October: scientifically proven to be the best month

My dear friends, 

Welcome to October! Always been my favorite month, I loved autumn long before a certain coffee roaster made that one overly sugary drink. To be fair, as a kid I loved October because it was the month of my birthday. Growing up in places when the seasons really started to change in October always made the fall feel charged with potential and promise. 

These days, October is special for another reason: Inktober. Started by Jake Parker, Inktober has grown into a world wide event for illustrators. Participated in by amateurs and professionals, a list of daily prompts is released and thousands of people take on the challenge of drawing and inking something every day. Over the last few years, taking the cue from Inktober, there has been a rise in "alternative prompts" and groups or individual artists make their own prompts and have expanded the challenge beyond ink.  

I've participated for the last three years. Never made it to the end. Either Things get too busy or I burn out and become uninterested in the prompts. 

This year I'm trying again, wish a prompt from The Guild of Natural Science Illustrators. As a science illustrator, the prompts are very exciting, the Guild seems to know exactly what kind of words get our brains cooking. 

I'll be doing a weekly art post of the ink drawings for your high-res viewing pleasure. I feel like things are off to a rough start, partly because I haven't done much with ink in a very long time. Hopefully looking back on these there will be an evident improvement. 

The other reason I'm telling you all this is to announce that you might see a slow down in sketchbook shares. This week, my work is picking up on the panels for the Stoke's nature center and I'm beginning to add color to the pieces. 

So you'll still get the major rewards, I suppose the sketchbook and process posts will be geared more toward inktober/ Sciartober (as they are calling it) and the nature center commission. Things will go back to normal next month. 

As always, Thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting me and my art and making it possible for me to grow my studio. Making enough energy to leave orbit is hard. You guys are the fuel in my tank making it so I never have to back to the planet "Retail". 

sincerely, 

Rob