Today’s podcast, Saturday Scrawl #3 is about stretching one’s creativity and diving in and expressing yourself as a GM, Player, and person.
I’ve always had a desire to sketch and draw well, but never the patience to hone that skill, as results were too slow for my level of patience.
However, I know I have a sliver of talent, and rather than regret never sticking with the practice, I am going to sketch everyday. At the end of September, I decided that I would do Inktober. Inktober is a month long challenge in October. It was started by an artist in 2014 as a way to improve his inking skills. I have always enjoyed the random art that has popped up in my social media over the years, and this year, I decided to jump in.
After just 6 days, I am seeing improvement in some things. I am posting each picture to social media. There are prompts. I am using the official prompts, but filtering them through an RPG lens. One day, I had an idea I knew I didn’t have the technical skill to execute, so I did a quick cursive poem. I was rushed that day, so I will make time later to do the poem with calligraphy. (Calligraphy is an acceptable form of inking for Inktober.)
I don’t like how rushed things are at work, but no matter how busy things are, I am sticking to doing the ink drawing each day.
Today, while out running errands, I picked up a 5.5″ x 8.5″ 80 page spiral bound sketchbook, and some art pencils. I will do one sketch a day, or little doodles to fill a page every day. I finished my first pencil sketch a bit ago. I used a B2 pencil, and I am hooked on that pencil for drawing. There is nothing wrong with a number 2, but the B2 responds to pressure better. At least for me, it did. I haven’t figured out how to make a number 2 over all these years do what the B2 let me do. If like me, you struggle to get a standard pencil to do the shading you want, try a B2.
Next I stopped by the craft store and picked up new nibs for my Speedball pen, and some ink. My old nibs are corroded and not working very well.
I really liked how my first sketch turned out, and posted on my other social media. I was even inspired to type up some quick text for an adventure hook.
Creative Itch
Ever since my card game idea was well received, I have felt the itch to create more. Creating my first PDFs and entering the realm of online publishing has only stoked the fires of my creativity. I find I consume less media for entertainment, and more for helping me produce content. With these fires of creativity, I feel like I have so much more to let out, thus the need to draw. [Ideally, I will get good enough to illustrate portions of my own PDFs.]
I encourage you to engage your creativity and find an outlet for it. As long as it causes no one harm, go for it.
The Night Gate
The night gate is a solitary stone arch at the end of a stone-lined path off the old north road. Legend has it that the gate leads to other locations, dimensions, or worlds depending on the time of night and the phase of the moon. The moonlight is said to trigger the magic of the gate.
Those who have tried to harvest the stones along the path or the gate itself are said to befall misfortune before they can even move a single stone the slightest bit. It is not unheard of for people to drop dead while doing hard labor, or unusual for wild animals to attack people in the wilds. All the talk of monsters is only hearsay as it is said that no one has lived to tell the tale of these creatures.
