Owl sketch (Patreon)

Well, I've figured it out now! It was never Inktober. It’s me proving to myself that after all the crap this year has throw my way, most of which will heal but never truly mend, I can still be myself. It’s not about any technique, or theme, or even about doing this every day. It’s about doing it at all.

It’s Dontgiveuptober.

Fittingly, this piece has to do with my brother. 

Jan loved owls. My mother told me that, when he'd been four years old, he could already read and loved to learn by heart the Latin names of owls. "Strix aluco. Bubo bubo." (He was a strange child; most would say, a strange adult.) One of my first memories of him - he would have been almost a teenager, me, around four - was his owl collection. When I was little, we had about nothing in common, and I remember being glad that an owl was always something I could get him for Christmas or his birthday. Accordingly, when December came around, I'd find myself doing clay owls in art class that I could present to him on those occasions. 

When I went through his house for the last time after his death, I took a few of his CDs but didn't really want anything else of his. Until I saw the owl - he had kept just a handful of the huge collection he'd amassed in his teenage years, and there was one to which I connected on some level. Either I'd given it to him, or it had been my favourite of his. Any way, I took that one home. It's looking at me from my computer screen now. 

(This one's a strix varia, by the way.)