Relic - Inktober 2026 - October 2nd 2026

 

"Relic" Ink Drawing for Inktober 2026 Challenge. Alex Ariza 2026.

October 2nd 2026 - The prompt is "Relic."

I've always been fascinated by the concept of relics, especially within Christianity. Something eerie and very curious about the veneration of someone's remains. To split up pieces of saints, clergy men, Kings, etc. to different people and parts of the world. I know no one will do that with my corpse.

I decided to forgo the ink wash for this piece. I decided to challenge myself with only getting different tones and values through hatching this time around. This takes way longer and probably won't be the approach I take for all of the remaining pieces. The ink wash, while challenging in its own way, is so much faster at covering large amount of space. You can cover more ground with layers of ink wash than you can hatching each line.

I played around with different approaches to the line weights. Not everything was successful with this piece. I tried keeping my line work as clean as possible, but I'm still such a novice with a pen nib, so there are areas that look very sloppy compared to others. 

I'll need to plan ahead way more for this to be successful and go more smoothly.