Here we are, just over half way through Inktober. I’m happy to announce that it still seems to be going well. I know month long daily challenges are usually difficult, but I’ve spent most of this year daily painting so this is just me doing my daily routine.

The biggest challenge has been working from life again. I’ve mostly been working from photos this year so there was a bit of an adjustment. While the switch between life and photos is pretty minor, it always takes me a couple of sketches to get back in the groove.

This week my dip pen nib finally tried to die on me. It has been slowly accumulating a layer of dried ink because no matter how often I try to rinse it off, some ink inevitably dries on in. Plus I didn’t exactly do a good job of cleaning it last year.

I finally did some research and discovered that ammonia is the secret to cleaning up waterproof ink. I didn’t have ammonia in the house though so I gave glass cleaner a shot and it dissolved that dried up ink instantly. My nib is finally useable again! Plus I don’t have to panic about ink getting where it shouldn’t be because I finally know how to clean it up. Seriously, I realize I should have known this years ago, but you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s a good thing too because I splattered ink all over my laptop and was resigning myself to it being there forever. Hopefully this tip helps out other clueless ink artists.

This week I also started to incorporate flowers with some of my larger skulls. This wasn’t an easy decision because I despise painting flowers, but I love how it looks. I know if I just practice I’ll get better at them. Motivating myself to tackle all of those petals is a challenge though. What subjects do you struggle to paint?

Thank you for reading and following along again this week. I’m posting every day over on Instagram. Follow me @amber.honour if you can’t wait a whole week between blog posts. Have a great week!