#obscutober2024

[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Prompt List(s)!

Anyone got room for yet another October Prompt List? 😉

I really wasn’t feeling the Official Inktober Prompt List this year & deeply miss the Obscutober lists nikolas_tower used to post over on Instagram, so I decided to break from tradition even more than I usually do & make my own! ✨

The main idea is each prompt is an Obscure Word, but I did get a little choosy & try to put a bit of my own spin on it!

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk more about the details + Definitions if you need them. ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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Before I get into my usual long-winded description, if you want to actually follow this prompt list—Or the Lite or Weekly version—here's what you need to know:

Here's the "Official" Definition list so you don't have to spend time looking up the words yourself if you don't want to...But also, if you do want to, feel free! The "official" definitions are intended as a time-saving guideline!

The list is open to all mediums! "Typical" visual art (Digital or Traditional), Literature, Sculpture, Crafts, Coloring Pages—whatever you want!

The word itself does not have to be directly included/related to what you make; You can just take inspiration from the way it sounds or looks, or something the sticks out to you in the definition, etc.

If a word or two doesn't work for you for various reasons, feel free to swap-in a different word—Either another "obscure" word of your choosing, or a word from another prompt list that you like better.

I've provided "Lite" and Weekly versions of the list in case the full 31 is too much, but you can pick-and-choose words from the full list however you'd like if you're not crazy about the words I picked for the shorter versions, or if you want to shorten the list in a different way.

Tagging me is appreciated, but not required!

Remember that my views on these Month-Long Daily Challenges is that it's about the challenge of completing a certain amount of creative pieces in the time given...And that's pretty much it, so as long as you're doing that and having fun, I'm really not bothered about how you choose to follow the list! My Inktober motto has always been "work smarter, not harder," and this is no different!

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Well, well, Sparklers—I assume this is quite the surprise coming from me. 🤭 Both because I've been awfully quiet over the past couple of months and this is what I come back with. [And for the record, I intend to explain more about where exactly I've been in a Museletter, but I wasn't able to get it typed up and ready-to-go today; Once I get it ready I'll add the link here.]

Not that me disappearing for a while and coming back with something not necessarily expected of me is all that abnormal, but rather if you've followed me for a while, you might remember I'm not normally super-keen on everyone and their uncle's mother's brother's sister making their own Prompt Lists.

So then, Mystic, what gives? Why make your own Prompt List now?

You can thank nikolas_tower on Instagram for that, actually. 😆 Some of you might also remember that I follow his Obscutober list in October 2021, and I've also swapped in an Obscutober word a couple of times when one of the "official" Inktober words didn't work for me.

I've explained before how much I love the Obscutober concept to its core, so I won't re-hash all of that here. The important part is that I do love it, but to my great sadness, 2022 only got an abbreviated Obscutober list (2 words per week), 2023 didn't get an Obscutober list at all (though I didn't really need one for 2023 because I was busy enough as it was following two other prompt lists at once) and considering just how close we're getting now, I really sincerely doubt Nikolas has/had plans for a 2024 one. Add to that: I was not super jazzed about the official Inktober prompt list for this year. Now, don't get me wrong—I'm normally not thrilled with every single word on the list (and if you've followed my Inktobers' past, you know I say as much during the month!), but I'm not sure I've ever felt quite so unenthusiastic about the whole list before.

Additionally still, some of you might remember I did talk a little bit last year about some...struggles I supposed is the closest word, that I've had with the past couple of Inktobers I've done. And generally, I've had some ideas for really shaking up the way I handle October for the past couple of years.

While, granted, my main "shake-up" idea is totally unrelated even to this list and I never seem to be able to get the necessary prep work it would require done in time, I think the main takeaway is a I've had a low-grade yearning to do something different...but I do still want to stick to my "tradition" of handling Inktober unconventionally.

So in the end, it kinda just made sense to at least try making my own Obscutober-style list this year. It's something different and I've missed the Obscutober lists, so why not?

Worth noting that I did try to put just a little of my own spin on it in my choice of words. While already I did try to stay away from words Nikolas already used for all 4 of his Obscutobers, I also had a couple of "rules" with the words I picked:

No words that are "Obscure" purely because they're not English/aren't found in English dictionaries. For example, "Lunette" is a French word, but it appears in English dictionaries with a definition that's more than just "the French word for..."

The word must have a definition that's relatively easy to find and/or appears in well-established English Dictionaries like Dictionary.com or Merriam-Webster. This rule exists because I noticed pretty quickly a lot of "aesthetic" definition images on Pinterest either don't turn up any other reliable results that a word even exists, or the word may exist but the Pinterest definition is straight-up wrong.

No overly gross/medical/NSFW words. (This wasn't a problem with any of Nikolas' Obscutober picks, this is just a personal preference that did shape my research a bit.)

One of my problems with the Inktober list for this year is too many words feel like synonyms/too closely related, so I wanted to avoid that. A couple of words are still kind of close in the end, like "Vitrine" and "Hyaline" or "Escutcheon" and "Orphrey, but they're still more different from each other than some words that I considered and ultimately turned down. [For example, I considered "Lambent" and "Clinquant" but decided they were too close in meaning to "Scintillate."]

Likewise, aside from the theme of being Obscure, I tried not to lean to heavily on words that fit a particular theme or idea

I tried not to pick "obscure" words that have become decently well-known or popular because they're obscure. The best example is "Aglet" wasn't even considered because it's been mentioned in multiple TV shows that I know of. "Scintillate" might push that boundary a little, but it is one of my personal favorites.

I also tried to pick words that had a little variety in definition length and not pick too many that had really short definitions, which ties into my next point...

More abstractly, I tried to pick words that feel like they both lend themselves to a really solid image but also leave room for interpretation of that image. Historically I've had problems with Inktober words feeling too much like they really only fit one specific interpretation of the word or they only have so many ways to represent the idea. And on the flip side, some of Nikolas' Obscutober picks (at least when I participated in 2021) felt a little too abstract at times. Ultimately, this feeling is probably highly subjective, but I tried my best to find the right balance anyway.

While not perfectly balanced, I did try not to lean too heavily on one type of word, as in Adjectives/Nouns/Verbs. There are still less verbs overall because it was just harder to find verbs that fit what I wanted, but if I hadn't consciously paid attention there probably would've only been 1-2 verbs and like 20 adjectives.

Not really related to adding "my own spin," but also worth noting that it was also important to me to provide "Lite" and Weekly versions of the list the way that Nikolas did for Obscutober II to make it easier for people that just don't have one-thing-every-single-day kind of time to feel welcome to still participate in some way. As stated in the description for those, you can just jump around the list however you like, but I know sometimes it's just easier if someone already lays things out that way for you instead of having to remember to leave things out and such.

And then for the visual list design, I did a mixture of Nikolas' Obscutober list style and my own more typical branding elements, which ended up working out much better than I expected; I wanted the "spirit" of the list to be recognizable to fans of Nikolas' lists without being an exact copy/looking too much like I was trying to "pretend" to be him or something, and I think I landed in a pretty good place. [And in case anyone is wondering, yes I did use my own template to make the list!]

I do have to admit to you Sparklers though that despite going through all that trouble, I'm actually still not 100% sure I'll be following the list myself. 😅 I've gone back and forth over how exactly I want to handle October at all this year so much...I definitely want to (and intend to!) do a Daily Challenge, especially given how spotty my uploads have been over the last year, but I just can't seem to settle on one full-fledged plan that I'm completely satisfied with.

I do have one potential idea I'm considering that already has a very specific alternate list, but pretty much all of my other ideas would normally use the official Inktober list, and so since that list isn't on the table for me this year, and it's really looking like DeviantArt isn't doing Drawtober again this year—Which I find incredibly sad, by the way!—I need another list on-hand that I know I can use and be reasonably happy with.

And for the record, I'm being intentionally coy about that one specific idea and not sharing that list because it's highly specific and if I do decide to go that route in some way, I'd like the main idea to be a least a little bit of a surprise.

But even if I don't use this list myself, I thought at least a few other people might enjoy giving it a try. After all, I wasn't the only one that enjoyed Nikolas' Obscutobers—I originally found out about them through another person entirely. So maybe a few other people are feeling that Obscutober void, or maybe you're just a big Word Nerd™ like me, or maybe you just want something that's a little different still from a lot of the more typical alternative prompt lists that have been floating around.

So, whatever the case, here the list is (and the Lite and Weekly versions, too); Let us all do with them what we will! 😉

Before I go, I will offer an apology to anyone who's disappointed or frustrated that I'm posting the list so close to time to use it—Believe me, if I'd been 100% sure I wanted to make it in the first place sooner, I would have gotten it out much sooner, too! But I'm doing the best I still can by getting out with this very tiny 2-day cushion instead of just dropping it right on the 1st. If the list turns out to be something you Sparklers want to see again next year, I promise I'll do my best to get it out with a lot more advance notice next time!

With that, there are still two days left in September and as semi-implied already, I still have a ton to do to be anything close to ready for October, so I'll leave you Sparklers to the list and your own October plans, whatever they may be; Hope to see you all again hopefully very, very soon...! 🤗

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List Design  © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

[freshvanillapng]

#Obscutober day 9:

Arenose (adj.) Sandy, gritty; full of sand

——

Marquess Tristain Lyonesse of Bawic pictured as how the party first met him - a fighter stationed in the sandy beige desert watchtowers of Sterling Watch.

(prompt by @mysticsparklewings !)

[potatoinalovelyhat]

Plexure Necromancer

The act or process of weaving together, or interweaving; that which is woven together

Day 6! Do not let her appearance fool you, she would add you to her friend the moment you give her any chance to do so.

The first list is the Obscutober list made by @mysticsparklewings https://www.tumblr.com/mysticsparklewings/762909713497309184/mysticsobscutober2024?source=share

The second one being the 30 Character Design Challenge made by Parakeetty https://www.furaffinity.net/view/22445508/

[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 22: Adust

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Adust (adj.)

scorched; burned

dried or darkened as by heat

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#Obscutober 2024 Day 22: Adust 🔥

I can’t believe we’ve only got 9 Days left to go of October/Inktober. 😵

I also kind of can’t believe I’m as happy as I am with how today��s art turned out since it’s not a very “me” palette or concept, but here we are! 🙌

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk a bit more about my general thoughts/process. ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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Some of you may remember that yesterday I mentioned today would be another day I have to fit Obscutober in around some IRL things; For that reason, I decided it would be best to keep the concept simple and just do my best to add details where I could to make it feel more complex than it actually is.

[This is also why this is going up later in the evening tonight; I actually had the art done earlier, but I didn't have time to sit down and write this description and the cross-posting caption until many hours later. 😅]

Naturally, the most obvious thing I thought of was fire. There are other things that can burn or scorch of course, like the sun or even hot water, but fire was the path of least resistance and something I haven't really touched on in previous Days, so that's what I went with. But I did do my best to not focus so much on the orange and the flames themselves.

I did still rely on shapes that felt "fiery," or in some cases "spiky," because I was thinking about the spiny, blistering pain that a burn or scorch would come with, and I played just a tad more with line texture for the same reason.

It wasn't fully intentional, but I think the outer edge with the cross-hatching kind of came out looking like that area was actually burned by the fire, so that was nice! My goal was just to try and get some mroe darkness/black as things tend to turn when burned in without having to rely on black much for the actual background colors, so the texture working out well in another way was a nice bonus. 👍

I also didn't intend for the angled lines in the ring closer to the center to look sort of like firewood, but that's what happened! I was just going with a zig-zag (...although in hindsight, it's really just the "zig" I guess) because I thought zig-zags felt kind of spiky and they mimic the movement of a flame without being too obvious.

The centermost ring was intentionally supposed to kind of look like a stone ring like you might find placed around a fire. I couldn't think of anything else that felt like a genuinely good place to start, and that was reasonably simple to do, so it won by default. 🤷‍♀️

And while I don't think it's doing as much as yesterday, I think today's color scheme is still doing quite a bit to really tie everything together. As I mentioned, I tried to be careful about how much orange and brightness I gave to the fire since the word is more about something fire does than fire itself, but it was kind of unavoidable/inevitable that some would be included and that it would steal focus from the colors that are actually more "adust"-related. At least the way my brain works, it was.

That wasn't helps by the fact that I'm just not generally drawn to browns in a color-palette anyway; I prefer bright and unnatural colors. 😆 But today was not the day to try and experiment with a magic-fire palette instead of a natural one.

It did take a little patience to get the balance of the darkness and the placement of the darkest browns just right, but it really wasn't that bad, especially given had tired I was at the time I got to that stage. [This is was in the early morning hours before I'd gone to bed.]

And...I think that's everything. A bit short and sweet for tonight, but like I said, I purposefully kept things simple and tried not to get too caught up in the conceptual details because I had other things to worry about today.

All things considered, I think it could have certainly turned out much worse, so I'm satisfied with my efforts. 🙂

It was never going to be in the running for my favorites based on color palette alone, but it's definitely not my least favorite—I like it about as much as I reasonably could with the palette and concept I ended up working with.

Now the real "fun": Seeing if I can be equally satisfied with my cross-posting experience and get to eating dinner in a reasonable amount of time. 😅

See you Sparklers tomorrow as we count down the final 9 days to go! 👋

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See the Prompt List

Artwork © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 2: Littoral 🏖️

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Littoral (adj.)

of or relating to the shore of a lake, sea, or ocean

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Good News, Sparklers: I’m still happy with this as my #Inktober approach so far! 🎉 (Hopefully that continues🤞)

This one definitely turned out more “general beach/ocean” than “shoreline,” but oh well! 🤷‍♀️

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk more about my thoughts/process for this piece (including part of why this word made the prompt-list cut)! ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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Well Sparklers, I seem to once again be writing this description (and therefore posting the art) later in the day than expected again today, but y'know I'm still early enough I don't feel such a rush to just get everything done, as was an extremely bad habit for me during Inktober last year...But we're only on Day 2 so it's still very possible I'll end up in that situation at some point later in the month. 😅

Either way, since we covered I think what was left of the background information for my how/whys for October this year yesterday, I think today I'm free to focus just on today's piece.

And I'll start with the admission that one of the primary reasons this word made the cut when I was putting together the prompt list is because I personally find it more amusing than I probably should that "Littoral" can very easily sound like "Literal" depending on your accent/pronunciation; And while I haven't figured one out, I just know there's a delightful pun or wordplay hiding somewhere in that association. 😆

Does that have anything to do with my choice of shapes for the mandala or colors for the background? Not consciously, no. But I mention it just in case someone for some reason finds the idea as funny as I do!

That said, this one is—at least I think—a lot strong on the specific images in the mandala that tie back to the theme than yesterday's. Granted, I probably leaned a little more heavily on general beachy/ocean themes than is really appropriate for a word that's really more about shorelines for multiple kinds of waterbodies...

In my defense, I started working on this one around 2-3 a.m. before I went to bed and was struggling to stay awake for the area between the inner circle of seashells and the round with the tail-fin shapes. What were supposed to look more like fish scales underneath those fin shapes came out looking a lot more like the edges of stacked sand dollars as a result. 😅

That might kinda be for the better though because I think if they did look more like scales, the tail fins might be a little too mermaid-y. Sand dollars probably fit a little better for a shoreline focus. Or, this way they kinda also make me think of like...ridged rocks that you might see either along lake edges, or as like the "drop off" point where the ocean shore "ends" and the deep sea more or less "begins," if that makes any sense.

I also tried something...I want to say "different" but we're only on Day 2, so that feels a bit odd. 😆 But it is something I don't usually do with mandalas when I make them. You'll notice that the round with the tail fins features only 2 additional sea shells, not 4, 6, or 8 as would be more typical for a mandala pattern, and on either side of that same round where you'd expect another pair of shells to be are instead some different wave shapes.

This was just a small experiment in what I'm going to do "non-traditional symmetry" (because "asymmetry" isn't quite right). So far I'm just using Procreate for these, and Procreate's built-in symmetry tools can only be pushed so far vs. an app made more specifically for mandalas, so I was trying to get a feel for where exactly my boundaries with Procreate's tools are. Obviously I didn't get too crazy with it because I was tired, but I did learn a few things and intend to carry them forward.

To that end, for what it's worth, I am considering trying a mandala-making-specific app, but I haven't pulled the trigger just yet. I thought I'd try a couple more with just Procreate and see if I still want to. I have a feeling even if I do try another app, I'll end up tracing over whatever results I get in there in Procreate anyway just to make sure all my Obscutober pieces are stylistically consistent. [That's a me thing, I don't expect anyone else to care about the style consistency even half as much as I personally do.]

I will also say the "splash" shapes that end everything off weren't really what I originally had in mind, but I'm not bothered about it because I think they came out great and give the effect that I wanted really well. 😄

Oh, and before I move on from the mandala part: If you look closer, you can also see I tried just a little bit of hatching on this one. I wanted to "fill in" some more of the mandala lines for visual interest, but I didn't like the solid-fill look in those areas when I tried it. It's still not quite what I wanted but I was too tired to be bothered re-doing it. I'm also not sure how much I'll use hatching (or other "traditional" inking techniques) for the rest of the month, though it is a tool I'll be keeping in my metaphorical back pocket just in case.

This may as well be a good time to mention that not necessarily every Obscutober piece will use white mandala lines; I don't want to overcomplicate my choices too much, but I am planning on allowing black lines as well, if they'll suit that day's themes better. So far we've just had two days in a row where I thought the white worked better. 😉

As for the background: This one is one of the things that motivated me to go with this particular format for this year. I didn't start working on this piece until after the decision(s) had already been made, but during those last couple of days of September when the mandala idea finally started to form, I was going back and forth over the words and landed on "Littoral" again; The idea of having a kind of "island" in the middle surrounded by "water" for the background popped into my brain—Nothing but shoreline all 360º around. 🤗

That wasn't the deciding factor alone, but it was definitely a strong nudge in that direction! This background was also a good "test" in that it pushed me to consider there might be days—like this one!—where it's tempting to color the background less abstractly and more tied to whatever is happening with the mandala lines. Somehow, I hadn't really considering that yet. From that, you can see I decided that some spot color is okay, but for consistency purposes, I am still going to keep it largely soft and abstract. Since I'm toying with the idea of making coloring pages out of the finished mandalas later anyway, if I really want to color right inside the lines, I can worry about that after Obscutober.

Besides, keeping it abstract will be faster anyway; I have a tendency to get way-too-perfectonist when coloring inside of digital lines. 🫠

The longer I think about it, the more there are things I might do a bit differently if I gave the mandala part another go. I am still happy with how this one turned out and think the background is really solid, it's just that usual "hindsight is 20/20" artist problem—Sometimes great ideas for a piece only come after it's already done and you really don't feel like going through the trouble if changing what you have!

Ah well. Maybe I'll have more ideas actually come to me in-the-moment if I can be bothered working on the future mandalas when I'm not falling asleep at my desk. 😆 It still beats being wide-awake because I'm rushing to get it done at all, but it's definitely not the ideal way to be! 😅

In any case, aside from delays in writing this description, I've been enjoying seeing a few people (mostly on Tumblr) decide to try out the Obscutober list for themselves, so the month is off to a pretty decent start as far as I'm concerned! I hope it is for you Sparklers too, or that if it isn't, that things get better soon! 🤞

I'll leave you Sparklers with that for today, and hopefully see you again in cheerful spirits tomorrow. Toodles! 👋

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See the Prompt List

Artwork  © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 10: Rampike 🥀

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Rampike (n.)

a broken or dead tree, especially the bleached skeleton or splintered trunk of a tree killed by fire.

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Maybe the most October-appropriate word on the list so far! 🎃

This one came out more simple kind of by accident, but it works because I’m still pleased with it & have some IRL things to work around today.

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk more about my thoughts/process for this piece—Simple or not, I still have plenty to say! ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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After a brief break from the nouns yesterday, we're back with what I would say is one of the more "useful" words that made the prompt list. In nothing else, this is almost certainly the most "October-appropriate" word so far.

Also, Fun Fact: There actually two trees in my yard that if they're not "rampikes" already, they probably will be in the future. It was a dark and stormy night (literally!) back in July, and around 3 or 4 in the morning, there was a massive CRACK of thunder—easily the loudest I've heard in my life—and I legitimately thought at the time that it felt like the lightning had struck our property specifically. Sure enough, the next day when we went outside, there were very visible scars scorched into the upper halves of two dizzyingly tall pine trees that stand together, like twins, in the backyard.

And believe it or not, that didn't really cross my mind when I picked this word out for the list. I did have the passing thought, "Oh hey I guess we kinda have one of those," and that was it! My main motivation for putting it on the list when I was going back through the word candidates I'd picked and making cuts was actually the spooky/October connections.

But hey, it made for a fun story! 🤗

As for the art: I kept things simple for today, but that was actually mostly unintentional for a change. But it does work out because (as I believe I mentioned yesterday) I have some other IRL things I'm having to balance today's Obscutober around. And I do kind of prefer having more simple results but feeling like I covered everything I wanted to vs. having a super detailed mandala where I'm still not sure I accomplished everything I wanted to.

I started with, of course, the split trees, because it was kind of essential they be included and be very prominent (at least in my book). The rest of the mandala was built around them; squiggles to represent the roots, a bit of grass-like representation near the base of the trees, then the larger triangles can either be more vegetation or maybe distant mountains—you decide!

I did pause for a moment after that, unsure of what to do with the empty space that was left and definitely did need something for filler.

Fortunately, the definition helped me out—I opted to do some swirls that are meant to be either wind or a representation of the storm clouds wind strong enough to break big, old trees would come with.

After that, the color scheme was easy. I went for mostly stormy blues, but also I tried to get kind of a lightning effect—but intentionally still abstract/loose—to highlight the splits in the trees, and I did let the tree trunks and the "grass" have touches of color just to help sell the imagery a bit better. It was at this stage that I decided I'd previously added too much hatching to the trees and the dotted triangle borders. Since I have a lot of thinner (white) lines here and was going for a stormy look, the extra white was just competing too hard for visual attention and made the whole thing look way more crowded than it actually is. You can see I left a little hatching on the trees for texture, but that's alk the hatching that survived.

...And that was it! And I don't feel like I really left anything out or missed anything! Unfortunately this is one of the words that I think maybe would have benefitted more from my usual mini-magnet shenanigans more than this mandala one. That's not to say I'm unhappy with how this art turned out—I like it a lot, actually! I just think the concept of broken trees brings out more of the poet in me than the artist, so I'm left wondering what I could've come up with in that other format that might have been deeper/had more substance to it.

Maybe that's something that could be properly explored at another time, but you Sparklers know how I am with hypothetical future projects like that. 😅 I'm going to focus on finishing what I've already started here first!

And I do think that finishes up what I wanted to tell you Sparklers about this piece today. Simple and more to-the point, which is kind of a nice change. They don't all need to be super complex!

So you Sparklers enjoy, and now I get to see how much trouble I have trying to do the cross-posting between those IRL things I mentioned working around. Somehow, I doubt that process will be as simple as the mandala itself was...🙃

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See the Prompt List

Artwork  © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 3: Horology 🕰️

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Horology (n.)

the science of measuring time

the art of making instruments for indicating time; clockmaking

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I assume real clock-making is rather time-consuming 😉 Making a clock-making-inspired mandala sure was!

...It took more time than I care to admit to come up with that joke. At least the art turned out nice? 😅 Bad puns aside: Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk more about my thoughts/process for this piece ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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I'm a little bit conflicted with this one, Sparklers. (But hey, at least I should be getting this one posted a little bit earlier! 🤷‍♀️ ) I am happy with how it came out, and I was pretty excited to see what I could do with the ideas of gears and metal that immediately sprang to mind for this word, however...The act of making said metal and gears ended up being a lot more trouble than I anticipated. 😅 Those emotions are so equally matched it's hard to separate them. The biggest hurdle was the fact that in order to look "right," I had to be more careful about getting curves looking circular-ish and uniform with each other. For full circles, that's generally not so bad. For semi-circles and arcs, it tends to be a big pain. 🙃

It also didn't help that I chose to make the outer ring of gear teeth a size that was really "too small" for Procreate's symmetry tool to help me out as much as I needed it too. So I also had to be more careful with those as I worked me way across what area the symmetry tool wouldn't fill in for me. The background was a bit more challenge than I expected, too. If anyone remembers how I mentioned yesterday I had decided some spot color "within" the mandala lines is okay but I still want to keep things loose: This one definitely pushed the boundaries on that. I tried leaving things more abstract, but I kept going back and re-defining certain color areas because it felt wrong otherwise.

I think that's a conflict between the general clockmaking concept and the abstract nature of how I'm approaching these prompts; Clockmaking, or at least the physical components needed to do it, is so very rigid and precise. Although, on the other hand, there's a kind of irony in that, isn't there? Since the way we humans measure time is something we made up—it's pretty arbitrary as far as nature is concerned.

...I seem to be wandering away from talking about the art and into higher concepts I am really not an expert in. 😅 Let me try to get this derailed train of thought back on track...

My point was that it felt like I needed more color, placed more carefully, to help with the definition between the different gear and cog pieces. This was not helped by how a lot of the images I kept seeing when I looked up clock/watch insides did usually have pieces that stood out because they were differently colored metal. Two related asides: 1. I apologize to anyone that does work with watch/clock components and may be getting a headache from my lack of proper vocabulary to describe said parts...Or the general lack of sense the "clock parts" I tried to draw here make compared to the actually insides of a time-telling machine. Many, many artistic liberties were taken! 2. I do actually kind of recommend looking up watch/clock insides sometime when you get a chance if you're not familiar with what that looks like; I found a lot of the pictures oddly soothing for reasons I don't fully understand. But even so—A lot of them are pretty even though I don't think they're trying to be. The screws on this one make me think of tiny gemstones! [I did consider adding some spots of color to background to mimic that jewel-like feel I just mentioned, but ultimately I didn't want to over-complicate the color palette.]

Anyway, going back to the lines/mandala portion for a moment: I knew going in that the fact I'm taking up the center for the word definitions would make a time/clock-themed one more difficult. After all, one of the primary things you think of with those concepts are the clock hands in the center of a clock face. Usually, even if you don't read analogue clocks that often that's still true!

For that reason, while I normally make the mandalas from the inside-out (aside from adjustments/tweaks that happen later), this time I started more on the outer edge. The clock hands hanging out there were still one of the very last things, but the gear teeth and general round "clock border" were the first and I more or less worked my way inward.

And at a certain point I realized so far I really just had a "gears" or industrial-themed mandala that showed no hints of being tied to clocks specifically. 😅 You can see from that, I ended up opting to put roman numerals in the 4 primary "clock" positions—12, 3, 6, 9. If I'd had room, I might have gone for the full set of 12, but by that time (ha-ha) I'd spent way too long making those four "gear spoke" semi-circle things that hang over right where most of the other numerals would go and I was not of a mind to either re-do or erase them. 😵‍💫 I then spent way too long trying to figure out how to "compensate" and fill the "clock face" just a little bit more because the big 4 numerals weren't quite enough for me. It's not very exciting but I landed on just some small lines—Tick marks, you might say. 😃 You may also notice that, true to something else I said yesterday, this is now the first example of one of the Obscutober mandalas in black rather than white. I did start out with it in white, but as I was moving into work on the background I thought the white was coming off a little too "soft" or too much like the mandala was glowing. Black felt like a better fit for the illusion of depth and the more "rigid" feel overall.

Although while I was in the process of changing the lines from white to black, I was very tempted to leave it in a half-state where some of the uppers layers were in black and the lower ones were still white. That got vetoed for consistency's sake, but it did cause me to go back and play with some of the contrast in the background a little more to kind of echo the idea.

I was also very tempted to try dark brown or sepia lines for this one, but, say it with me: I decided not to to keep things simple and consistent.

The final product doesn't necessarily look that much like what I originally had in mind...But to be fair, my original vision was pretty fuzzy. At least unlike yesterday, there isn't too much I feel like I'd change or do all that differently if I had to do it over.

I do hope I can say at least that much about tomorrow's piece—Tomorrow is shaping up to be a busy day in my offline life, so I'm a little bit concerned about how I'm going to fit Obscutober in...But that's a key point of the challenge, right? 😅

There's definitely a joke in here somewhere about "use your time wisely," but I can't quite put it together, so you Sparklers will have to think on it and let me know if you can figure one out. 😉 Until tomorrow, Sparklers... 🤗

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Artwork  © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 20: Ichnite 🦖

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Ichnite (n.)

a fossilized footprint or track of an animal

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I was a bit concerned about how this one was going to go—I picked this word mostly because I like dinosaurs & how it kinda sounds like “ignite,” not because I knew what to do with it artistically. 😅

But! I think it turned out pretty neat! 😃

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk a bit more about my general thoughts/process. ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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Today's evening post time brought to you by: "I put this word on the prompt list mostly because I like dinosaurs and (not unlike my reasoning for Day 2) I'm amused that it sounds kind of like 'ignite,' not because I actually had any ideas of what to do with it artistically."

And also like...one of the previous days—I can't remember which one and I don't have time to go back and read every description to figure it out—this is one word I think may have benefitted more from my usual mini-magnet approach that the mandala one...But, then again, maybe not. I'm less sure than I was for that previous day, but I do think I'd still maybe like to eventually revisit this one with the magnets and see what they can do with it.

In any case, my biggest worry when I sat down to get started was that I could really only think of 2 distinct images for "trace fossils" like this word describes. And to be clear, that is a little bit of a "my bad" on this one—Technically, the definition is supposed to cover more than just footprint/track fossils specifically and somehow I glossed over that when I put the definition list together; It can also cover things like fossilized burrows or like, fossilized vegetation prints, etc.

I mention that because I tried not to stray too far from footprints and tracks because that was all I covered in the definition, but the two distinct I alluded to a moment ago were: 3-toed dinosaur prints and what I now know are called ammonite fossil imprints—Kind of like the classic swirly-fossil shape you might be familiar with if you've played an Animal Crossing game. [Animal Crossing isn't the only way I'm personally familiar with fossils like that; Somehow they just got buried in the general "fossils and dinosaur things" folder in my brain, Animal Crossing just seemed like an easy reference other people might understand.]

Ammonites are technically, usually ichnites—at least as far as I know, and I'm not a palentologist—but as far as I understand, I don't see why the impression left behind by an ammonite couldn't be considered one. It would be a "trace" of the creature, after all.

Either way, whether ammonites—or imprints they left behind—have anything to do with ichnites or not, I went ahead with the idea anyway because the swirl shape works so well with some "more traditional" mandala techniques, and otherwise I would've been pretty lacking in those here. And I don't know if you Sparklers were able to gather or not, but over the last few mandalas I've noticed how I sorted drifted away from more typical mandala motifs and ideas, and I want to try and drift back towards them.

But I still did my best to make more "proper" ichnites the focus. Obviously, that started with the nice big 3-toed...They're probably not actually to-scale for this, but we'll call them T-rex prints because that's definitely the dinosaur I was thinking of for them. Those served as my starting point that I build the either rest of the mandala around.

You'll notice I fit some human-ish prints inside of the T-rex prints. They're only human-ish because it was a little too cramped for me to get 5 full toes in there and I didn't want to size my brush down to do it at that stage. That said, it's worth noting I hadn't even considered this word might call for barefoot prints when I made the decision to go for shoe prints instead back on Day 15, but I'm definitely thanking past-me for that decision now!

I don't think I necessarily would have had too much of a problem of today and Day 15 feeling too similar if I had still gone with barefoot prints at that time, just because of all the other differences, but it does make me feel better knowing they have that one extra degree of separation between them.

That said, I did still want to re-use the idea of having some footprints "walk around" the mandala because I just think it's a cute one. But to aide the separation even further, I ended up going with something more like—if the chart I found via Google is to be believed and my doodle version retains any integrity to the proper shape—Velociraptor prints. If they don't really look like velociraptor prints, we'll just call them prehistoric bird prints and be done with it. 😆

Although, kind of ironically I think they came out looking a bit like flying bird silhouettes, which I had considered using somewhere on Day 15 but ultimately decided against. [Now I'm thinking that was maybe another good call to help keep this one separate that past-me wasn't even thinking about!]

But before I put the 'raptor prints in, I spent a lot more time trying to fill more of the space with the ammonite-esque swirls I mentioned before. I definitely spent way longer on those than anything else because getting the base swirls just right proved for more difficult that I anticipated—even more so for the ones towards the edge rather than the ones towards the center.

And then I maybe went a bit overboard trying to make the swirls towards the outer edge a little more interesting. In hindsight, I may have overdone them a bit, but after I spent so long on them I very much did not have it in me to go back and try to figure out how to "un-over-do" them. So they are what they are. 🤷‍♀️

I did however also decide to fill some space and accent a bit with one other kind of more proper trace fossil—My very simple approximation if what I think were snake trails that I kept seeing pop up in my search for ichnite references. I saw at least a few that really did look look that lines-with-V's-down-the-center that I drew along the outer edge and just a bit in the center.

They also ended up kinda going along with some of the more decorative lines around those outer swirls, which was nice.

Oh, and the line that weaves between the 'rapot prints was both a last-might attempt to just fill more space and also I think is a nice nod to the cracks and crevices I personally associate fossil imagery with.

There was kind of a trade-off in that this was one of the mandalas where I spent a lot of time on the lines, because this was probably the simplest color scheme so far. I just smashed browns and tans like the color of both fossils and the dirt/rock their buried in together and tried to get the contrast to enhance the footprint ichnites in a reasonable way.

I did have a little trouble getting the amount of brightness just right like I did yesterday, but yesterday's was still worse in that regard.

Ultimately, I think I was right to be worried about how this one turned out...However, this is one of the ones that ended up surprising me with the results. 😊 It turned out much stronger than I was expecting even though here are things I'm second-guessing like you more or less heard me mention (and other ones I'd rather not call specific attention to).

This one is also probably helped a bit by the fact that I wasn't in quite the frenzy to finish it that I was yesterday's. 😅

That said, I think I covered everything I wanted to and I've still got to get to cross-posting...And I have no clue what song I'm going to pick for the Instagram post, which will definitely slow me down. 🙃 So I'll leave off here while we all ponder the footprints of the past and hope for a tomorrow that turns out at least as well as these did. 😉

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Artwork © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 30: Vitrine 💎

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Vitrine (n.)

a glass display case

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I may have still be short on ideas for this one, but I think I was mentally prepared for it a bit more, which helped considerably. 🙌

My best? No, but I do like it! Let’s just hope I can say at least that much tomorrow…😅 So close to the end!! 

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk a bit more about my general thoughts/process. ✨

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I admittedly yet again did not have a ton of ideas for this one, and it probably shows. 😅 However, I do think I managed a little bit better because I actually remembered this one was on the list for most of the month, so it's been kind of living in my subconscious all the while. I think that shows, too.

This was though a word I originally put on the list because of the fun I thought it would be if I'd chosen to work with the mini-magnets. Yes, a glass display case itself is a very specific thing, but the cases can be designed in a few different ways, serve different purposes, and hold a multitude of different things. I had it in mind that toying with the different expectations and contents of a glass display would lend themselves well to poetry.

...But I'm not working with poetry here, am I? 🙃

At least not literally; If you want to argue figuratively, I won't stop you.

Still, in another timeline where I had more than just a single day—probably more like a whole month to itself—to play around with the concept, and maybe if I had decided to work on a bigger canvas, I might have ended up with an outcome more like some of the designs you see in Adult Coloring books. I'm thinking along the lines of Johanna Basford's work, but she's just the one I know best by name, plenty of others I think could also do wonders with, "A glass display case full of interesting stuff."

I did try to capture a little of that general idea, still, but some of Sparklers are probably familiar enough with what I usually have to say about these mandalas by now that you might guess: I wanted to lean more in the "traditional mandala" direction. Both just for the aesthetic-y reasons, but yeah I will be frank that that way, particularly with this kind of subject, was much faster, too.

Speaking of, I would also like it on the record that I initially didn't back myself into quite as tight of time-crunch corner tonight...But I neglected to notice my Apple Pencil needed charging before I got started, so at one point I had to both break for dinner and just to let the pencil charge, and that basically ate up whatever tiny bit of "extra" time I had when I got started. 🫠

Anyway. I started with a vaguely French/Rocco Vitrine-inspired shape as my base, then "decorated" it a little, and tried to"fill" it with a few things—A crystal ball, something that lightly resembles perfum bottles, and a gem. Then I went around filling space with a little Art Nouveu and little Art Deco, kind of thinking of a jewelry store that's maybe been around for years and years, that would have a bunch of antique-y display cases hanging around instead of the sleek, boxy modern kind.

So not the most elaborate design in the world, but I do think this is one of my better attempts to marry the more doodle-y nature a lot of these have come out with and some more typical mandala motifs and ideas. It's still certainly not perfect in that regard, but I do think it kind of stands out in a good way because of that.

This is thought probably another where the colors are doing a lot of work to help things along. 😅

White lines were a must. They felt kind of essential to the "glass" feel, much like back on Day 21. And now is a good time to note that I also fought with myself quite a bit on the colors to keep the two of them—today and Day 21—from feeling too similar to each other. This was mainly accomplished by sticking with teals and avoiding "true" blues. Which, I do think that made for a nice nod to how a lot of glass has kind of an underlying green tint to it.

I still can't say I necessarily avoided them looking similar as much as I would've liked, all the things considered, but the clock was ticking, so it is what it is. 🤷‍♀️

...And I think that's kind of everything I have to say, really. Probably for the best since typing this out took longer than I expected and I still have to get to cross-posting, but I do feel a little bad that I managed to enjoy this one more than the last few and feel like I have even less to say about it. 🫤

Oh well. At least I am happy with it. I hope I can say at least that much tomorrow...And naturally, I really hope I can get tomorrow's posted earlier so I can be DONE and work on some other things, but after the way last week and this week is going so far...I have my doubts.

Even so, wish me luck either way, Sparklers—We're so close to the end!! 😵‍💫

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Artwork © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 23: Sylvan 🌲

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Sylvan (adj.)

consisting of or associated with woods; wooded

pleasantly rural or pastoral

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I think this one turned out pretty cute, especially since I don’t normally draw trees that often and didn’t really know what I was doing. 🙌

What’s *not* cute is how late I got started on it, now leading me to post in a rush. 😅

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk a bit more about my general thoughts/process. ✨

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For the second time this month: Now circling back to do this description properly, after speed-running to go ahead and just get it posted without one. 🫠

But unlike Day 19, today's supreme delay in getting started wasn't rooted in distraction, but rather a mixture of some IRL things demanding my attention (nothing serious that you Sparklers need to worry about, otherwise I'd elaborate), and good ol' procrastination. 😅

I think instead of over-hyping the concept like I did with Day 8, I stumped [ha] myself by..."under-hyping"? Whatever word/phrase I'm looking for that would mean "expecting it to be difficult, in a bad way."

"Sylvan" made the list because I like the word itself—It reminds me of Sylveon from Pokémon, one of my favorites. And even though the definition has nothing to do with such things, the word puts images of Tinkerbell-esque fairies in my head, which is a very pleasant experience. [And now you know where the teeny-tiny butterflies came from. 😆

Why exactly then I was dreading working on this mandala so much when I was reminded it was the next one up, even I still don't really understand. 🤔

And I'd love to sit here and say that once I actually got started that I was worried for nothing, but it wouldn't be entirely true. Granted, it wasn't nearly as bad as my subconcious was insisting it would be, but it definitely wasn't what I would call easy, either.

For starters: It was weighing on me that I didn't want to re-hash too much of things I'd done on Day 10 or Day 19, and in hindsight having all three of those words on the same prompt list was probably not the best idea. 😅 I don't think it's as bad as some same-y/too similar words I've spotted on other prompt lists before, but if I had thought it out further when I was putting the list together, I probably would've forced myself to choose between "Sylvan" and "Rampike," and then go for some other non-tree-related word to fill the space. [Feuillemort most likely would've gotten to stay either way, though; It's easily my favorite word of the three.]

Then there's also the matter that I've been learning the hard way with these mandalas—And again with Day 19 in particular—that I'm not very good at "stacking" and overlapping motifs; My brain much prefers to keep them clean and separate, especially with the more doodle-y ones. But to really get the forest-y look I wanted, I had do at least a little bit of that here.

What I did do turned out nice, I think. I'm particularly pleased that I thought to include a little tree stump as that stage. It felts a bit unexpected, and I think it kind of ironically does more to paint this as more of a forest picture and less of just a tree one, if that makes any sense. Plus it kinda saved me some trouble because the one other idea I had to fill those smaller spaces with drawing tiny stand-ins for flowers, and that would've taken much longer to get something I was happy with.

To that end, I did my level best to make the various tree "types" included look different from each other, but there was a limit to how much patience I had to try and figure out exactly how to do that, as was as I didn't do too much experimenting because I did get a late start and therefore did not have a ton of time in case said experimenting didn't pan out. Still, some experimenting was had.

The first couple of trees were okay because they were first and could be very stereotypical in nature, with some swirly bits for good space-filling measure. The third and fourth were more difficult. [Take a wild guess which one was the fourth design since it had the roughest time. 🙃] At one point I tried a kind of Bonsai-inspired thing, but I couldn't get the leaves into a form I was happy with, and without that, the more Bonsai-looking trees seemed horribly out of place next to the others.

So that's how we ended up with that odd-looking thing with the swirl brands that might look vaguely butterfly-ish. Since I was having trouble translating a more "realistic" tree design into the piece, I just made something up! 😆

After all that, I knew the coloring phase had it's work cut out to try and top everything off in a satisfying way. I don't think this one is as reliant on the colors to bring everything together as Day 21—And in fact I don't think "bring together" would be the best description of what it's doing anyway—but I think it is helping "sell" the forest idea a lot more than if there was no color.

I did make some effort to not make the palette too much like Day 8, Day 12 or Day 17, though. It was a little tempting to make it intentionally more like Day 8 and it definitely still came out bearing a passing resemblance, but my instinct was to keep them more separate and stuck by that. And I stand by that decision now as the right one.

As you Sparklers might have guessed, this is in fact another one where I think if I'd had more time to think through what I was doing and experiment, it may have come out better. But At least I am still decently happy with what I did get out of it; I did actually really like the center with the trunks a lot—a weird feeling since it's mostly a tan-brown halo—and there's nothing I feel is expressly "wrong" with the rest of it. It's just maybe missing a little extra "oomf" I just wasn't able to give it today.

I'm hoping tomorrow's will be a little bit of a different story based on the prompt—if I haven't misread the list again, it'll be another of the ones I've been looking forward to—but there's only one way to find out, and nothing is guaranteed!

See you Sparklers then; Hopefully early enough in the evening I can actually post the art with the description and not have to come back and do it later for a third time. 😅 👋

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Artwork © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 21: Hyaline 🫧

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Hyaline (adj./n.)

having a glassy, translucent appearance

a thing that is clear and translucent like glass, especially a smooth sea or clear sky

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2/3 of Inktober down, 1/3 to go!

Does that mean I've got figuring the art for the day out down-pat? Nope! I was probably the most lost I've been so far with this one.

But y'know what? I found my way in the end. The color palette is doing a LOT of heavy lifting, I think, but sometimes that's just what it takes!

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk a bit more about my general thoughts/process. ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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As the caption-y bit says: We are officially now 2/3 of Inktober down, 1/3 to go! On the one hand: Yay! 🥳

On the other:...What do you mean October is 2/3 over?? 😱 😖

But I will ignore the minor existential that thought stirs in me for now and attempt to at least get through writing this description first...

[Again, as the caption-y bit says] This was easily the word that had me absolutely the most lost on what to do so far. I was getting hints of ideas thanks to the noun allusion to sea and sky, which I think comes through pretty clearly [haha] in the final product, but I had several false starts and didn't feel like I really had any idea where I was going with this until I was maybe 70% done with it. 😅

Because let's review the images this word put in my head:

glass, like glasses you drink out of or stained glass ["glass" in general puts "stained glass" in my head 99% of the time]

a "smooth sailing" ship; Particularly at night for reasons even I don't fully understand

bright blue, sunny sky on a clear day

That's not a ton to work with, and none of those translate particularly well into mandala doodles. The sky might, but I learned the hard way on Day 17 that it's still no cakewalk, at least not for me.

I was also a little worried that if I wasn't careful, this one might come out too similar to previous days, and I was mostly thinking of shapes and color palettes we've already made considerably use of: Dark Blue + light colors, moons, clouds, etc. Not to even mention some of the more subtle ideas/motifs.

Still, I had to do something, so I started fiddling with cloud shapes.

Somewhere in there—maybe because I had both "glass" and "sky" top-of-mind and I watched Clue last night—the idea of a chandelier occurred to me. Chandeliers can be be made up of a lot of glass and hang up high, also as if they were in the sky. And, more pointedly, when I attempted to look up references I did find some chandeliers designed to kind look like clouds in various ways.

Very briefly this resulted in my own kind-of cloud chandelier, but it felt...Pathetic? I think it was something about clouds being "tied down" when normally they float around as they please. Either way, it was not working for me.

So I went for a more abstract "general" chandelier kind of thing. That worked a lot better, but it was far, far way from being enough to build the rest of the mandala on.

Still a loss, I went back to fiddling with free-form clouds and started thinking about stained glass options.

It was while looking "Sky Mandala" for more ideas of what to do with the clouds that the "biggest help" idea would occur to me—The moon with "light beams" radiating from it. It's such a simple idea, and I had touched on it just a little before on Day 4 and Day 9, but it was just what I needed!

I thought they were a great way to incorporate more rigid lines that feel very stained-glass-appropriate, fill a lot of space fast, and divide up the image a bit so what blank space I'd have left was less intimidating.

The moon also helped finally bring a cleared picture out of those hints of ideas I mentioned before: A little sailboat, drifting on a sea of clouds under a clear night sky.

So that's the image I tried to stay true to as put the moons in and fleshed out some details of what I already had. And short of adding the boat itself—which I had trouble figure out where to put, but I managed!—the stars, and some hatching, admittedly I didn't really do much else once the moons and beam were in...Because it felt like I didn't really need to. More stuff would just be more cluttered, and too cluttered would mess with the "clear sky" idea.

But the real star of the show here I think is the color palette, which really tied everything together and is probably doing the most heavy-lifting of any color palette I've used so far this month. 😆

I had gone into this know I'd probably use a lot of a desaturated blue or gray and white to go for a glass feel, which I did, but I'd also had inklings way back on Day 6 that I might want to squeeze a soft, blurred rainbow in there somewhere. That's why I specifically tried to stay away from using too much blue back on that day, and yeah the idea stayed with me all this time. Though I did second-guess if I'd actually end up going through with it after I actually got started today.

And for a minute there, I really was sticking with just the blue, white, and a tiny bit of yellow. But I'm so glad I stuck with my guns and kept pushing in those little bits of color. I think they really helped the chandelier stand back out after the moon beams had kind of subdued it, and they really marry together the sky and sea elements in a way they just weren't coming together before.

In a way, I think this one was the opposite of Day 17. For that day, I had what felt like good ideas but no strong ways to pull them together. Today I started out with what felt like no good ideas, but I managed to bring together some small ones really well. 😁

I think we might have a new favorite here, but I'm also a bit wary that I might just be that glad I managed to make something I like when I started out at so much of a loss...And I didn't have to rush through it, either! 🤩

It would be so nice if all the days when I start out super lost could turn out this well, but I know better than to get my hopes up on that. 🫠 I'd settle for at least half as much, most of the time though!

Speaking of getting my hopes up, let's see if I can have a similarly pleasant experience in cross-posting tonight. I really doubt that, as I always do, but you never know, right? 😅

Either way, I hope you Sparklers like today's piece as much as I do. Enjoy, and I'll be seeing you all tomorrow—Possibly a little earlier than usual as I work around some IRL things, but we'll see!

Toodles! 🤗

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Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 19: Feuillemort 🍂

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Feuillemort (adj.)

the color of dead or dying leaves; a dull yellowish or orangish brown

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Finally, one of the words I was most looking forward to, & one of the most seasonally appropriate! 🍁

...If only I hadn’t been distracted by art supply news for most of the afternoon so I could’ve given it the attention it really deserved. 😅

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk a bit more about my general thoughts/process. ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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Okay, circling back to do this description properly now, after speed-running to go ahead and just get it posted without one. (😅)

That was even necessary for a few different reasons:

I got distracted by an announcement from a certain marker company this afternoon and that distraction ate up a lot more time than I wanted it to.

This isn't the first time I've had to post one of these later than I was really happy with this year—You Sparklers know that. But at a certain point, it became obvious I was going to come uncomfortably close to the late posting hours that have plagued me for Inktobers' past, and I started to mildly panic.

Point 2 was not helped by the fact that dinner was ready just about time I finished the art itself, but I knew if I stopped to eat, I'd be set back a whole additional hour, if not longer. So I put off dinner for as long as I reasonably could, and then still had to work through dinner with one hand because trying to Just Eat and Not Think about The Obscutober Post was making me panic more.

And it's a real shame because if you Sparklers remember from yesterday, this is one of the words on the list that I was really looking forward to—So much so that I almost accidentally did it early. 😅

Sparklers, if you learn nothing else from me, please at least take to heart: Life is much easier and less stressful when you have actual time management skills and use them!

Ironically though, and kind of in spite of not getting to give this one as much careful attention as I wanted to...I don't feel like I have too much to say about how it did come together in the end. 🤷‍♀️

At it's core, the mandala here was mostly just drawing leaves, after all. It did take me a few tries to nail the shape of the Maple and oak leaves, though that's largely because they look weird of you don't get the subtle roughness of their edges just right. [At least if you ask me.] But the rest of the leaf shapes mostly took figuring out in how to place them together, not so much in how to achieve them.

Much like Day 8, I felt like I kind of had a leg up here because of a project you Sparklers haven't seen yet but my Ko-fi Members have. [And hopefully you Sparklers will get to see it soon, too, I've just been too busy to squeeze it in yet!] Said project also involved drawing a lot of small leaves, so I had a bit of experience with simple leaf shapes up my sleeve. [Up my sleaf. 😃]

I was kind of worried I was going to/had maybe overhyped working with this word also like Day 8, but really my biggest problem was just the ticking clock.

The one other "major" problem I had was that after the past few mandalas have felt more doodle-y and less mandala-y to me, I wanted to insist on getting some more "proper" mandala elements in here. That was easier for the simpler leaves that served more as filler and more difficult for the more specifically-shaped leafs.

Getting the more traditional mandala elements in there was also kind of important to help keep this from looking like a giant mess of lines for the different leaf segments and such, which I didn't realize until I'd started on maybe the third different kind of leaf or so.

Speaking of late-stage realizations: Believe it or not, it only occurs to me now that this looks kind of like a fall wreath. 😆

But I managed to get through the line phase and still feel pretty good about it. My goal was to get a nice leaf-pile sort of thing going and despite my anxiety over how long it was taking, I think I got pretty much what I wanted out of it.

Next, of course, was the color. There was little argument to be had there because that's sort of what today's definition hinges entirely on.

I did however have a bit of a fight trying to get the right brightness and the contrast I wanted in some areas. While I did want to stick fairly close to the definition and limit how much red and green go in there, at least some of both felt necessary to stay true to the nature of dying leaves and I didn't want it to just be a flat yellow-y-brown blob, either.

I stand by the outcome I got, but I do think if I hand't been so pressed for time I could have arrived at a just-as-happy conclusion a lot easier. As it is, I spent most of the coloring phase just kind of smashing fall colors on top of each other; If I'd had more time, I would've selected my colors a little more carefully and wouldn't have had to layer some of them up so much to get the color I wanted. 🙃

And then when I thought I was finished, I had to go back twice to brighten it up because it just didn't look as vivid on screens that weren't my iPad and it bugged me.

...Sparklers, here I was typing a paragraph about how I originally misspelled "dying" as "doling" in the image definition and had to go back and fix it right before posting, only to realize I didn't even completely fix it. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

It'll be fixed by the time I update this description to actually be a description, and I'll fix it in the few other places I'm able, but I can't fix it everywhere so now a bunch of the cross-posts are just...stuck with "dyling" instead of "dying" up there. 🫠

*Sigh*. I knew that was going to happen eventually. It was just inevitable with a format that includes text, the same way it's pretty inevitable that every time I do a daily challenge with the mini-magnets, I make some kind of dumb spelling mistake I can't easily fix with those, either. At least this way is technically easier to fix the image itself and it's just the posts that are the problem; The magnets are often trickier to fix because I have to decide if I want try to literally fixing it with the magnets or just Photoshop it instead.

Still, I absolutely exhaust myself with these dumb oversights. 😫

Maybe that's a sign I should leave (ha) this description here before I knock all the remaining wind out of the sails I have left for this artwork. 🙃 I think I mentioned everything I wanted to about the making-of, before that realization happened. I think that's why I was even bothering to bring it up—To make sure I'd covered as much as I could.

Well. I suppose I would rather realize the mistake now than like, a week from now or sometime in the future when it would be way more ridiculous how long it took me to notice. This is still not great, but at least I know the main reason it happened was because I was just in such a rush from the coloring phase onward and that mistaken was collateral damage.

Remember that thing I said at the beginning? I think it bears repeating once more: If you learn nothing else from me, please at least take to heart: Life is much easier and less stressful when you have actual time management skills and use them!

Bleh. I think I should also say I do still like the art itself, The frustration I have towards myself is just very strong right now. I knew cross-posting went a little too smoothly once I got started tonight.

Sigh together with me for a moment, Sparklers: SIGH.

And now please send thoughts of better time management my way, because clearly I could use them as to hopefully not have another day like today. 😅 I'll see you Sparklers tomorrow, hopefully with a proper description the first time, everything spelled correctly, and in much better spirits than the mood I've just put myself in. 🫠

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Artwork © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 18: Prink 💅

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Prink (v.)

to dress, groom, or decorate (someone or something) in a careful or showy manner; primp

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It’s a good thing I check the definitions before I start on the art for these—I would’ve done tomorrow’s word by mistake today if I didn’t! 😮‍💨 

Narrowly avoided catastrophe aside, I like how this one turned out a lot! 💎 

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk a bit more about that word mix-up and my general process for the art. ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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Does anyone remember at the tail end of yesterday's description that I said today's word was one I'd been really looking forward to?

Well, (as implied by the short caption) that was incorrect—I had actually jumped ahead and was thinking of tomorrow's word and continued to do so right up until I went to grab the definition and get started today.

Note the phrasing there: Thankfully, I start each of these art pieces with the definition in the center so I have a better idea of what space I have to work with for the mandala rounds, and because the words are new-to-me, I still have to consult the definition list. SO I found out I'd been thinking of the wrong word before I'd made any actual art progress! 😅 I was thinking this would be one of next week's words!

Note the phrasing there: Thankfully, I start each of these art pieces with the definition in the center so I have a better idea of what space I have to work with for the mandala rounds, and because the words are new-to-me, I still have to consult the definition list. SO I found out I'd been thinking of the wrong word before I'd made any actual art progress!

Ergo, my word mix-up wasn't quite the catastrophe it could have been. 😮‍💨

I had already spent several minutes looking up inspiration that was related to tomorrow's word, so it felt strange to have to so strongly pivot my line of thinking, but I'd certainly rather have to do that than realize I'd made completely the wrong piece of art for the day...And then still have to turn around and make the right one. 😖

With that in mind, once I actually had the correct word in mind, I was pretty worried the outcome was going to be another bag of mixed feelings like yesterday was...And yet, I'm actually very pleasantly surprised with what I managed to put together here. 😁

I'm not quite ready to say the whole package is my new favorite, but the color scheme is definitely one of my favorites so far, and I at least like today's line work much better than yesterday's, or a couple of my other "least favorites" of the month so far. Considering how I started out, that's a win in my book!

So then, "Prink": My thoughts, as might be obvious, went mostly to sort of an idealized "old" Hollywood headspace. I definitely wanted to get a dress in there somewhere—That was at least one thing I knew more or less from the beginning of the month, after the list was finalized and I had mostly settled on the mandalas as my method of attack, that Prink would be "needing" a dress.

I went with a very [in my mind] stereotypical "glam dress"—Sparkly, probably satin, with a fur stole/boa—in part because it was easier to draw than a lot of other options would have been...But also because for me that kind of dress just does feel like a "careful but showy" fashion choice, and it kind of fits right in with a lot of the other imagery that was coming to mind: Gaudy jewelry (my favorite kind!), pearls, those backstage dressing mirrors framed by circular lights, red carpet events, expensive perfume....etc...

...And that's basically how my exact thought process went right there. 😆; One vague idea/symbol of celebrity "prinking" after another. Really the only thing that—perhaps surprisingly—didn't immediately come to mind was the suit/tuxedo, but I thought to add it in because it would be a little more variety than just repeating the dress around, and I later realized it fits as a subtle reminder that "prinking and primping" aren't exclusively to femininity.

Likewise, the color scheme is mostly what I'd consider stereotypical for a lot of this imagery. Except the hot pink and dark blue are a step off; More stereotypical, at least to me, would be red and black. Since I'd gotten myself psyched up for a very different word and had started out kind of disappointed, though, I tweaked the colors to what would personally be more visually exciting to me. And you'll remember that I said this is definitely one of my favorite Obscutober color schemes so far, so that both worked and I think was the right choice.

It's funny how I feel like I had even less ideas for how to tie the individual ideas together today than I did yesterday, and yet I'm so much happier with what I cobbled together. Things just seemed to flow much better from one idea to the next, and I'm not really sure why. Especially since I did start out with such a different mindset and have to change course so quickly. 🤔

I'm definitely not complaining, though!

Really the only thing I could say I'm not terribly happy with here is that it doesn't "feel" very mandala-ish. As in a lot of the lines here really are just small doodles that could be "normal" drawings on their own, they're not really composed thy way mandala motifs normally are. But, if I'm being fair and realistic with myself, this certainly isn't the first mandala of the month you can say that about. It might even be fair to say most of them have been like that, even. I think maybe it just sticks out a bit more here because I would normally think of drawing clothes so completely separately from drawing mandalas.

Perfume bottles, too, for what it's worth. And if the perfume bottle or the proportions on the suit look a little funky, here's my excuses right now; I don't think I've ever drawn a perfume bottle before and it's been a very long time since I've attempted to draw anything resembling a suit, and it was definitely not in a more simple doodle style like this. 😅 There was much small-scale learning done here today!

Let's see...I think the only thing I haven't mentioned yet is that you can see I opted to do considerably more stippling here than I think any other mandala has gotten so far. That was a very conscious choice because I've found before that stippling can be a pretty good stand-in for a glitter effect when you're trying to not get too complicated with coloring. It didn't quite "glitter" the way I'd pictured here, but I also didn't really go out of my way to help it in the coloring department, either. But I still stand by the decision to use stippling the way I did.

[And oh look, that example I linked is probably the last time I attempted to draw something like a suit...five years ago...]

In conclusion: I pretty significantly underestimated myself today...But I kind of needed to, after yesterday, I think. It feels so much better to have gone into this one so uncertain and turn out so much more satisfied with it.

I feel like I've said that same thing like five times with different words now, but if I have it's only because I am still so surprised and in that way it really can't be overstated.

[Once I realized I had my words/days mixed up] I was already feeling pretty good about what I'll be able to do for tomorrow's word, but I think now I have a little bit of confidence back that I'd lost yesterday, so I'm looking even more forward to it than before. 😉

So, in the end, maybe it was a good thing I got my words mixed up? I just hope I don't do it again, because while I maybe-needed the bait-and-switch this time, it very easily could've turned out much, much worse. 😅

...I can say I'm not looking forward to cross-posting because (as I complained a bit about yesterday, too) Instagram keeps giving me stupid problems when I come around to it specifically—And it gets saved for as-close-to-last-as-possible for that reason!—but then again, do I ever look forward to that? Not really!

Oh well. Has to be done. [In my mind, anyway.] So I'll leave you Sparklers here and get on with that for today. Here's hoping tomorrow comes out at least this nicely, if not even better... 🤞

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Artwork © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 17: Avolation 🪽

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Avolation (n.)

the act of flying [away]; flight

[obsolete] evaporation

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Today I bring you art with a big side of Mixed Feelings™️

You might say all of the good ways to tie my ideas together for this one just seemed to fly away before I could fully grasp them. 😅

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk a bit more about those ideas and my general process. ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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Today I've done my level-best to stay on-task, so hopefully if this description doesn't take too long (...or randomly delete itself...) hopefully this one should be going up a little earlier than usual.

That said, we have another one that...I like it, but I'm not sure this is necessarily "the best" that I could do for the prompt.

Birds and feathers for "flight" felt like an obvious "must" to me. But I did want to include some slightly less conventional ideas; I thought about butterflies and was really close to including them, but while I was looking for references, I spotted a dragonfly picture and changed course.

I think butterflies one might associate a little bit more with calmly flittering around flowers, delicately pausing to sample the nectar, etc. Meanwhile, dragonflies move fast and generally in my experience are quicker to fly away when approached than butterflies are.

I was planning on including some kind of flower from the beginning—see more or less what I just said about butterflies—but similar to the dragonfly, I spotted a dandelion while I was looking for butterfly references and said: Wait a minute. Dandelions would actually be kind of perfect, because their little wispy seeds "fly away" in the wind.

And, weed or not, I have a really big soft spot for white dandelions. [And baby's breath—Anything that passes for springtime snow without actually being snow.]

I also wanted to get clouds or cloud-adjacent shapes in their somewhere both because clouds > sky > things fly in the sky, but also as a more subtle nod to the obsolete definition since clouds are part of the water cycle and evaporation in that way.

The thing is that I'm not sure I managed to tie all of those ideas together in the most satisfying way. And I had a lot of space leftover that, as you can see, I ended up filling with just a little hatching, some dots, and...tiny triangles. 🫤 I don't know why, the triangle just felt like they worked. Maybe they're seeds the bird was eating and dropped, I don't know.

But I only really made efforts to change what I originally did with the clouds, and I am at least much happier with the final cloud shapes you see here. I'd had more trouble than I anticipated making the birds and dragonflies in the first place, so having to do them over was intensely unappealing.

I think it's sort of the opposite problem I had shortly ago on Day 15. That day I had a bunch of strong ideas, and trying to jam them all together gelled really well. Here...The ideas were strong, but they just didn't coalesce as nicely as I'd hoped.

Likewise, I think the color scheme is doing some of the more heavy lifting here. I mostly went with the first choices that came to mind; The only significant changes are that I went with more of a BlueJay-Blue for the bird instead of a brown or more Robin-like color scheme, and a lot of dragonflies I see around here are more of a dark reddish brown, so I went with a much brighter orange-y red. I really wanted to keep things light and kind of airy to go with the clouds/evaporation thing.

The final product isn't bad, and I like a lot of the individual pieces. I just think it needs some help in tying all the pieces together that I apparently simply did not have in me today. 🤷‍♀️

Ah well. I do have slightly higher hopes for tomorrow's word at least—It's one I've been really looking forward to. 😉 Let's just hope I don't end up hyping it up too much like I kinda did Day 8. 😅

And let us also hope that I don't have the issue with finding music for today's cross-post on Instagram like I did yesterday. I found and made something work, but I had a pretty different song in mind that I thought was a perfect fit and Instagram for whatever reason doesn't believe the song exists. 🙄

Oh the many little idiosyncrasies of social media, I loathe you so...

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Artwork © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 16: Escutcheon 🛡️

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Escutcheon (n.)

a shield or shield-like surface on which a coat of arms is depicted

an ornamental or protective plate around a keyhole, door handle, drawer pull, light switch, etc.

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We are officially halfway through October/Inktober! 🎉 

You could say I went with something more on the simple side to “celebrate,” but it was mostly just a coincidence. 😅 I am still happy with it, though! 👍

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk a little more about my thoughts/process. ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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Once again for catharsis: We are officially halfway through the month, Sparklers! 🥳

...And you'd think that to celebrate, I'd actually be able to get today's piece posted earlier, but nope! And it really is no one else's fault but my own this time—I had this one already 90% finished, but I let myself get distracted by some other things I know really could've waited until after this was taken care of. 😅 I accept my fate!

But it is what it is; At least I don't think the art itself suffered as a result.

This one felt relatively easy since, as might be overly obvious, it put very specific images in my head—Much of which I thought translated well enough into a mandala design. Namely, I kept picturing a keyhole plate that was etched gold, and I went with a very basic, "classic" shield shape because the definition literally says "shield" and I associate coats-of-arms images with a pretty shield-like shape as it is. And I also associate coats-of-arms strongly with royalty, so that's where the crown shapes came from.

Once I had those shapes in place as a foundation, it felt fair to just kind of fill in with more general mandala motifs that, at least to me, feel reasonably adjacent to some detail work you might see in these kids of decorative plates...However, I will admit I didn't actually bother looking up references for this one, so if you're personally more familiar with "Escutcheons" and some of the motifs I picked look terribly out of place...Well, here's my excuses and an apology, I guess. 😆

The colors were also very straightforward. I went with silver and goal for the metal base, then offset them with some abstract shadows. I added the spots of red, blue, purple, and green as a last-minute pop; The whole package was missing something, and I each of these colors in jewel tones I again associate pretty strong with royalty, plus I think they're fairly common inclusions in colored coats-of-arms designs.

My one regret in the design is that the white lines + browns in the background make me think an awful lot of a Gingerbread house, but when I tried switching the lines to black, everything just felt horribly flat.

At that point I really did not feel like going back over the background colors to try and "fix" the black lines when the white ones were fine outside of the Gingerbread thing (and this was after I got distracted, so I was running short on time, too)...So white lines it is! Who says you can't make a Gingerbread house that looks more like a castle for Gingerbread Royalty, anyway? I'm sure someone out there has done it! 😉

...You'd think I'd have more to say than that, but...Well, this one was pretty simple, especially compared to all everything I tried to squeeze into yesterday's. I know I said once before these can't all be super complex, and that holds true for today.

Oh! I should mention: This is yet again one word where I left off part of the definition that I included on the "official" list because it both took up a lot of space and also didn't really fit with the direction I took the art in. Escutcheon, in nautical use, can also mean, "A panel on the stern of a vessel bearing its name and port of registry."

And one final note you Sparklers might find amusing: This is probably the word I'm the most glad I don't have to pronounce out loud for this challenge. 🤭 I've had trouble enough remembering how spell it!

...That should be everything for today, I think. Now let me get to cross-posting before it gets any later...or before I get distracted by something else that could really stand to wait. 😆

See you tomorrow, Sparklers. 🤗

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Artwork © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 15: Peregrinate 🥾

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Peregrinate (v.)

to travel or journey, especially to walk on foot

to walk or travel over; traverse

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You might say this one took me on a bit of a “journey!” 🗺️

I went in very unsure of what to do, but once I got brainstorming I kinda had *too many* ideas & I’m not sure I managed to do them all justice…But I am SUPER happy with the results! 😄 

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk a little more about my thoughts/process. ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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I'm going to begin today's description with a moment to pause and hope there is no description- or uploading-related catastrophe today like there was yesterday. [And if you Sparklers are reading this paragraph, that should mean there wasn't one...but we'll see...]

As for actually talking about the art: You might guess by my posting time that I yet again got a late start working today's piece. That is true, however that's not the only factor to blame. Originally, this word made the consideration list while I was pulling together the prompts solely because it makes me think ofMiss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (which long-time Sparklers may remember I am a fan of even though it doesn't come up often). Yet the definition for the word doesn't really relate back to that book series; You could argue that it does tie in nicely in some ways, but that's about all I can say about that without getting spoilers all over the place.

But I bring that up because I really had no clue what I was going to make for this word other than "maybe someone map-inspired," and even when I first sat down and started trying to brainstorm I felt very uneasy about what I'd be able to come up with.

And yet! Once I got the brainstorm going, I think I opened a bit of a floodgate, actually. 😅 As it turns out, there was a lot more "map-inspired" stuff I could think of that could be converted into simple mandala motifs than I expected!

A lot of these really kinda hit me all at once and I am a little short on time, so I'm just going to bullet point the things that made it in, and give minor elaboration where it seems necessary:

Compass! Perfect for a base shape and some larger filler motifs. I did try to be mindful that the compass elements didn't come out too similar to Day 3, though.

Okay, literally a map, but more specifically: A paper map you'd fold up and take with you. This idea was in my brain but it wasn't until I did some Googling and saw another mandala design that used a folded map in a ring like this that I had any grasp on how best to fit it in. My map is a bit wide because I'd gotten most of the central compass elements in already and didn't want to change them, so putting it as the outer ring made the most sense of what options I had left. But it still works!

Related: While more challenging than I expected to do in a way I was happy with, I had probably more fun than I should have putting the little blobs and dotted lines on the map. And the "X-marks-the-spot" idea for that was the one thing I had in mind before I even got started on the rest of the mandala, so I'm glad I was able to squeeze that in somewhere.

Googling also brought the little "you are here" teardrop shape to my attention. Ironically even though I've probably spent more of my life using digital maps to travel than traditional and am therefore super familiar with that image, it didn't naturally occur to me as a "travel symbol" at all. But it fits really well—It was both a nice way to get an extra pop of color in here (red seemed like the obvious choice), and it was a great bit of filler between the compass points.

After going over the definition again to get started, I felt like it was important to get either boots/shoes or footprints in the design somewhere for the "especially to walk on foot," part. I was half-tempted to do more like barefoot prints because I thought boots would be a little too much detail...And then my Googling reminded me this style of shoe prints exists, and that seemed like the much-better way to go. Less detailed, still gets the point across, and I think most people would rather "peregrinate" with shoes on than they would barefoot! 🤭

After all that, I had just a little bit of space left. I didn't have any immediate ideas to fill it, but after some looking around and consideration, a couple "this way/that way" kind of signs seemed like they'd do the trick about as well as anything else. And I am glad I went with those because in order to fill the space "enough" without getting too cramped, I alternated an upside-down one in there, which speaks to the Alice in Wonderland obsessed part of my brain.

And the very last thing i wanted to do, mostly for "flavor," was the little pointer arrow. I think it came out more like a weapon-arrow than a compass-arrow, but that's what felt right so I stand by it. Although it was originally pointing South-East instead of North-West; I genuinely thought I'd like South-East better when I did that, but it felt wrong—I think maybe because of the shading on the internal compass points?—So I flipped it, and this feels much better.

The color scheme was also one of the simpler ones—Just whatever colors I associate with maps; Tan and Green for paper and different kinds of terrain. Blue for water, and also certain types of maps seem to incorporate a light blue fairly often for other things like roads. I already mentioned red for the "you are here," but it also works as a little red and green for "Stop" and "Go," which even if you're not traveling by car are still pretty travel-adjacent in my book. Then just a little gold to "polish" off the compass imagery specifically. ...Oh! I almost forgot—Both to mention it and to actually do it, you can see I did end up putting a little N and S up there for North and South, similar to the Roman numerals on Day 3. Originally, I had thought to put them...Somewhere else with more room so I could do the proper N/E/S/W around, but I go carried away with my other ideas and took up all the other possible spaces without even realizing what I'd done. 😅

Of course, I couldn't bring myself to un-do any of that, so I made do with what (little) space I had left. And besides, I was feeling like the very center around the words was a little plain anyhow. Really, I should've made the innermost circle a bit tighter and then maybe things would've worked out so I had more space to work with and get the letters in better, but oh well! 🤷‍♀️

I really was not expecting much from this one, but here I am thinking the final product is right up there with Day 2 and Day 13 as a top contender for my favorite. Granted, I think this one appeals to me as a favorite in pretty different ways from the others, but still.

That's probably a good note to leave on. The only thing I can say I'm really not happy with today is the posting time, and I feel like I can't complain about that too much because making the choice to try not to worry so much about the time ticking by and letting myself actually think about what I was doing is probably one of the main reasons I'm so pleased with the results.

In any case Sparklers, I think I've told you all there is to tell for now, and I hope you enjoy this one as much as I do. 🤗

Now let's see if cross-posting will be as non-frustrating as making the mandala was...(I doubt it!) And hope the latter half of the month is full of a lot more days with outcomes at least as satisfying as this one was. 🤞

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Artwork © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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