Inktober 2021 Day 3 - ENDANGERED

Whoop, well, I'm definitely behind on this, but here's day 3 of my 2021 Inktober series!XD

I had a couple of videos go viral on Tiktok (one has nearly 4 million views now.....goodness...), which brought an influx of orders to my online store. It was very much welcome as I'm struggling a little financially at the moment, but also meant that I had to spend a good 3 days processing everything (and I'm still not done), and has affected my Inktober progress. I'm also trying to get Patreon rewards ready to ship at the same time and my office has piles of everything everywhere, which is a little intense, haha.

I'm glad I had managed to prepare a few drawings before that though, as it means I only have to focus on inking away for the next few days. 

So here is day 3, "Endangered". 

This one went through a few changes since the initial sketch I shared with you last week. 

I scanned my pencil sketch and took it into Photoshop to play around a little, as some things still weren't clicking into place and I needed to try tweaking a few details. 

Above : the initial pencil sketch

Above : the sketch after tweaking it in Photoshop and resizing it to fit the inking paper format

- After some experimenting, I decided to flip the drawing so my character faced the other way.
This gives the narrative a different flow and directs the eye towards different details first. 

- I also modified the angle of the head tilt, as something felt awkward and slightly unnatural about the first sketch's head position. I find the new one a little more peaceful. 

- Once it came to transferring the sketch onto my inking paper, I decided to leave out the character's right hand. It felt less stiff that way and made the character look more relaxed and contemplative. 

- I had initially wanted to draw foliage in the background, but ended up only adding milkweed flowers and leaves (the natural food source of the monarch butterfly) at the bottom of the composition.
I like the juxtaposition of the character and the milkweed, and the visual and symbolic play that having the caterpillars feed on the person instead of the plants adds to the piece. 

I did end up giving in on using gray for this piece, and not just sticking to black and white. I felt like I needed to add something to the skeleton to add contrast and the gray felt like it fit better than cross-hatching this time round. 

So here you have it, day 3 is all done!
I hope you like it, let me know what you see in this piece!

Today will be dedicated to inking Day 4. ;)
See you soon!

Love, M