Art: Ink and Markers for Others

In 2015 I did a few pieces with Copic markers on bristol board, as part of a couple gift exhanges on Reddit; I scanned them before sending them off, though it must have been with my old scanner because these scans definitely have some problems…

Then, looking at my art folder, it seems like I put the markers away for a few years… but it was more that my artistic focus was elsewhere. In 2015, my oldest child started preschool, and I started drawing notes to put into her lunches for school every day. I’ve missed a few days here and there, but overall I’ve been maintaining that tradition for her, and then for my younger two children as well, for the last nine years. Sometime in 2016 I started drawing Pokemon notes, starting from the first entry in the Pokedex (Bulbasaur!) and simply going in order. I’ve been drawing them all from reference – mostly just copying the official art from the Pokemon website.

I’m into the Paldea region at this point, and I’ll hit Pokedex number 1000 (Gholdengo!) in a couple months. They’re meant to be ephemeral art, and I haven’t scanned any of them, but I’ve occasionally taken pictures as I’ve drawn them…

One thing I’ve been doing for those notes, though – and the other kids’ notes, too – is (almost) never sketching. Just ink straight onto a blank card. So that’s why some of the proportions look a little wonky sometimes. But as an exercise in developing skill, it’s actually been really useful, because I have to think about where the lines are going to go before I draw them.

My second child liked having Pokemon notes for a while too – I started back at #1 for him – but a couple years ago he decided he’d rather have Minecraft notes (I drew him various blocks for a while), and then sometime last year he started asking for Katamari Damacy notes. Those were fun, but I ran out of cousins towards the end of last school year. So this year I’m writing him mathematical axioms and formulae illustrated with the “pi creatures” from 3Blue1Brown (one of our favorite YouTube channels), because my eight-year-old is quite possibly even a bigger nerd than I am.

For my third child, I drew some cupcakes, and then various characters from her favorite shows – Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Sailor Moon, and Gabby’s Dollhouse, which then led into a series of cartoon cats. I had a lot of fun trying to mimic styles without doing any sketches to guide me…

But in among those notes, I’ve still found time for some occasional SFF fanart, as well as a truly ridiculous project. More on that next time…