Inktober 2024, week 1
Start the journey.
This year, I'm doing the Inktober Challenge, which includes a daily word prompt. Instead of waiting a month to compile all of my entries, I'll share them a week at a time, with a little commentary to accompany each 5 Word Poem.
，
dancing
letter
poems
Inktober
incoming
hi!
The weekend before the challenge, I learned Textura Prescisus to have a script that contrasts strongly against scripts. I then wrote this 5WP to mark my the arsenal on the eve of the event.
It had been a struggle over two months to learn twisting the nib for both Foundational Hand and Celtic Half-Uncial because they move the pen differently from each other. To my surprise, that painful skill building set me up to learn Textura Prescisus in a flash. I learned it so quickly, that I picked up Chancery Cursive (hi!) the morning after.
That said, these new scripts betray an uncertainty in the hand, but only time and practice will fix those lines.
,
proudly
carried
his
red
backpack
The boy got a red backpack at a back-to-school event this summer. Even though we're doing online school, he proudly wore it when we went to Springs Preserve. With the brilliant Birmingham Ink Magma in one of my pens, this was a no-brainer.
，
reaching
out
we
discover
ourselves
I started the challenge with Foundational Hand, which I knew best. On this second day, I snuck in Celtic Half-Uncial to highlight the day's prompt.
,
boots
never
worn
new
work
I bought a pair of steel toe boots since we were about to start construction on a new DMV. Then I changed jobs. By the time life slowed down, it was too late to return the boots. They're sitting in the closet, waiting.
,
exotic
is
your
neighbor's
normal
I paired an extreme form of Textura Precisus (cutting off the baseline of the script) with Chancery Hand (its narrowness lets me fit "neighbor's" onto the page). These 5WP's are a balancing act to find a decent poem that also works visually on the page.
,
eye
see
binoculars
far
out
I took two bites of the apple with this one. After posting the first version, my daughter mentioned that the "b" looked small. I was also unhappy with the original wording so I went back upstairs to try again.
The shading displays the proud entrance of brushes into the mix. I wanted something that could let me write larger on the page, after maxing with the 6.0mm Pilot Parallels. So now I got hairs to lay ink.
,
This week has been fun. The 5 Word Poem format had gotten stale, so it's been invigorating to have someone else hand me a fresh word to wrangle every day.
It's also a pleasant challenge to produce a finished drawing every day. Sometimes it's important to lie fallow and just play, but a little pressure is often necessary to push the process. Luckily I had enough free time this week to both play with brushes and make a 5WP each morning. I doubt I'll be so lucky in the coming weeks with incoming Halloween events.
Cya next week!
,
BONUS!
The girl finally joined the Inktober fun on Saturday after I showed her a series with Pokemon. Hopefully she'll keep it up, at least on the weekends.
.
These are beautiful and look like you had a lot of fun. My husband is interested in calligraphy, so I'll share these with him. Also, when you're centering, do you start the word with a middle letter and work outward. And did you let one of your kids help you with some of the backgrounds? I also liked the ideograms in the background of "Exotic is your neighbor's normal." Great post, Justus. Can't wait to see more.
VERY cool.
You're a fan of Pilot parallels, right? Do you have an easy(ish) way of swapping ink with them? I used to have a few, but switched to calligraphy pens because switching ink was a lot easier. (But I'm still using fountain pen ink, which isn't exactly ideal for those kinds of pens.)