Last October, I completed the one-month Inktober project for the first time in three tries. Drawing in ink every day for a month helped me to like the medium. And so, I decided to continue year round with Inktober’s second challenge, Inktober 52. It’s a really great idea and it’s been an opportunity to grow as an artist in that medium. It is a drawing medium so, if you like to add lots of detail, this is the medium for you.
This kind of challenge is very much for you if you struggle to come up with an idea for your drawing. Because you get a prompt each week, you have at least a framework for coming up with your illustration. It’s up to you to interpret the prompt and you’re free to create any image you like within the framework of the prompt. So, there is structure and there is freedom at the same time, which works so well for me.
I am going to share the last four images that I made, along with the prompts.
Inktober52 week twenty-seven. The prompt for week twenty-seven is “home.” This is the story that goes along with the picture.
From the previous episode: Bearnacle left the tube and he landed with a small thump underneath a tree. He opened the door of a portal that looked nothing like the portal that he had seen when he first entered… and he was…
Home. Back near the sea. Where he had come from before his family had traveled to the bearish gathering prior to hibernation. Where he had come from before he went through the portal and had traveled from planet to planet to asteroid on a magic rope ladder. Bearnacle looked into his bag and saw that he still had a few tiny pieces of rope ladder. Some day, they would become magical. He would store them away until they were needed, whenever that was.
The next day, Bearnacle walked to the beach, where he had spent much time with his friend, the boy. The humans were gone. The boy had told him that all humans were going to live in the Land of the Humans and that most of them could no longer understand the language of the bears. Bearnacle sat on the ground and felt sad. He noticed the old rowboat that he and the boy had painted in odd colors just because they could and he saw that the boy had forgotten his bucket and his shovel.
“We shall sail the seas together,” said the boy.
“Because we are friends forever,” said Bearnacle.
That promise, however, seemed like it was made a long time ago. And now, the boy’s absence felt like a gaping hole in Bearnacle’s world. Would he ever see his friend again?
(to be continued)
Note: the prompt for week twenty-seven is…. home…
Inktober 52, week twenty-eight. The prompt for the week is sardine. Once upon a time, there was a baby who was born extremely tiny. She was perfectly formed, but she was very, very tiny. Her parents didn’t know what to do with her because of her unusual size. They didn’t want her on the floor for fear of stepping on her. So, they kept her in a box on the kitchen counter. She ate and drank a lot of food and milk but she never grew much larger. One day, the baby crawled off and found a tin of sardines that has been partially opened. Only one sardine remained in the tin.
The baby pointed at the last sardine, and it came to life. It jumped out onto the counter and performed a happy dance because it has not been eaten by the baby’s parents. The baby joined the sardine in the happy dance, and the two of them danced so long that her parents saw the dance. That night, the baby and the sardine slept together in the sardine tin.
Once the baby grew older and learned how to walk and how to follow the stars, she and the sardine began to travel in search of the sea. On the way to the sea, they met a bear, who said his name was Bearnacle.
“I shall carry the two of you to the sea,” said Bearnacle. He placed the sardine and the very tiny girl in a jar and carried them for days until they reached the sea…
(more, later)
Inktober, week twenty-nine. The prompt is super. For this prompt, I decided to draw a mouse wearing a super hero cape. People don’t really see something as little as a mouse as a super hero. They just see mice as pests. But did you know that those pesky mice are great for the environment? Many mice eat insects, which helps with insect control. In the wild, mice dig tunnels and burrow underground, which is good for the soil because it provides aeration for the soil. They both hoard and transport seeds, which helps flowring plants. Plus, they are food for larger species, which is why people should not set out poison traps for mice. It will cause havoc for the entire food chain.
The lowly mouse does so much that it is a super hero!
Inktober 52, week thirty. Well, I had every intention of going to the Garden Walk in Buffalo, but I knew that the heat would probably mean that going there by public transportation and walking long distances was a bad idea. And then, at the last minute, I had no transportation and no hope for transportation. So, I stayed home and drew this picture instead. Transportation is truly the bane of my existence, and it impacts my life at every level.
But this picture is supposed to make up for the disappointment of living in a car culture without one of those overpriced and unaffordable machines, I guess. So it’s a cheerful, fun image because this disappointment reminds me that cheerful and fun have to come from within. But still, no one likes feeling excluded. When you want to go to an event and it’s too far to travel to on your own, you start feeling like Tantalus. He was a guy in a Greek myth who was being punished for eternity by being in a pool of water with nothing to drink because the water receded when he tried to drink it. Above him were delicious grapes but they were beyond his reach. Hence the word “Tantalize,” which means “to tempt with something desired but kept just out of reach.”
So, I drew a picture of a lion, a tiger, and a bear who were offering a music and dance performance. They decided to form a performance group after Dorothy was heard to say, “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” They talked about how they were seen as scary and, even if their performances were atrocious, no one would dare throw tomatoes (or apples) at them for assaulting everyone’s ears. In fact, they decided to give themselves the name, the Oh Myes. But, alas, no one remembers them because no one in Oz was brave enough to actually watch the lions and tigers and bears perform. The audience was afraid that they would be seen as the post show entree because… lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
The prompt for week thirty is Leo.
I hope that you’ve enjoyed the pictures and the stories. How would you interpret the words home, sardine, super and Leo?
