Three posts to the blog in one day? What is this sworcery?
Once again, nearing the end of my internet month and my bandwidth is low. Also, Penguin Host is shuffling servers this weekend, So I can’t post anything safely on Saturday and Sunday.
Roit, so, on with the thing. Brace yourselves, Inktober is coming.
The prompt list has been out a few weeks. But a gentle reminder, if you’re just trying to improve your skill at drawing and the Inktober list doesn’t work for you, no problem. There are other October-Inktober drawing challenges. For example Witchtober.
Feck those guys who bash Witchtober for being the teen girls Inktober. Witches are awesome, and if you want to draw them, go for it.
Hey, I love that. Octobit. For the pixel artists out there.
Need some blood splatter and zombies? No worries, Goretober has your back.
So, dust off your pens. Grab a sketchpad and get ready to get doodling.
You’ll be happy to hear, this update doesn’t require three cups of tea to get through.
Reala
Lucy on Tee
Lucy’s Competition
Ink/Witch/Gore*Tober
Hit me up on Patreon
Reala
Our resident bartender for this weeks colour collective on Twatter. Originally named after an old Second Life avatar, I still use. Her namesake in Second Life is also a bartender, often adorned in red, white and black. She has a backstory, but that’s a tale that won’t be told until Christmas. The disadvantages in writing so far ahead heh.
Lucy on Tee
The first of Lucy’s tees, there’s going to be three of her (eventually). She’s available at Threadless on t-shirts from $12.95 and art prints from $12.
I’ve only had about 20 entries so far, so the odds of winning her are in your favour if you enter. If you want a chance to win, please do leave a comment under the post linking to your entry. I can see the post has been shared far more than 20 times, suggesting people aren’t commenting to enter.
For the bloggers out there, I shall be explaining process, stats, complications and results of running a blog competition in Monday’s blog post.
Ink/Witch/Gore*Tober
Inktober, Goretober and Witchtober are all now in full swing. I’m posting four times daily to my Twatter, Instagram and Tumblr with all the new images. If you want to keep up, click the links below and say hello!
If you read to the bottom of my last post, you may know for any new $10 and $25 Patreons I get, I’ll give you a shout out and link back each week in the Friday update posts. $25 Patreons will be also written into the daily tales. Interested? Head on over to my Patreon page for details.
Stone me, this is a big update! You’re gonna need a cuppa tea for this one.
Fawn
Spider Dance
Patreon Update
Competition
Inktober, Witchtober & Goretober
Buttons
Fenix for Esme
Darn I’m bad at Pinterest
Patreon Shoutouts
Fawn
The character at the top there is Fawn. Created as a horror character, the tale Magpies Eyes featured killer deer as a bit of a hangover. I needed her to look different from Deer from Deer Puns in the humorous stories. She walks on all fours and looks pretty ruddy menacing to me. Coloured this week to fit into the Colour Collectives, Old Lace theme.
Spider Dance
Spider Dance is back! Never been my best seller, indeed a long way behind Bird Walk, but it’s one of my fave art prints. There’s just something very cheerful about Spectre teaching the baby spiders to dance.
I have meant to add some incentives to Patreon for yonks. I’m hoping to add unique art prints monthly to high pledgers. It may have to wait until I have moved to Scotland and I am settled, I need my printer, proper inks and paper to do it justice. Blah! Until then though, I have a different idea. If any of you fine people pledge $10 a month or more, I shall give you a shout out, adding your name and a link to your website to the bottom of the weekly update posts. Not sure how that works? I’ve added the $1 & $2 supporters to the bottom of this post as a demonstration.
Yup, Lucy again. As you know, I do a fair lick of PR work freelance. In 17 years, I have had a hand in running three competitions. One I ran on Facebook when Like/Share comps were legal. One pairing up with a DVD launch which my colleague signed off without asking me first. Hoo, boy did that backfire. One was with a magazine. I ‘m not big on competitions, but I learned something from each.
Next week I will be running a contest to win an A4 art print of my favourite nefarious lady, Lucy. The intention is to discover how much interest a competition will generate for the Little Fears website. After I have a winner I shall furnish them with a copy of Lucy, then do a Monday blog post detailing the method, website stats and increase in traffic and earnings I may or may not receive. Keep an eye out next week for how to enter.
Inktober, Witchtober & Goretober
I have a problem with my doodles. They’re rarely consistent. I have trouble drawing the same character the same twice in a row. I believe I am good at conveying an idea or image in ink, but my technical abilities are quite clearly piss poor. So this October, I am entering all three of the most known draw-a-thons with the idea of building a more consistent style across a couple of characters and scene style. I’ll only be posting them on Twitter and Instagram. With a few in the weekly updates on the blog. So if you want to follow along on my themes, say hello to me on social media.
Interested in joining? By all means, please do share links below to your Twitter, Instagram or other Inktober posting outlets in the comments section below. We can come over and harass, like, and retweet your Inktober submissions.
New to Inktober? Some advice, post in full on Twitter and Instagram if you’re on the platforms. Don’t auto-share because you won’t get anywhere near the attention you should. Nobody retweets Inktobers that are just links to your Instagram account.
For Inktober I am going to practise scenes. Such as Spider Dance above.
For Witchtober I shall be drawing 31 Yuffie’s. Our resident necromancer is the right character for this, and I struggle to get her hat right each time I doodle her.
As an aside, if I notice anyone bitching about young girls drawing witches for Inktober, I will unfollow you. Last year there was a tiny minority of men spitting venom at young girls on Twitter. It came across as poncy old men, bitter that 12-year-old girls could draw better than they ever could. Man, they were noisy and man they were nasty.
Goretober has no official list that I have seen, so I shall be drawing the nefarious Lucy in Indian Red doing evil deeds each day. She’s usually pretty curvy and it would help me practice getting longer lines smoother.
I did nobble myself some new art supplies for the month of course.
Click the image to blow it up. The assembled stationary consists of:
Have you seen my new buttons? They look the bee’s knees, don’t they!
I keep getting told, and my stats show me, a lot of WordPress readers never visit my site. Folk read the flash fiction without even opening my blog post because it’s short enough to read in the preview. I then get asked where folk can buy my books and art prints. The cute buttons are in the hope someone might see and click them from my post snippets.
Some of you asked about the tip jar PayPal button. There is a way of creating a donations button in the PayPal account settings. I believe you’re limited to raising $10,000 or less through that method if you’re not a charity (haha, like any of us will get that much!). The button looks hideous though. I created my button myself by setting up a zero priced ‘buy now’ page link and adding my image. You must be registered as a business on PayPal to do this. It’s one of those things everyone with a tip jar seems to do it differently.
Fenix for Esme
My avatars body. I’ve been telling Esme I would post him for a while heh. Never used him in any stories. He’s a short bodied, long-eared Spectre. I named him Fenix after the foxes.
Darn I’m bad at Pinterest
I’m kind of hot with social media, but holy snot bags I am not good at Pinterest. I usually try to have conversations on social media to build followings. I tried this week getting into Pinterest. After 30 comments, I hit a block to prevent spam. 30 ruddy comments and I hit a block! OK, maybe it’s because I use my Pinterest as a share and forget network. Time to edumacate me though aye.
A browse of Skillshare and I have found two premium courses by Peg Fitzpatrick and one free class by Raymond Baxter. The free course is completely free, just sign up, skip anything that asks you to pay, and navigate to Raymond’s course.
The first premium course from Peg. I figure I’ll do this one first as I know my pins themselves need work. The shape of my images is all wrong, and most have no description. She has 92% in reviews http://skl.sh/2xL1BlA
The second premium course from Peg, a chuffing lot of reviews leaving her with 99%. About 2,100 students, certainly think that’s worth my time. I’ll let you know what I think when I finish. http://skl.sh/2xFrGTg
The free course from Raymond, three reviews at 100%. I’ll be taking Pegs courses myself, but I understand everyone cannot afford the Skillshare Premium subscription. This course is 100% free, no dodgy premium payment to unlock. Just sign up, skip anything that asks for money and take his course. http://skl.sh/2yciJly
Little Fears 