This is my final illustration for Inktober 2021! This one was for the prompt "risk", although I think the real title ought to be "I hate drawing hands".

If you watch the time-lapse below, you'll see a couple of misfires in my sketches before I finally settle on what to draw.

First, I thought I'd draw someone playing Risk (the board game). I thought it would be cool to see the thrown dice tumbling toward the viewer and the board below. After getting started on the sketch though, I just didn't like the way it was looking.

Next, I thought I'd draw a baby reaching up and trying to stand. I don't really like drawing babies though, because the proportions are difficult to get right, so I scrapped that one quickly.

Finally, I settled on the sketch for the finished drawing, but not before considering another idea my wife had about a creature taking off their human mask, revealing a werewolf, vampire, or some other monster underneath (it's Halloween today, after all). I liked that idea a lot, but I didn't feel like doing something so complicated, so I pushed ahead with the hands.

The idea behind this is the risk one takes whenever they express their true feelings towards someone else. It makes me think of my wife - we've been together much longer than when we got married, and it always amazes me how a relationship like that starts with such simple but powerfully charged gestures.

Anyway - there's a time-lapse of this drawing's creation below. If you've been following along with me as I make these each day, I appreciate it, and hope you've been enjoying them!

This is my thirtieth illustration for Inktober 2021, for the prompt "slither".

When I started making this one, I wanted to add a bit more texture to the walls and the tentacle, but as I added each layer of light/shadow, I started to embrace the simplicity of it. In the end, just a little bit of airbrushing was all it needed.

Just one more to go and this year's Inktober project is officially complete! Time-lapse below:

I'm barely getting this one done in time - the day just got away from me!

Anyway, here's my twenty-ninth illustration for Inktober 2021, for the prompt "patch".

As usual, I planned on this one being sorta simple, and then I got carried away.

Time-lapse below!

Here's my twenty-eighth illustration for Inktober 2021, for the prompt "crispy".

Being a fan of Rice Krispie Treats, my mind immediately gravitated toward drawing a batch of those for this prompt. It seemed boring to draw a bunch of lumpy squares though, so instead I dipped into what seems like another one of my trends for these types of projects, and drew a bucket of fried chicken.

I made a batch of Rice Krispie Treats tonight for dessert, and they were yummy.

Time-lapse below!

This is my twenty-seventh illustration for Inktober 2021, this one for the prompt "spark".

I peeked at the prompt for today the night before - which is how I usually do things with Inktober - just to get a jump start on my brainstorming, but came up blank. I don't hate doing straightforward drawings for the prompts, but I like to be creative about it when I can. The best I could think of was to draw an explosion.

So today I was thinking about that idea and how it could be more interesting, and I came up with this, a zippo lighter, as it sparks into ignition.

I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out. I wanted to have the lighter be the primary focus, but also have the hand be very large in the frame. I liked how it looked plain at the end, but thought it could use a tiny bit more detail, and after almost changing it into the (famous?) lighter from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I went for this adjacent design.

Time-lapse below!

Here's my twenty-sixth illustration for Inktober 2021, this one for the prompt "connect"!

This was one that I struggled with. Initially, I wanted to draw a man pumping gas into his car, and noticing that both the car and the pump had odd looks on their faces - but it didn't fit well in the square panel, so I quickly changed course to the idea you see above.

As always, there's a time-lapse of me making this below!

For the first drawing of the last week of Inktober 2021, I drew this fly - or what's left of him, anyway. The prompt for this one is "splat".

Originally, I thought I'd make the fly a lot smaller, draw more of the flyswatter, and have the handle of it blur off into the distance. When I actually got started, I decided I wanted to make the splat take up more space, and so this is what that idea turned into.

Time-lapse of this illustration below!