Huevember 2018
“Environments of Kydance”
When it was time for October to roll around, after spending much of the year throwing my efforts into branding and logo work (Daily Logo Challenge*) and fundamental drawing practice (Sketchy Veggies), once again I found myself wanting to utilise Inktober as a personal challenge to try something different. For years I had seen huevember turn up – a colour-based challenge, traditionally taken up in November – but always at the wrong time of year. And since I had been wanting to practice drawing backgrounds, it seemed a good an excuse as any. So with a huevember chart in one hand and a list of random-generator environments (I think from https://artprompts.org/ ) in the other, it was time to get some practice thinking about and drawing places that would fit the prompts.
Everything was going according to plan! … Until the night of Day 3.
1. A Great Fair
2. Cave of Wonders
3. Stars Ablaze
In what is, in hindsight, spectacularly typical me style, I managed to drop the apple pencil. Enough of a drop that I could try to course correct and catch the pencil, in the right timeline.
This was not that timeline.
Instead of catching the pencil I brushed it at just the right time to change it’s course from the floor, to slamming point-first into the wall. But of course, not just any part of the wall. It had to be point-first into the solid steel support beam, a mere 160mm space of wall with plasterboard either side. Very quickly it became apparent that bending the copper innards of the Apple Pencil tip, was a shortcut to an expensive paperweight. The sensitivity was gone, and despite synching to the ipad, the surface didn’t recognise it.
Comically, I was heading to Melbourne the following day to pick up pieces from the Royal Show, and was able to swing past the stationery store to get an early birthday present. Problem sorted, more or less.
(“But where’s the proof? Where’s the photos?” yeah, good question, I thought I had some too! I am very sad there’s not photos of the 90˚ bend in the copper beyond what’s been etched into my memory. All I can say is 0/10 do not recommend yeeting thine expensive electronic pen into a steel beam. I clearly do not learn from experience though and proceeded to drop the replacement pen, tip first, straight into the floorboards in 2026. But it had a much better – and longer – life than the previous pen! And this time, I got photos.)
One of the things I went into Huevember thinking about was an old Illustration project from University, where one of the restrictions was it had to be a two-colour job. It seemed so odd at the time, hilariously familiar upon reflection, but through huevember it became a good excuse to revisit and play around with those sorts of restrictions and colour groups – such as triads or complementary colours.
1. A Great Fair
3. Stars Ablaze
2. Cave of Wonders
4. Secret Passage
5. Forest Lanterns
6. Lazy Coffee Shop
7. Mythological Creature Pet Shop
8. Alchemist’s Shop
9. Pastoral Landscape
10. Hot Canyon
11. Scenic View
12. Autumn Forest Village
13. Bright Light Shed
13. Train Station
14. Japanese Street
16. Fresh Crevasse Meadow
17. Fireflies in the woods
18. NYC Street
19. Grand Cityscape
20. Tundra Hot Springs
21. City Inside A Long Dead Creature’s Skeleton
22. Barren Desert with rock formation.
23. European Town
24. Stone Pillar
25. Fishing Docks
26. Cherry Trees
27. Dilapidated Haunted House
28. Dragon Graveyard
29. Bay of Doom
30. Magic Shop
31. Corridor and Locked Door
Somewhere along the way I wanted to try and tie the environment prompts together, like an expansion on the world that I’d started building with a self indulgent illustration at the end of an event for a writing group, dubbed “That’s Novel”. It had featured a group of adventurers taking a break at the tavern, inspired by the event venue (a pancake restaurant).
Shortly after the final Huevember piece was completed in January, an opportunity arose to help a friend table at the Sticky Institute’s Festival of the Photocopier. In a mad rush to make zine-fair appropriate material, I threw together an artbook of a small selection of pieces from the collection. Complete with place names and locations that reflected the global nature of the writing event that had inspired the pieces.
Internal pages
Internal Pages
A small selection were also chosen as part of a short run of A6 prints for a COVID Lockdown snail mail group in 2020.
