#INKtober2019 Has Begun

For months I've been considering what thing I would concentrate on during this year's INKtober, a world-wide yearly challenge to get out your pens a draw something each day in the month of October. I considered drawing the unusual trees in a book that was given to me, or maybe focus on the photos in another book I had on hand that showed stone walls in Ireland. I looked at the official INKtober prompts and was uninspired. It was pretty much by accident that I recently found this book at the library, too big and too heavy to shelve upright so was lying out flat on a shelf next to a section of books I was scanning. I flipped through a few pages and thought, yes, sketching from these pages of old manuscripts with their quirky animals was what I wanted  to work with this month.

I couldn't believe it wasn't a reference book, but one I could check out and bring home. It's so heavy I nearly needed help getting it out to the car. My bathroom scale says it's a hefty thirteen and a half pounds. Over the weekend I went through every page and marked those that caught my interest. More than thirty-one it turns out so we shall see what wins out.

Click on the photo for a larger view

Here is what I sketched on this the first day of INKtober (and yes, it took my usual hour, not a quick sketch as I did an undersketch in pencil before tackling details in pen). It is from a Book of Hours from the mid-1400's and is the cover page leading to the book of John. There are several animals I could sketch from this one page but chose the bear and the hippogriff squaring off. I tell you, these manuscript embellishers had quite the sense of humor.

Honestly, I didn't know what that animal was on the left and scanned the text to find out. I still didn't know what it was after it told me. I don't think I've heard of a hippogriff before but according to Merriam-Webster and other sources, it is "a legendary animal having the foreparts of a griffin and the body of a horse." I'm not seeing wings on this one but that does explain the bird's head with beak and the horse reference explains what's going on in the back part. I'm hoping to learn much more as I go through this book and sketch away.