#also discovered that i really enjoy drawing cloud shapes during this piece lol

[animaxvi]

"The stars could fall, the moon and even the light could fade but I will always keep you safe" ☁️🌌🌟

Day 4 - 'salvation | sacrifice'

INPRNT

[vinku-iikku]

Yay I finally finished 2018 inktober! If you want to just scroll through them all please go here, and if you want to see some comments on each please look under the cut.

Day 01 Flowey and Overgrown Ruins This prompt I picked as is because as far as I remember Flowey stayed behind when the monsters left. If you can’t find him, he’s near the big root on the left. All other days the second prompt got randomised by a die (except when I reached the last two).

Day 02 Grillby and Exotic Flora Grillby’s on a journey to look at all the flowers that aren’t living in a wet environment. Maybe he’ll make some wine from the non-poisonous ones.

Day 03 Chara and Cave Entrance They are still curious about morbid things and places that could be portentially dangerous, practically running at danger.

Day 04 Undyne and Astral Plains/Dreamland Welp I’d rather have had her with some other prompt, but now she has an anime showdown/faceoff with a mean monster that harasses a moldsmal.

Day 05 Asgore and Rocky Ruins Asgore had a trip down memory lane and visited the place where their castle used to be, before the war. Not much is left any more.

Day 06 Frisk and Ancient Tree They are still precariously looking for adventure. I saw this article about a 800 year-old Finnish tree, as soon as I saw that top I wanted to climb that, looks like a perfect spot to see everything around you and chill for a bit.

Day 07 Temmie and Nature Untouched I did some research in a nearby forest for this one, the sales-Temmie has made a nest in a tree that has fallen down in a storm. The soil is shallow before solid rock so trees have their roots mostly close to the surface, when they fall the roots go up as well. Temmie on the left is sitting on an ant nest lol. There are seven Temmies in total.

Day 08 Muffet and Crystal Coves Crystal Coves is either a place where crystal business is the main employer, a cove that has crystals, or a cove with crystal clear water, I think. I tried to implement them all just to make sure. Muffet has now made a business in making spider-products with glass expertise.

Day 09 Fuku Fire and Freezing Fjord Finally back to the ‘monsters travelling’ theme, Fuku is taking a longer trip and is currently on a boat by Norway.

Day 10 Gaster Blasters and Townsquare The blasters are on their own for whatever convenient reason, Pap’s one is figuring how things work by destroying them, Sans’ is... playing with local children. :D The fountain is loosely based on Havis Amanda.

Day 11 Nice Cream Guy & Shanty Town He’s travelling the world and selling nice cream! Definitely inspired by Beadle in BotW.

Day 12 Mettaton EX & Cemetery This combination took me a moment, Mettaton is a bit loud and showy for a cemetery. Then I remembered that Napstablook said they’re already dead when you try to kill them, so here Mettaton’s visiting haunted places and telling everyone about this wonderful body he got and where to get one if you’re interested in becoming physical again. I worked in a cemetery for one summer years ago, felt weird pulling those visual memories to this...

Day 13 Toriel & Hall of Deities In order to become a teacher I’d imagine she’d have to brush up her knowledge on lots of things that’ve happened on the surface, and here she’s in a secret underground place with some sacred scriptures or something, she reads them and writes down notes and then returns the scrolls.

Day 14 Annoying Dog & Volcanic Terrain Another weird combination, but eh, it’s the dog. It’s feeding bones to the vulkins and admiring danger up close.

Day 15 Monster Kid & Path Along the Water I made a huge area with different textures so I could try learn something new by scribbling around, and I’m really happy how the boulders on top of the waterfall and the water itself look like.

Day 16 Doggo & Ancient Altar Room Took a moment to come up with an idea, then I read Doggo likes squirrels. So now he’s travelling the world too, and he always has time and seeds for any squirrel population he discovers.

Day 17 Alphys & Summoning Altar I thought I’d not be drawing Mew Mew, but here was a perfect opportunity for that! Alphys isn’t travelling, but discovering new things in her home, humans have such interesting books! All of the Japanese text mean something; the bowl has the kanji for ’love’, books under it are Mew Mew manga, there’s two yury books, a reference to Free!, Digimon, Pokémon, Rose of Versailles, Natsume Book of Friends... and it’s fine if you don’t get the one that says ‘corn’.

Day 18 Photoshop Flowey & Windmills and Grasslands I think the modern wind generators look super cool. I tried to make Flowey as cute as possible so he’d be more fun to draw there, this is some dream stuff or alternate universe since Flowey did stay behind.

Day 19 Papyrus & Desserted Drylands I’m pretty sure that’s an accidental typo, but since it was Papyrus I wanted to roll with the new pun meaning. First thought was Papyrus somehow being in the drylands and dropping a huge cake, thus ’desserting’ it, but that would’ve been a bit mean. This cake is made with 100% organic sand (some of which he ground himself when grooming Rocky), the tiny cow ornaments are modified mouse skeletons. :) The chef hat would be straight but there wasn’t enough room on the page of the notebook I draw these on... I remembered he had a triangle on the battle armor, but didn’t remember what way it points so avoided it by replacing it with a heart. :D

Day 20 Sans & By the Beach Sans is getting some more sand for Papyrus with his shortcut, then he took a nap unfortunately close to the tide..? The shore felt a bit bare so I added some animals to keep him company. I h/c that animals don’t mind having monsters around unlike how they usually try to run away when a human is near.

Day 21 Shyren & Buried Statue(s) She’s doing that Disney princess thing where you sit down and start singing and all small animals within hearing range come to listen.

Day 22 Asriel & Underwater Temple Another dream thing since Flowey stayed behind, this is how he imagines the oceans look like outside.

Day 23 Lesser Dog & Market Place Some people have to learn the hard way to not trust a dog that has opposable thumbs.

Day 24 Box Mettaton & Merchant’s Store Any website run by a popular monster must get an insane amount of curious folk, which leads to ad revenue being a good way to fund the next tour. There’s some.. insider jokes there if you’re in any kind of website business.

Day 25 Rocky the pet rock & Eldritch Forest I don’t actually know what the latter means, looking at Google images it’s probably just a forest that’s very dark or something. Wanted to try a different perspective for a change. Rocky has a bowl of food there but I can’t really think of any non-sad reason for why it’s in this forest.

Day 26 Froggit & Inn in th Middle of Nowhere Had to take a break for one day, regardless I’m proud of myself on being consistent this far despite everything going on. I first only had the top Froggit and the bg in the sketch, and didn’t like how it looked. Somehow adding more Froggits made it look a lot better to me...

Day 27 Burgerpants & By the Docs Birsd with human arms and birds sitting like humans will never not be hilarious to me.

Day 28 Bratty and Catty & Deep in the Woods Tried to play with perspective with this one, it’s kind of the opposite of the Rocky drawing.

Day 29 God of Hyperdeath & Idle Portal I had a hard time coming up with anything for this, so now poor goat is somewhere in a completely white dimention and the only way out is not active, though he’s quite chill about it.

Day 30 Amalgamate & Abnormal Formations This and last one’s world I didn’t leave for the die to decide, I really wanted to do Tetris with Napstablook and out of the two still left this prompt suits Endogeny more anyway. There’s a forest in Poland where several of the trees bend to north like this.

Day 31 Napstablook & Puzzling Platforms Only one I did during morning, my hands shake more then so all the lines are more or less wobbly. Every Tetris piece has it’s own signature design except the L-shape which is just blank to keep it interesting. Napstablook is enjoying game music while inside the game, maybe ghosts can possess videogames..? This also shows the notebook I drew all of these in and the tools I used most of the time.

It’s hard to tell if I’ve improved at all when comparing these to 2017 inktober, I haven’t draw regularly through the year and the main focus point this time was on backgrounds and not so much on lines and characters. I did learn new things and that’s always exiting, I think my trees, glass and rocks look way better than before I started, and I did some progress in shading metal too. All of these took 3 hours or less to finish, some only took an hour. I didn’t need to erase pencils like last year because I used a trick where I placed the sketch under the notebook page and my tablet with 100% brightness and a white bg under them, and traced that with ink. The notebook paper is pretty thin, you can see the Amalgamate drawing’s clouds showing through in the Napstablook photo. Anyway, this was fun, and I think I’ll try do it next year too!

[gylisaa]

Cornwall Tattoo Convention came back for its second year at the start of September, and we joined our good friends there – Cat and Mel, owners of The Vault tattoo studio in Looe.

Held at the Royal Cornwall Showground this year, it initially felt quite isolated, but still people found it !

The Sisters tea van, more on them later…

Considering how young this convention is, there is already such a sense of community appearing, among artists and punters alike, many of whom took part last year and I recognised many friendly faces, as well as meeting some new ones!

  Mel, Ryan and Cat – about to begin…

  DAY ONE.

We came bearing gifts of croissants and pasties, and Cat set about prepping for Ryans knee tattoo. This year Cat was chosen to be on the judging panel, alongside the legendary Doc Price, Lee Holman, and Pash and Uzzi Candy – the new E4 Tattoo Fixers.

The programme of events…

With Ryan about to enter a world of pain, Mel and I were open to chat to anyone wandering by, which is I believe, why tattoo conventions are so wonderful. Mel has a natural flair for getting people into conversation, which explained why our stall had a crowd around it more often than not! A lot of the tables have sweets in a bowl, (helpful if you need a sugar boost before or during a tattoo) but also so people can stop, have a look at the tattoo being done if this is the case, read any leaflets, advertising or chat about any products that tattoo artists are selling or are sponsored by.

Melanie Allen, aka Person of the People…

We struck up several conversations with people passing through, many people were really open to having a chat, and it gave a real insight into the sort of people that come to these events, as well as proving yet again – never judge a book by its cover.

Ryan promoting his favourite studio, aka The Vault. Special Appearance – Dave the photographer

One lady in particular was so unassuming, you couldn’t see any visible tattoo on her. But a bit of conversation later and she was lifting up her trouser legs, pushing up her sleeves and she was absolutely covered in beautiful watercolour style pieces, many of which had personal meanings to her or her family members. We discussed whether tattoos need to have a meaning and/or if its always wise to represent a loved one through a tattoo. For example, a kid might love Disney characters at a certain age, but might grow up to be a goth.

The Illustrated Lady!

We agreed however, that like photos, a tattoo can be a snapshot of a certain time or a certain person in your life, whether its meaningful or not. Lots of tattoos can have a story behind them without outwardly meaning anything. I have a finger tattoo that means fuck all, looks awful but reminds me of a brilliantly drunk experience in London. And for that, I will always love it.

  Getting

Started!

  The seminars began at 11.30, the first by Theresa Gordon Wade teaching artists and customers alike of the Art of a Coverup. Mel and I wandered through the convention, saying hello to familiar faces and nosying at what other artists had at their tables. We watched the cover up seminar from afar, and then I spotted a lizard on the floor.

Hi little dude! 

Not a real one, but a little cartoon painted onto the carpet.

As we were musing at the little guy, we also noticed a paint room opposite, with the words Living Gallery above the door. A guy meandered over and mused about the lizard. Turns out, the backdrop for the main stage hadn’t been delivered on time, so he’d been asked to paint one.

‘Stayed here til 2am finishing it, back here at 7.30 this morning…’ He laughed.

It was during the moving of paints, he’d dropped some on the carpet, and decided to hide it in plain sight by turning it in to the sweet cartoon it was now.

‘I might do some more so it looks intentional…’

    Interests piqued by his story, we poked our heads into the Living Gallery. Across each wall was a huge painting of a naked woman, and we were invited to ‘colour her in’ with tattoos. Didn’t need to ask us twice really! Mel got started on a well chosen bit of foot.

  Like a fool, I chose a bit a bit of arm, stupidly close to the floor. Time to get drawing, I decided on a teacup, because …well I fucking love tea.

Turned out to be a brilliant spot however, as Lizard Guy was painting a sword just above and we got chatting. His name was Matt, I think! (It was hard to hear over the thump of bass, the next seminar beginning about tattoo aftercare and I was concentrating on my teacup design.) Anyway, he was head honcho of Cosmic Images, and the mind behind the Living Wall. So we will call him Cosmic to avoid awkwardness.

    Speaking of which! Cosmic had set out to paint a large sword running down the bit of arm above my teacup, but while he was distracted by everything else, Doc Price, living legend, had turned up and drawn over the design with a face, and Japanese writing. Cosmic wasn’t annoyed, if anything he was honoured to have his work painted over! So his sword design had to be shortened into a tiny dagger instead. Lol.

Losing sense of time completely, I set about painting my design, it was proving to be quite therapeutic, the buzzing of tattoo machines, the music thumping in the background and listening to Mr Cosmic telling a story about magic mushrooms and surf shops, and why never the twain should meet. Long story short, wetsuits hanging in a shop look an awful lot like bodies, more so when the mind is feeling wild, and that coupled with a story about the real life horrors of Vietnam lends itself to what one might call ‘a fucking awful trip.’

Feeling proud AF. Ps that’s a nipple next to my head…

Sloping off for a loo break, I walked past the body art parade, last year there were only a couple of people that leant themselves to be the real living canvas, but this year there were several huge pieces going on. Lots of painted breasts, which I believe was for a breast cancer related cause! I should have stopped to ask, but nature was calling!

Outside there were some hot rod-esque cars, a couple of motorbikes and LOTS of people ‘vaping’. The air was a sweet cloud of pretend baked goods. Also outside were the food vans, with an option of vegan foods, curry and noodles and, well chips. As well as The Sisters tea/coffee van that was frequented often by Ryan and I last year, and is run by two sisters who do ‘the best coffee’ according to Ryan, and homemade cakes!

Back to my painting however, my neurotic self couldn’t leave it unfinished, and who appeared again, only Doc fuckin Price! He’d said hello earlier whilst walking about, I think he recognised us from last year. And now here he was admiring my teacup and painting beside it. I reigned in the excitement by taking exactly 1000 photos of the experience, obviously.

Back to Ryan who by now was not having much fun at all, the lines had been done and the tiger was beginning to take shape. As usual Cat Allen making brilliant things appear with a needle.

  Tattoo more or less finished, it was time for Cat to have a quick drink and get on the judging panel. Ryan nipped off for a much needed loo break and I said hello to Uzzi and Pasha, excited for their impending TV debut, we had a laugh about unusual names!

However …. Time for Ryan and I to make a swift exit, Ryan had a stag do to get to (with a knee like a Rhino) and I wanted to get home so our ‘babysitter’ aka Ryans lovely mum, could have a break!

DAY TWO.

With Ryan hobbling around with the post-vasectomy limp, I proudly showed him yesterdays art to discover the walls of the Living Gallery room were absolutely COVERED overnight. It was amazing. Cosmic showed me a medusa piece a young girl painted and it was incredible! Was amazing to see such a raw bit of talent in amongst the scribbles and graffiti.

At 3pm, there was a barbering seminar, hosted by Ryan’s good friend Sweeney and the lads from Seadogs Barbers. Ryan met Sweeney last year at the tattoo convention, and has been a regular at the barbers since, so during the seminar was passed the mic to tell the crowd about the boys, and the shop! 

    Seminar over, knee sore, but hair and beard looking fresh AF, we sat most of the day out, observing! I wanted to watch some of the Bizarre Entertainment having seen Toby Lerone walking around the convention on stilts, but when he put a pair of scissors up his nose, I was out of there!!

We stayed to watch the Body Art Parade though, and it was intense, although amazing to see the finished pieces, after walking past half painted people all day. Each piece on Sunday had an elaborate story or theme behind it, each a bit more darker than the first. One lady had simply made someone into ‘Space’. Whereas another had detailed a divorce, cheating and a death or two. Cheerful!

After that it was the final judging, a fire performance, and the Urban Voodoo Machine were playing, but sadly we had to miss it to get back for the Lil, that’s parent life for ya!

Still, we enjoyed every part of this years convention, felt such a part of the community despite not being ‘in the biz’, made some new friends, had a larf with the old pals, and we look forward to next year…

Kevin, the organiser promised me it would be even bigger!

    Cornwall Tattoo Convention… Cornwall Tattoo Convention came back for its second year at the start of September, and we joined our good friends there - Cat and Mel, owners of…