Thinking Is Not Pre-Inking

It’s two more weeks to go before it’s Inktober, and I’m kind of nervous this year because this year the word prompts feel more difficult than last year.  I almost have everything on my list filled in with ideas for what to draw but that doesn’t mean I can draw everything on my list. 

Some of what I wrote down is pretty hard to draw, and plus, ink and markers aren’t exactly what I’m best at doing art.  I do way better with colored pencils but Inktober is about ink (and markers have ink) and it’s not Pencil-tober, so I have to do what the rules say Inktoberites have to do.

I don’t know if Inktoberites is a real word, or even what people who do Inktober are called, but it’s what I think we should be called so that’s what I’m calling people who are part of Inktober:  Intertoberites.  I looked up what –ites means when you put it on the end of a word, and the dictionary says it’s a suffix of nouns (meaning it comes at the end of the noun) and it has to do with people that are part of a place or a tribe or a system, or something that is part of a mineral or a fossil or a chemical compound, and stuff like that.  Inktoberites is for people who are part of Inktober.

I guess if you do Inktober exactly the way Jake Parker came up with Inktober, you would be a Parkerian Inktoberite.  I should probably send Mr. Parker a email and ask him for sure so I don’t make trouble for him that he’s going to have to fix because of what I was guessing about on my blog.

Anyway, even if my stomach is going all superly rollercoastery every time I think about Inktober starting in just a few more days, I’m going to do Inktober again, and every single day of Inktober, I’m going to upload what I drew and explain how it ties in with the word prompt because sometimes maybe it’s going to be hard to figure out without me explaining things.  I know that because my big brother Josh looked at my list and he didn’t get how some of the ideas I jotted down tied in with the word prompt until I told him how they did, and then he got it.

Josh is not using a list.  He’s going to do Inktober the way he always does Inktober.  He’s going to draw whatever hits him on the day of the word prompt.  I did that last year and it was superly hard because sometimes nothing hit me, so I had to ask Josh or my other big brother, Aaron, for ideas.  They didn’t give me ideas though. They just talked to me until I got a idea so I could say I did Inktober, even if Josh helped co-draw a couple of drawings last year.

Be sure to tune in to my blog every single day next month because I think you’re going to like what you see.  That’s the fun of Inktober: Seeing what comes out of the word prompts every single day.

So remember:  Twenty twenty-one won’t just be two of the drawings I do for Inktober.  It’s the year we’ve been living in this year.

Planning and Prepping

My Grandma Two Rivers always talks about planning and prepping when she’s getting ready to do something important like making supper or crocheting a afghan or planting a garden. She’s all about the lists, and the lists help her not forget to do something or get something she’s going to need to make things turn out the way she wants them to turn out.

She taught me way early when I was really little how to make good lists, and before I even was in kindergarten, I was coming up with lists (except most of the time I had to get my big brother Josh to write things down for me because I was not a good speller yet). I also learned that lists kept me organized, and when I made lists, I hardly ever forgot to do something that I needed to do.

Last week, I told everyone that I’m getting ready to do Inktober 2021 again this year (and so is Josh), except this year, I’m doing things a little bit differently than how I did Inktober 2020. Last year, I would look at the word prompt for the day and then I would do art that fit the word prompt. Some days were superly, crazy hard to do because I had zero zip idea what to draw. Those were the days that annoyed my big brothers, Josh and Aaron, because then I would bug them to help me come up with a idea of what to draw.

But this year, I’m going back to planning and prepping, and that means making a list!

I know what all the word prompts are so I printed them down one side of a lined piece of paper. That left a lot of space on the line to put down any ideas that come to my mind over the next three weeks while I’m waiting for Inktober to start.

By the time October 1st comes around, I should have a idea for pretty much every word prompt, and maybe even two or three ideas and I can pick the one I feel like drawing when that word prompt comes up. Like for the first word prompt CRYSTAL, maybe I can draw crystals like what you see when you break a geode open or I can draw a snowflake because they have crystals in them or I can draw a crystal glass (you know, as in ‘Get out the good crystal, Ethyl — we’re celebrating that Bessie had a new calf in the barn tonight’). I thought about drawing a crystal ball but that just feels way too easy for me because it’s just a circle on a stand so that’s how come I didn’t go with that idea.

It’s a good thing I’m doing a list of ideas ahead of time because some of the word prompts already are giving me trouble. Words like PICk and CRISPY because I don’t know how to draw action words sometimes and if you do art, you want people to understand what the theme of the picture is. If I draw a hand picking raspberries, most people are going to think the word prompt is RASPBERRY when it’s actually PICK so I have to figure out better ideas than the ones I already have.

Also, for me, CRISPY only makes me think of apples and that means I have the same trouble with CRISPY as I have with PICK.

I asked Josh if it was cheating to plan and prep with a list for Inktober and he said he didn’t think so because I’m not actually drawing yet. I’m just coming up with ideas, and just because I have a idea doesn’t mean that’s what I’m for sure going to be drawing for that word prompt. Josh said that maybe on the day I’m going to draw my idea, a even better idea pops into my head and I draw that instead. That doesn’t mean the first idea was bad because it doesn’t get drawn and it doesn’t mean I had a fall-back idea just because a better idea showed up on the day I’m doing a drawing for that word prompt. It means I have ideas to choose from and that means I’m ready to do some awesome art even if it does not turn out right (because sometimes it doesn’t).

Anyway, if anyone has ideas for PICK or CRISPY that they want to share with me, that would be great. Maybe I’ll add your idea to my list and maybe I won’t add your idea to my list, but I totally will consider if it’s a idea I can draw.

So even though everybody knows that twenty twenty-one is more than numbers that come one after the other (because it’s also this year), I’m going to keep on wishing you a great 2021 because there’s always something to be superly excited about every single day.