daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
Lately I’ve been adding more color to my Hobonichi journal with colored watercolor pencils, which made me realize I should bring out my regular watercolors as well. It’s so great how remarkably well the Tomoe River paper handles watercolor paint. 🖌️✨
It took some time to figure out how I wanted to draw the Inktober prompt “Ogre”. I ended up going with this version, styled like the fantasy maps I’ve been really into lately. Inktober is simple in theory, but pretty tough in practice, and I’m falling a little behind. Hopefully I can catch up over the weekend! 🖊️🗺️
I’m giving Inktober a shot this year! I decided to keep it simple and small, drawing directly in the October calendar of my Hobonichi Cousin. I’ve been practicing sketching every day for about half of September, so Inktober feels like a natural extension of my new routine. Wish me luck sticking with it all month! ✒️📖
Filling up my Hobonichi with map icons has been so much fun! It’s a great way to add some color to the page, and it gives me plenty of good practice, too. 🗺️✒️✨
I’ve recently started getting into drawing maps. After watching a few videos by JP Coovert and picking up a couple of his PDFs, I’ve been learning how to draw the kind of maps you see at the beginning of fantasy novels. Today’s photo shows a continent I drew. I still need to fill in all the terrain and landmarks, but I think it’s a pretty nice start for my first world map. It’s been lots of fun! 🎨📜
I’ve been doing small sketches for fun recently. Seeing so many cool illustrations on my social media feeds makes me want to improve my skills, which aren’t great. But even if they’re mostly just doodles, every drawing is fun to do! 🖊️📖
I stopped by Kinokuniya today to look at stationery and manga. I expected a few 2027 Hobonichi items, but they had way more than I thought. The single item I wanted from the 2027 line-up was actually in stock, but I managed to resist. Instead, I picked up a small sketchbook and a dot-grid notebook for drawing. Browsing stationery stores is easily one of my favorite activities these days! ✏️📖
