Dream (Inktober 2023)

Oh wait, this is October 1st already?

So are we doing Inktober again this year? Trying to? Okay, let’s try to then.

But before we go any further and if you’re not familiar with my approach to Inktober know that I don’t care the least about the challenge aspect of it. I don’t think art should be a competition, not even an endurance race. I actually started my drawings as soon as the list was released about a month ago. I’ve only done five so far, and I’m not too sure how many more I’ll manage to do this year. We’ll see.

What I like about Inktober is to see how one simple word will inspire many different people, and what they will do with it.

Also, know that I’m not good at drawing, but after being pushed into it a little bit a few years ago, I found out that trying to draw regularly helped me improve a little bit. It’s obvious in retrospect, but not so much when you have an inferiority complex with the thing.

Alright, now that know all of this, let’s get into this year’s first prompt:

Dream

It’s very probably because I recently finished rereading all of The Sandman for the first time in 20 years, but this prompt could only trigger one image in my mind. Morpheus, of course.

If you don’t know him, he’s the title character, known by many names, among them, Morpheus, The Sandman, or… well… Dream.

I wasn’t exactly happy with my first attempt. I’m still posting it because these posts are not just about showcasing my drawings, they’re not that interesting in themselves, go to the Inktober subreddit if you want to see amazing things.

I’m not sure who the original artist, whom I drew from, is. Sorry for not being able to give him credit.

Did I tell you I was especially not good at drawing humans? So that first drawing was going to be a challenge.

Perusing through different drawings of the character online, I finally found one that I thought I could try.

It’s this version, drawn by the wonderful Frank Quitely.

Here is a sketch (sometimes I like my sketches better than the finished drawing, but as it’s called Inktober, I should put at least some ink, right?)

While it’s far from being perfect, I think it’s the one I like the best of all the variations I tried.

Here are two more, but while they may be a little “better” (especially the second one – the first one is just a variation of the previous one) I don’t like them as much.

What do you think?