Inktober Day 8 – Reckless

Not reckless. Work in progress. Had fun on the hoop this morning. I am not reckless but I know my strengths and weaknesses.

It’s been a while since I drew Mr Fox in the air. Did you know I have a full collection off downloadable aerial fox prints on my Etsy? They actually have become one of my most favourite items.

And the finished drawing. Who is the reckless on here?

Inktober Day 7 – Starfish

Good morning world! What are you having for breakfast? Personally I stick with big black coffee and a banana.

Another seagull. Interesting fellas… If you missed the first one, here is yesterday’s seagull. Should I add a seagull print to my Etsy shop?

Have a wonderful day!

Inktober 2025 Melanie Franz

Do you like seagulls?

Inktober Day 6 – Pierce

Sticking to exploring different kinds of animals. Seagulls are weird though. We occasionally have huge seagulls sitting on our balcony. Looking at their beaks, I definitely wouldn’t want to get too close to them.

Day 4 – 100 Animals and Pinterest

The first 10-15 animal took definitely some effort. Effort to sit down, and effort to sketch. Now I am at the point where I am starting to have fun.

I have been using Pinterest a lot to look up reference images and create boards. I only now discovered that Pinterest is drowning under a flood of AI-generated junk. What once was a useful platform for photographs, has turned info an AI dump which is flooded with ads. I didn’t notice it at first because I hadn’t been on Pinterest in months, but it became especially apparent when looking up images of birds and suddenly I was faced with only AI generated non-existent bird species. Beside the creepy look of AI generated imagery, they look like the same same garbage the more you look at them.

ink animal drawings _Melanie Franz 2025

I have been listening to a lot of illustrator and artist podcast and the discussion with the issue of anything AI generated. While there are the fast-fashion consumers that don’t see anything wrong with anything AI generated, there are the traditional artists. Art lives through its imperfections. No human generated art, being it music, painting, sculpture will ever be 100% perfect. They might be close but not perfect. And it is this imperfections that gives the artwork its soul and life.

ink animal drawings _Melanie Franz 2025

Have you been noticing that Pinterest is collapsing under the weight of AI-generated garbage?

Good morning

Mood today…
Did I mention I have been drawing birds, just for fun. Any animal you would like to see next?

Print you can get here on Etsy.

Birds of a feather flock together…

I finally tidied up my desk and came across all those ink bottles I bought over the years. Thought it was time to give some of those different colours a try. I usually just go straight for black ink but I quite like the look of the indigo one, the bird on the far left.

Do you use colours other than black Indian ink?

When everything is up in the air…

Or something like that. It is Inktober and I haven’t found the time yet to get it started. Maybe I’ll try and play catch up at the weekend.

Are you doing Inktober?

Aerial Fox _Inktober _ Melanie Franz

Wanna hang with me?

Here is the almost finished opossum. I haven´t been hanging upside down for almost a month now due to an elbow injury , but I might attempt going back to aerial hoop this week to start with some easy training again.

Anyone else here who likes to hang upside down?

What animal would you like to see next?

Watching your back

That’s me, waddling out into the snow today. We are back to winter wonderland after 2 days of snowfall and no one who cleaned the roads…

Happy Sunday everyone!

311018-inktober-moon-Melanie Franz

What’s the Weather?

I finally managed to finish the weather book! What started as a fun way to get over my creative block last spring, is now finally finished! Last spring I was stuck and a friend suggested to try something I have never done before. That’s what started this paper-cut project.

The finished project is a picture book that takes you through the seasons with funny weather pictures. You can see more of those in my earlier posts like here and here.

The book will be released on Wednesday the 22nd, just in time for my daughters first birthday! Until then you can find the kindle version here if you would like to take a look.

More Ink…

I had so much fun with the Inktober prompts and my turtle and spider that I decided to keep on going and use the Inktober 52 prompt list to keep on going. It’s a nice way to do warm up sketches while I am working on other projects.

Here is the first prompt – Build. I am not sure what mood I am currently in, building sand castles or snow ones? Or who knows, maybe ash castles, depending on whether the volcano decides to erupt or not 🙂

2311_1 Build_Inktober_Melanie Franz

Inktober 2023 Roundup

Despite having been late to the party, I really enjoyed the Inktober challenge as every year and I am really happy with the outcome. Just like in the previous years, I was not sure where the journey would take me. And as every year I am happy about what I learned and the results.

I got so much positive feedback about the little turtle and spider, that I am considering of putting an actual children´s book together with these two characters. So watch this space.

Here are all of the 32 drawings ( yes, I did one extra because I had so much fun)

Did you do inktober? What is your take away from the challenge?

Inktober 2023 – Rush & Fire

Last but not least. So I rushed through all the prompts in 4 days. And as every year I do like the process. From not knowing where this would go initially, it turned into an exercise of quick minimalist sketches.

23_30 Rush_Inktober 2023_Melanie Franz
23_31 Fire_Inktober 2023_Melanie Franz