Inktober, day 6: Finrod Felagund (Patreon)

It's incredible how much I've suddenly fallen in love with inking! My self-perception, for the last fifteen+ years, has been, "I can't ink". I did have a feeling that I knew why that was, and that's proven true: I approached inking by doing a pencil sketch that was still pretty rough in places, and thinking, "I'll fix that when I ink."

Now in every piece, there were about ten places that could or might not work. Of those, five ended up not working. Of these, two tend of be in the face or hands, and that drags down the entire piece. 

So I've taken to pencilling much more carefully, particularly in spots where I can't wing it (hands) or where a line needs to be ultra-clear and unambiguous (faces), so there's absolutely no doubt where that line needs to go. 

And then it's hoping I *see* the line. A few times, I didn't see it, thought I'd caught a dry bit of the brush tip, did the line again, and then had two...

I'm going to put up the first few Inktober originals in my Etsy shop on Wednesday! My five-year-old computer is dying, and I've sent my eye(s) on a shiny convertible laptop instead. Our school now has Smartboards that you can pare with tablets, and it would be so easy to just throw any text I'm reading with students straight on the board...