed in a letter to a friend. Undoubtedly this is bad. One shouldn’t compose as quickly as I do. Composition is a serious process, and in the words of a ballerina friend of mine, “You can’t keep going at a gallop.” I compose with diabolical speed and can’t stop myself.… It is exhausting, rather unpleasant, and at the end of the day you lack any confidence in the result. But I can’t rid myself of the bad habit. - From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey #dailyrituals #inktober #shostakovich @masoncurrey

"Like maggots in a dog's carcass, they fill me, my children..." A cosmic being known as "The Sleeper", "The Ugly", but most often he is proudly called "The Father". "Like maggots in a dog's carcass, they fill me, my children..." A cosmic being known as "The Sleeper", "The Ugly", but most often he is proudly called "The Father". I SWEAR I made him before I knew about Barbatos. Anyway, The Father sleeps deep beneath Gotham and unwittingly poisons the city and its population with his toxic aura. He is known to his cult as the God of Madness and Chaos. He simply cannot control his influence on those around, which makes him a villain of a tragic fate. I figured his existence would be a good enough explanation for why Gotham is such a rotten piece of society, with very creative supervillains who loves to be so extra and why they not executed horribly for everything they've done. The cult of his worshippers is quite old and includes a huge number of people trying to keep him asleep, because if he wakes up and gets out of his prison, it will be the end of the city, and maybe not only the city... I should point out: he's not actually a god, he's an alien, and he's not the embodiment of "chaos and madness" - he's a cosmic horror, most likely mentally ill and therefore his aura is toxic. He didn't create the villains or Batman, but his aura affected the environment in which they were created.

Fun flower doodle!

Erik Satie (1866–1925) In 1898, Satie moved from Paris’s Montmartre district to the working-class suburb of Arcueil, where he would live for the rest of his life. Most mornings, however, the composer returned to the city on foot, walking a distance of about six miles to his former neighborhood, stopping at his favorite cafés along the way. According to one observer, Satie “walked slowly, taking small steps, his umbrella held tight under his arm. When talking he would stop, bend one knee a little, adjust his pince-nez and place his fist on his hip. Then he would take off once more, with small deliberate steps.” His dress was also distinctive: the same year that he moved to Arcueil, Satie received a small inheritance, which he used to purchase a dozen identical chestnut-colored velvet suits, with the same number of matching bowler hats. Locals who saw him pass by each day soon began calling him the Velvet Gentleman. The last train back to Arcueil left at 1:00 A.M., but Satie frequently missed it. Then he would walk the several miles home, sometimes not arriving until the sun was about to rise. Nevertheless, as soon as the next morning dawned, he would set off to Paris once more. The scholar Roger Shattuck once proposed that Satie’s unique sense of musical beat, and his appreciation of “the possibility of variation within repetition,” could be traced to this “endless walking back and forth across the same landscape day after day.” Indeed, Satie was observed stopping to jot down ideas during his walks, pausing under a streetlamp if it was dark. During the war the streetlamps were often extinguished, and rumor had it that Satie’s productivity dropped as a result. - From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey

Doodling of the Day (Colored Pencils)

This is my boy Sebastian. He is a collaboration of Ichabod Crane and Dracula, he was just born today. I have a least a few pages full of his sketches. Type: Vampire -Hopeless Romantic -Comfortable within his castle -Kind -Can be easily scared, but when it comes to those he cares about will fight for. -He is VERY clumsy

Taking time after all things festive to scribble some more… and of course, test out even more washi tape I got gifted!

Merry Christmas, a quick (60 min) colored pencil piece from this morning.

Teddy Bear's Change of Seasons - Sophie's Christmas included! Is beautifully written and illustrated, Teddy Bear’s Change of Seasons includes four charming stories, wonderfully rolled into one children’s novel.  Teddy Bear and his friends create magical ways to explore and learn about the snow-white, wonderful world they live in, which changes from summer to autumn and into an unforgettable Christmas.  Teddy’s journey of self-discovery through four seasons, Christmas included, begins in a magnificent old-growth forest, but Teddy is stuck inside a dark and lonely place. His dreams look far away and out of reach, until Teddy rescues a small mouse, who is desperate for help. From this one act of kindness, Teddy's life changes in ways he never imagined, bringing him close friends, a new loving family and the kind of challenges and adventures other teddies have never encountered before.  This is a dream of a book, the perfect snuggle-down bedtime story, accompanied by hot, sleepy cocoa.

I used to see this friendly dog that would wander around and I would pet him. He disappeared for like a year. I was sad because I missed him and I didn't know what happened to him. I saw a dog last week that looked like him or was him but I wasn't able to get close enough to know for sure. It inspired my to finish this drawing I started a while ago.

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) “I get up at about eight, do physical exercises, then work without a break from nine till one,” Stravinsky told an interviewer in 1924. Generally, three hours of composition were the most he could manage in a day, although he would do less demanding tasks—writing letters, copying scores, practicing the piano—in the afternoon. Unless he was touring, Stravinsky worked on his compositions daily, with or without inspiration, he said. He required solitude for the task, and always closed the windows of his studio before he began: “I have never been able to compose unless sure that no one could hear me.” If he felt blocked, the composer might execute a brief headstand, which, he said, “rests the head and clears the brain.” - From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey

I just finished the Calandra Lark. Here are some facts about this beautiful bird... Appearance: It's a large lark, about 17.5-20 cm long, with a robust build, a heavy bill, and noticeable pale eyebrows . Its plumage is mainly greyish-brown streaked above and white below, with large black patches on the breast sides. Habitat: This species is found in open plains, steppes, pastures, and dry cereal cultivations. It's mainly resident in the west of its range but Russian populations migrate further south in winter. Diet: Their main food source is seeds, but they also consume insects when nesting. Behaviour: Calandra Larks are known to be gregarious outside the breeding season, often forming large flocks. Song: Their song is considered musical and slower than the Skylark's. It has been historically popular as a cagebird.

Spread 3, oil based sepia and red chalk.

Something from imagination...it can mean what you imagine...

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) Kant’s biography is unusually devoid of external events. As Heinrich Heine wrote: The history of Kant’s life is difficult to describe. For he neither had a life nor a history. In actual fact, as Manfred Kuehn argues in his 2001 biography, Kant’s life was not quite as abstract and passionless as Heine and others have supposed…. If he failed to live a more adventurous life, it was largely due to his health: the philosopher had a congenital skeletal defect that caused him to develop an abnormally small chest, which compressed his heart and lungs and contributed to a generally delicate constitution. In order to prolong his life with the condition—and in an effort to quell the mental anguish caused by his lifelong hypochondria—Kant adopted what he called “a certain uniformity in the way of living and in the matters about which I employ my mind.” This routine was as follows: Kant rose at 5:00 A.M., after being woken by his longtime servant, a retired soldier under explicit orders not to let the master oversleep. Then he drank one or two cups of weak tea and smoked his pipe. According to Kuehn, “Kant had formulated the maxim for himself that he would smoke only one pipe, but it is reported that the bowls of his pipes increased considerably in size as the years went on.” - From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey #dailyrituals #inktober #ImmanuelKant @masoncurrey

Artists I'm inspired by. For every head different material: pencil, ballpoint pen, brush pen, colored pencils + ink, watercolour

I couldn't redraw her again