Inktober is coming up soon. For more information about what Inktober is about, follow this link. Last year, I chose a theme of sketching out whoever was walking by my window that day. It worked out fairly well most days. I only had to break the rules a few times. You can see the end results following this link here, and you can see a few of them with some quick colour dropped in here.

This year I wanted to do something a little different. Last year I designed a character for a local comic convention. It wasn’t chosen, so I felt I should probably use her for something else. So for Inktober, I am going to have the character, now dubbed Northern Lights, interact with various Canadian superheroes. To help me out with this I expanded to Canadian comic characters or characters that were created by Canadian based comic artists. I will also break the rules twice to cover some comic heroes that inspired the overall costume design for Northern Lights. The list will go as follows:

1. Wolverine
2. Captain Canuck
3. Guardian
4. Nelvana
5. Scott Pilgrim
6. Johnny Canuck
7. Fleur de Lis
8. Puck
9. Deadpool
10. Major Mapleleaf
11. Red Panda
12. Sasquatch
13. North Star/Aurora
14. Delilah Dirk
15. Cassie and Tonks
16. Superhero Girl
17. Northguard
18. The Grenadier
19. Shaman
20. Batgirl
21. Mr Monster
22. Ms Marvel
23. Box
24. Spider Gwen and Squirrel Girl
25. Gary and Zii from Ménage a Trois
26. Kid Thor
27. Superman
28. Hero Bear
29. The Red Ensign
30. Cerebus the Aardvark
31. Northern Lights solo

At least that is the plan. Hopefully it all turns out well! FYI, Deadpool is kinda controversial. He apparently has claimed to be Canadian, but there is quite a lot about the character’s history that might be suspect, so who knows?

And now for my weapons of choice:

1. Pentel Pocket Brush – my first brush pen. I was introduced to it in school 20 years ago and fell in love. A great pen that can create both fine lines and thick lines with lots of character.
2. Zebra Disposable Brush Pen Fine – my new favourite brush pen. A much harder tip than the Pentel, and can still create a wide variety of line weights. The lines are more fluid and sharper than the Pentel as well.
3. Tombow Brush Pen Soft – the softest tip of all the felt tip brush pens I will use this year. Good for medium to thick line weights. Though the thicker line weights break up a bit.
4. Kuratake Disposable Pocket Brush Pen Fine – a softer tip than the Zebra and a generally heavier line weight as well, but cannot make quite as many varied line weights.
5. Gelly Roll white pen – a white ink pen with a fine line. Goes down pretty good as long as the dark ink underneath is bone dry.
6. An old fine line Sharpie. A really really fine line. Only good for small details or fixing up lines made from the other pens.
7. Bamboo reed pen – I picked this one up from a local art supply shop that was going out of business. I have no idea what kind of lines it will draw. I am anxious to use it.
8. On old pen nib – waaaaay back in the day, I was interested in calligraphy. I never really was very good at it, but I managed to inherit quite a few pen nibs from my grandfather. They were the pen nibs he would have used in grade school. Will be interested in how this one turns out.

This should be an interesting upcoming month. I am currently trying to sell my house and work has been very busy lately. Hopefully I will have the time to do all of this! Enjoy!