Inktober day 11: #run

The prompt for day 11 was #run. I immediately thought about this strange thing I heard about (thank you Laurent). The Jesus Christ Lizard or plumed basilisk. It got its name because it is able to run on the water for short distances, which it uses to escape from predators!

It was a lot of fun to draw this and I like the splashing water. Unfortunately I got the crest on its back wrong. In fact the line along the body is on the side not on the top. That could still be ok but the crest on the back needs to be in line with the crest on the tail. It looks ambiguous on a lot of photos. I need a real one as a model!

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Inktober day 10: #gigantic

Rübezahl is a folklore mountain spirit of the Riesengebirge or in English the *Giant Mountains*. However if ever you should be near the Giant Mountains you'd better use the name "Lord of the mountains" instead of Rübezahl.
Rübezahl is a mountain spirit and can take on any form he likes. Sometimes he appears as a giant but at other occasions he may appear as a dwarf.
As someone remarked one cannot see in the drawing if he is big or small. Although his cane and pipe appear to be extraordinarily long, they could very well be of normal size and Rübezahl be a dwarf. In fact I did not think so much of him as a giant but of the lord of the giant mountains.
You can find some tales about Rübezahl in English in The Legend of Rubezahl, or Number-Nip.

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Inktober day 9: #screech

What the heck does "screech" mean? I have to admit that I had to look it up. And then I came across the western screech owl (not the eastern!!!). So I immediately decided to draw it. I really liked doing this one. The different strokes and patterns are interesting because one sees the effect only after a whole region is filled. Lucky that drawing in ink no deleting is possible. When I did the eyes the right eye turned out to be much smaller than the left one. If could have changed it, it would never have stayed that way. But I couldn't - and finally it looks really nice and quite funny this way.
I was astonished how nice the wood of the trunk worked out. And I tried a blurred background for the first time which gives a nice contrast.
Now a friend remarked that the owl seems to have a strange way of sitting on the trunk - but this is only because under the claws of the owl is a splinter that you can't see - I swear it was like this in reality.

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Inktober day 8: #crooked

Here in Sommières we just to have a couple of white swans and a couple of black swans swimming on the Vidourle. However the black swans disappeared. It seams that someone tried to catch one of the black swans and broke its wing. Sad story...
There are a lot of things you can think of when you here crooked either by its literal or its figurative meaning. However I did not want to draw a complex scene and having the word crooked in my mind I could not stop thinking of the verse from Haendel's Messiah "Ev'ry valley shall be exalted, and ev'ry moutain and hill made low; the crooked straight and the rough places plain.".
Yeah, got still nothing to do with a swan, right? So what - after all the prompts are there for inspiration not to absolutely stick to them.
 I liked the form and marks on the body, but clearly the body got too long compared to the crooked neck ;) My first attempt of representing water as well. It's basic here but it works more or less. I very much enjoyed doing water later at day 26 when I drew a rubber duck swimming on the water - just come back later to see it.

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Inktober day 7: #shy

Does she look shy? Difficult to say - her expression is ambiguous. After the foregoing inktober drawings that were done with a controlled hand and that took a long time of concentration I wanted to try something more spontaneous and less controlled. So I just let my hand do whatever it wanted and I took it easy for the coloring as well. I like the result and the quick drawing is really fun.
I did a project "Casting" with 30 second drawings (although coloring took a lot more time) later. This is kind of a precursor for the "Casting" project.

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Inktober day 6: #sword

Some swords have names !!! We know this from Tolkien of course. And Tolkien got his inspiration from norse mythology. In the song of the Nibelungs the hero Siegfried disposes of a cloak that makes him invisible and a sword that is called Gram (or Balmung). With his sword he killed the dragon Fafnir and bathed in his blood which made him invulnerable - or at least almost. A lime tree leaf kept the blood of the dragon from touching one spot in his back. Being invulnerable almost everywhere except for one tiny spot is not too bad of course except if one tells his wife about it :p

I got completely confused about which part of a leg belongs to whom while drawing and so finally got the right hind leg of the dragon in an impossible position - except of course it might be that dragons or lindworms have a special anatomy and can bend their legs at the knee in both directions ;)

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Inktober day 5: #long

#Long the prompt of inktober's day 5 made me think of a road, a long road.  So I looked it up. One of the longest roads in the world is the Pan-American Highway that runs from Alaska to Argentina. I had no idea how to do this before I started. Now has not been one of the more popular sketches, but I still like it. There is a little effect where the road goes slightly up and then down.
The strokes where the sides of the road converge in the distant mountains are too fat so that it now looks as if the road enters into a canyon (which it might very well do - right !?)
Of course, I could not help but think of the poem from the beginning of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings - The Road goes ever on and on... - even though it's not the same kind of road. 

You can also find my drawings at:

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Inktober day 4: #underwater

The prompt of day four was #underwater. Now, I thought that orcas would be nice to do in ink, filling all the black parts with ink and leaving out the white parts. Yes !!! - But my only tool is a fountain pen. That makes filling large parts hard work and risky for the paper :)

In the beginning I thought to do all black parts homogeneously filled with ink, but than I found that I needed some shading to represent the reflection of the light in the upper parts.

Here is the original drawing before coloring:

Orcas are one of the species that clearly shows culturale behavior. They beach temporarily to hunt seals. Beaching is very much against their instincts. Young orcas are taught by the elder generation. The teaching can take up to 20 years...

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Inktober day 3: #poison

Thank you Raphael for pointing me to death-caps for the third day's prompt #poison. These mushroom are very dangerous. They are similar to perfectly edible species but deadly. One of these mushrooms is enough to kill an adult. Once symptoms are showing inner organ are already severely sometimes irreparably damaged.

You can also find my drawings at:

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Inktober day 2: #divided

The second day prompt of the inktober 2017 was #divided. This made me think of Berlin which I visited this spring with my parents and sisters. Berlin has been divided from 1961 to 1989 by a wall, which was called "antifaschistischer Schutzwall" (Anti-Facist Protection Rampart) by the GDR authorities. 

You can also find my drawings at:

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Inktober day 1: #swift

My day 1 drawing for Jake Parker's #inktober challenge 2017. The prompt of the day was #swift. The cheetah is able to run at 112 km/h (70 mph) for short distances. Cheetahs kill their prey by tripping it during the chase.

All my inktober drawings are done in ink on paper. I use a fountain pen and colorize the result at the computer. 

Here is the original drawing before it has been colorized: 

Since the sketches are done directly in ink without any pencil drawing first, one has to live with any error that occurs. Corrections are not possible which makes the whole thing more interesting ;)

You can also find my drawings at:

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