By KARI MUTU

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Inktober, in which artists during the month of October make ink drawings based on a daily prompt list of words such as “united”, “poison” and “filthy”, was started in 2009 by American illustrator Jake Parker to improve his artistic abilities and work habits.
Kenyan artist Gemini Vaghela has taken on the challenge with a set of ink and charcoal drawings on hand-made, recycled paper. “It helps you think outside the box, improve your drawing, and gives you better control when working with ink,” said Vaghela, who also makes wearable art on hand painted fabrics.

Several of her abstract and semi-realistic ink drawings have an athletic looking figure drawn in thin outlines expressing movements like dancing, jumping and wielding a sword.

She combines broad strokes with narrow ones, wet and dry lines, and moves from dark, saturated pigments into light, washed-out sections.

“Watercolour paper is very good art paper when working with ink because it allows you to manipulate the spread of ink in a controlled way,” Vaghela said. She uses A6 size paper for uniformity and to keep the daily project manageable.

The drawings are attractive for their simplicity, motion and skillful use of lines. Some paintings, such as Deep and Shattered, explore the varied meanings of a single word. Weather is drawn as a soft, voluminous mass in Cloud and as a tornado-like swirl in Furious.

Vaghela’s colour choices are limited to shades of red, blue, black and grey, leaving a lot of white space. Mysterious is one of my favourites. It is a shadowy, monochrome image showing a path cutting through a line of leafless trees.

Vaghela trained in photography and multimedia in Australia. This year she was a finalist at the ARTaipei International Competition in Taiwan for a painting called I Know Who I Am, a mixed media on canvas portrayal of women’s struggle with social conformity, perfectionism and individuality.

The Inktober creations will be on show and sale in South Africa in early November as part of an assemblage show of several artists. More of Vaghela’s work can be seen on her website and at her Nairobi studio.