Pears in October

I love drawing pears. They’re a simple shape, but not so simple they’re boring. And a forgiving form too: you can mess around with a pear shape quite a bit and it still look like a pear.

I thought I’d sit down and do a ‘quick 5 minute’ #inktober sketch, but I just kept going for an hour. Here is all of it, the ones that worked and the ones that didn’t. These weren’t made with any particular aim to try different approaches, or change up how I worked, I just drew one, turned the page, drew another and kept going…

Pear#1

Pear#2

Pear#3

Pear#4

Pear#5

Pear#6

Pear#7

Pear#8

Pear#9

I love how Noodlers Bulletproof Ink (used for the brushed-on washes) granulates. The linework is mostly with a Carbon Platinum Pen and sometimes a Sailor Bent Nib.I started working on the linework before the  ink washes dried. I like the idea of only controlling so much of my work, and then letting the wet-in-wet thing make it’s own sometimes-mess-sometimes-magic. Looking back, I wish I’d left some of those sketches as just washes with no line. But they were fun to do they way I did them, no thinking involved, just do one, turn the page, do another, and then do it all over again. Still, I do se how they evolved and got simpler as I went along.

I’m liking this Inktober thing. Join in, it’s never too late and it’s fun.