Inktober 2025 – Day 19 : Arctic – Dark Art
The Arctic is often romanticized as a place of pristine, white silence. But to a mind that dwells in the shadows, silence is just a hunting ground. For Day 19, the prompt “Arctic” didn’t bring to mind cute penguins or scientific outposts. It brought to mind the biting, indifferent cold that strips away humanity and leaves only the beast.
I wanted to capture the legend of the Wendigo or a lycanthrope lost in the tundra—something that wears the clothes of a man but carries the hunger of a wolf. This drawing centers on that duality. The heavy, fur-lined parka suggests warmth and survival, the kind of gear an explorer might wear. But the face peering out from the hood is pure predator, and the trophy in his hand is a grim reminder that in the deep freeze, you are either the hunter or the frozen meat.
Drawing snow in ink is always a challenge of negative space. You have to let the white of the paper do the heavy lifting. I used sparse, floating circles to indicate the falling snow and sharp, jagged lines for the ice formations on the ground to contrast with the soft, ruffled texture of the fur. The head in the creature’s hand is drawn with minimal shading to make it look pale, drained, and frozen solid—a preserved warning to anyone else wandering this wasteland.
This piece is about the isolation of the cold. It preserves things, but it also reveals the savage nature of survival when the temperatures drop and the sun doesn’t rise for months.
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