inktober 52 - 2023
This is the Inktober 52 'one drawing a week' challenge for 2023. This is the entire body of work for the whole year, excepting week 27 which is a graffiti one that i am going to draw outside when weather and time permit. I have enjoyed the challenge of coming up with a new illustration every week. I will be doing Inktober 52 in 2024, but it will not be quite the same. 
WEEK 52: OLD The last illustration of Inktober 52 for the year of 2023 is done and dusted. The year is old, in fact, it has been assigned to history. It’s just an old record that can be looked at or listened to now in its entirety.
WEEK 51: ELF There is a myth about an elf blacksmith at the Neolithic Long Barrow at Waylands Smithy in Oxfordshire. There are versions including Norse and Anglo Saxon and more modern takes on it. I have chosen some parts that I like and put it into my illustration.
WEEK 50: FOREST I decided I wanted to draw a spooky forest in a quick style, with no sketching before hand apart from the fox. I was listening to Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone when I was drawing it. The Christmas Eve episode ‘A Ghost Story for Christmas was perfect listening.
WEEK 49: GROUCHY This is Hartley Hare from the UK children’s show Pipkins, which ran from 1973 - 1981. I enjoyed the programme and Hartley Hare was my favourite character. I like the fact that a kid’s TV programme had a character who was quite grouchy, unlikeable, bossy, a bit of a diva and really temperamental.
WEEK 48: CHOMP It occurred to me that I haven’t done a hot mess for a while, so I thought I would give it a go. I am not sure if I have succeeded: I kind of like it, even if it’s a bit mad.
WEEK 47: FEAST This is an old favourite ice cream, though I think it may have changed since the 1980s, probably smaller and less chocolatey.
WEEK 46: BELIEVE The explanation is in the illustration. I also like the fact that The Polar Express is a Pere Marquette 1225, class N1 2-8-4 Berkshire steam locomotive as my name is in there.
WEEK 45: WEIRDO When I lived in Hull in the early 1990s, I had a go at busking outside Bob Carver's chip shop while wearing scuba goggles and flippers.I was definitely too weird for the good people of Hull (note the empty busker’s hat!)
WEEK 44: SING The three canaries here are approximate portraits of treasured childhood pets. The first one at the top was Tweety Pie, below was Bertie with a green patch on top of his head, and Archie at the bottom who was a green canary.
WEEK 43: REMOVE This is part of Inktober 2023, the last one that is also part of Inktober 52. Two mischievous hares are removing a brick from the dangerous tower, making it topple over.
WEEK 42: PLUMP The plump wildcat is standing on the plump hen. I have no idea what is going to happen next. This is one of the illustrations that is also part of Inktober 2023.
WEEK 41: SPICY Birds are biologically unable to register the effects of capsaicin, the chemical that makes peppers feel hot in your mouth so they don't feel the burn like humans do. Here is a blackbird eating heartily and feeling NOTHING! This is one of the illustrations that is also part of Inktober 2023.
WEEK 40: MAP This illustration is part of Inktober 2023, it is the day 5 prompt and is actually half a double page spread illustration. You can go to the Inktober 2023 page to see the whole thing.
WEEK 39: DREAM This is the first prompt for Inktober 2023. It is the introduction to my theme this year of a castle, and some of the cast of characters who will appear in the prompts over the next month.
WEEK 38: HARVEST The hop harvest starts straight after the August Bank holiday weekend when the last of the summer heat is still hanging in the air though the chilly mornings and darker evenings are but a couple of weeks away. Here is a tired hop picker, having a rest form bottom cutting.
WEEK 37: FEAR The only thing I can think of that I have a real fear for is heights. Or is it the fear of falling or jumping? What ever form it takes, I don’t like being up high and unanchored though I am facing my fear more as I get older.
WEEK 36: CHILDHOOD This drawing depicts artefacts from my childhood: A holiday photo where I am pretty sure I was wearing the shoe that I have drawn. I still have the shoe, it is red.
WEEK 35: CAMEL This prompt is based on the Biblical verse ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of A needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!’ I worked out that if a real camel was going to walk through a horizontal needle, then the needle would need to be about 180m long. Battersea power station is about 160m long: this illustration is so useful if you want to see what this would look like.
WEEK 34: VAMPIRE I use the internet and my phone/computer a lot so I don’t draw this from a censorious viewpoint, but it can suck the life force from you if you spend too much time on it!
WEEK 33: SLICE I am glad to say that I have never sliced the side of my finger off when I have been cutting along a ruler using a scalpel, but I have been there when it’s happened to someone else. Fingers crossed (and well away from a ruler’s edge) it will never happen to me.
WEEK 32: CAUGHT I caught a ferry to The Isle of Wight for my hols.
WEEK 31: BOX It’s box in a box with a drawing of the box on.
WEEK 30: TEETH It is a well-know fact that real birds don’t have teeth any more: they lost them many millions of years ago. The reason I came across that seemed to make sense to me, was that teeth take too long to develop in incubation. Over time, the eggs that had chicks with under-developed teeth probably survived as they were out of the egg and up on their feet earlier with less time to be preyed upon.
WEEK 29: TRAP Don’t do it! It’s a pitfall trap! It looks like this pitcher plant (Nepenthes distillatoria) is inviting the cute frog to jump into its digestive liquid-filled cavity. Of course, this is exactly what it is unwittingly doing, though it is utilising nectar instead of a come-hither look.
WEEK 28: MERMAID Mermaids live in the seas and oceans, and the water comes from rivers. I had the idea that mermaids are formed in rivers, from magical trees with roots that dangle and flow in the river current. At certain times in the year, riverine-maids are formed from the roots and are swept along to the seas and the oceans where they change into the mermaids we are familiar with.
WEEK 26: CUDDLE A child cuddling a guinea pig. Job done!
WEEK 25: KABOOM NASA is developing a Ka Band Object Observation and Monitoring: KABOOM! to track and characterise near earth objects, looking for things such as asteroids, comets, orbital debris, odd socks, missing keys, golf balls, the Jules Rimet trophy, Amelia Earhart’s plane ‘Lockheed Electra’ and the lost city of Atlantis. I may have gone down an imaginative information rabbit hole when I was trying to think of an idea for this prompt!
WEEK 24: KETTLE The first cup of tea in the morning when I am camping is just the best. I like to get up early and put my small metal kettle on the camping stove as soon as I can. It’s the best part of camping for me, especially if it seems like the whole of the rest of the world is still asleep.
WEEK 23: POWER Frederick Douglass was born @1818. He was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer and statesman. He escaped slavery in Maryland and became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York. He was famous for his oratory and incisive anti-slavery writing. This message is as relevant today as it was then.
WEEK 22: MASK Last week I was in the North Devon village of Combe Martin on the fourth day of the annual custom of Hunting the Earl of Rone. It is said that he is the Earl of Tyrone, who landed somewhere here (or Spain!) in 1607. He was eventually hunted down and charged with treason. There does not seem to be much idea of why he is wearing such a distinctive mask, but it is probably from a pre-Christian time, from some pagan ceremony.
WEEK 22. MASK This illustration shows part of the custom of Hunting the Earl of Rone. On the final day, he is captured and put on a donkey facing backwards. He is regularly shot by a firing squad of grenadiers, revived by a hobby horse and a fool then taken to Combe Martin Beach where he is shot for a final time and a facsimile is thrown into the sea.
WEEK 21: SCRATCH I wanted to do something to commemorate the passing of Tina Turner this week. So, here it is: someone has scratched a picture of Tina on the inside of a steamed up car window. (Get it?)
WEEK 20: SKATE This is a quick one, dragged out from some weird corner of my brain. Just in case anyone was wondering, skates have their eyes on the upper (dorsal) side of their body, this is the under (ventral) side. Baby Skate.. doo-doo doo-doo.
WEEK 19: BEARD Part One: This is a very long illustration in a concertina book of a very long beard whose owner remains a mystery. This was drawn quickly with energy with a dip pen, with added ink wash and white ink pen on top.
WEEK 19: BEARD Part Two
WEEK 19: BEARD Part Three
WEEK 18: DOCTOR I decided to do something in the style of Dr Seuss. I was talking about it to my daughter, who came up with the idea of doing Doctor Who in that style, she is great for bouncing ideas off when I get a bit stuck. I have chosen my favourite incarnation of the Doctor, played by Matt Smith.
WEEK 17: MELT A heart melts
WEEK 16: GRIMM This is a Grimm tree in Iffley village that I take pictures of every now and then. It looks like a figure: its ivy-clad body with its twiggy limbs is quite menacing in the shadow of fog or the silhouette of moonlight. I would not want to meet on my own on a dark night.
WEEK 15: PROWL I wanted to use a thicker Rotring isograph pen and not get too hung up on detail, so I just did a brief sketch and dove straight in. It’s not overworked and there are some nice marks in there.
WEEK 11: HAWK This is a literal rendering of the idiom ‘To know a hawk from a hand-saw’, which I have obviously failed miserably at! 😉
WEEK 14. TEARS Shedding tears at not having time to finish drawing Curt and Roland of the band Tears for Fears getting ready to sow some seeds of love. The tears I have drawn are a bit dark, almost like I was crying out diluted ink!
WEEK 13: GIANT I went on a trip to see Stone Henge this week and thought it would make a good subject. Except…. along came a giant Neolithic cat: the mystery of the stones has been solved!
WEEK 12: CONSTELLATION I enjoyed drawing this, but it’s not really gone the way I wanted: I really like some parts of it, though generally there is a bit too much going on and there is a version on my instagram account with crime scene tape over it which I think suits it well! In my research into my astrological sun sign, I discovered that Aries was the ram that supplied the Golden Fleece in Greek Mythology.
WEEK 10: FRAME The portrait inside the illustration of the gold, oval frame, is the comedian Harry Hill. He presented the British programme ‘You've been Framed’ where viewers sent in their funny and embarrassing videos for a flat fee of £250. The first version that I posted on Instagram has ‘You’ve Been Framed’ under the portrait, but then I realised that ‘I’ve Been Framed would be so much better!
WEEK 9: BOTANY These are some of my favourite examples of botany. Daffodils and waterlilies are my favourite flowers, raspberries my favourite fruit, hornbeam one of my favourite trees. Some have personal meaning, one of them helped save my life. The pea is just there to fill space, and should really be a chick pea, but I'm OK with that.
WEEK 8: PUP I hope this drawing of a cute pup makes you feel a warm and comforting feeling: drawing its happy little face cheered me up on a very dank, cold, English Winter’s day.
WEEK 7: ODD Some dressed fleas are enacting tableaux of odd number proverbs/puns. The University Museum of Natural History in Oxford is exhibiting a collection of Mexican, dressed fleas: this phenomenon of Mexican Pulgas Vestidas began about 200 years ago. They were made in monasteries and convents and were eventually made by ordinary people too. They were sold to visiting tourists in the early part of the last century. How odd!
WEEK 6: SKULL I was looking (unsuccessfully) for a skull to draw when I was on a trip to Dungeness in Kent. I found a stone on the beach which looked suitable, though it was a lot harder to convert to a skull than I had thought. Nevertheless, I drew the skull of a rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) on the reverse side and have now invented a new animal: The Dungeness beach rabbit: Littoralus cuniculus dungenessii.
WEEK 5: MIGHTY The poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley seems as relevant as it was at the time Shelley wrote it in 1817 (around the time of Napoleon Bonaparte and the start of the British Empire). He used the fallen statue of the Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses II to show that no leader, King, despot, dictator or ruler can escape the sands of time. This applies to any era, though I am afraid to say that it doesn’t seem to stop them trying.
WEEK 4: ANGEL I saw the number 237 in an artwork at an exhibition in London and I had the most intense feeling that I had recently been doing something with that number, talking about it, and putting the digits together, but I couldn’t think why. I googled ‘meaning of the number 237’ and found out about Angel Numbers, I thought it would make a good subject if Angel ever came up as a prompt. Only days later I found the next Inktober prompt was ANGEL. It gave me a really spooky buzz and it felt quite unreal, like I had summoned it to happen.
WEEK 3: SHADOW was inspired by an exhibit in the 'Horror Show!' Exhibition at Somerset House in London which I saw at the weekend. I realised that I actually own a Hagstone which I picked up in Bridlington in the summer.
WEEK 2: PUPPET Here is Judy. She has had her wooden stick replaced with a flower by someone who is worried about depicting violence. It’s a tricky and complicated matter, but I think I am with Charles Dickens on this one. This is part of his response to a letter in the 1840’s asking for help to ban Punch and Judy shows; “In my opinion the Street Punch is one of those extravagant reliefs from the realities of life which would lose its hold upon the people if it were made moral and instructive."
WEEK 1: BUILD This is a drawing of an Airfix model of a Gloster Meteor: This drawing is straight to drawing in ink from the aeroplane in front of me. My dad used to build a lot of these kits, I have put him in the pilot seat. It is the first British jet fighter (no propellor!) and the Allies' only jet aircraft to engage in combat operations in WW2.