December 18th, 2008 Pen and ink Here's my manticore OC Adâr again. This picture is an entry for LyrebirdJacki's mythological creature contest. The assignment was to draw an unusual mythical creature (one that isn't drawn very often), and to do this using only traditional tools. Now, LyrebirdJacki was willing to let me enter a digital piece, but at the last moment I changed my mind and decided to go traditional after all. I wanted to stay true to the nature of the contest, and besides... Before going all digital, I used to make a lot of art using the pen and ink technique. I was never fantastic at it, but I did really like the technique. So, because I was feeling nostalgic, I decided to break out the old ink flasks after all. Get my hands dirty and all that. ;) But here's the thing: I haven't really used this particular technique in what... 3 years? So while I was working on this, I spent half my time wrestling with the tops of ink flasks, which after all those years had gotten very stuck. Then, after finally managing to open the darn things, while almost spilling all the ink all over myself, I realized that the ink was quite difficult to control. I had forgotten all about how this stuff sometimes just creeps in areas where you don't want it to go. As if it has a mind of its own, or something. I kept trying to click a non-existent undo-button. Putting in the lines was no less difficult, but at least I could do that bit a lot faster. Inking is a wet technique, which means you need to wait for the stuff to dry before you can add a new layer. And I don't like waiting. Putting in the lines does not require me to wait at all. (Jay!)

Anyway, so I finally finished this picture today and scanned it... And of course the scanner just butchered it. Why do scanners always do that? Looks like my scanner chopped off a portion of this picture, made the linework all blurry, made the whole thing too dark, and let me assure you that the colors of the real thing look a lot brighter than this... In short, while going back to traditional art was a fun little excursion, I'm not about to give up on digital art in the near future. XD PS. I hope it's ok that I entered one of my existing OC's, rather than just making up a totally new creature for this contest. For more info about Adâr, go here.

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