Inktober Week 1
You’ve got questions. I understand. Either you read the title thought to yourself, “What’s Inktober?”, or, you’re familiar with Inktober and you’re wondering what I could possibly contribute to the event. The first one is easy. The second is more compilcated.
Inktober is a 31 day drawing challenge in the month of October, in which artists tackle a daily inking prompt. See below:
What could I offer an endeavor geared for those of such technical skill and creative merit? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. Guess that wasn’t a complicated question afterall.
But, I decided to do it anyway. Why, you ask? Well, I’d say you’ve reached your question limit for this post and you’re getting a little too nosey for your own good. But, a valid question none-the-less. Why? Because no one can stop me. Unfortunaely, there isn’t a shortcut key to insert a manical laugh here, so you’ll just have to use your imagination.
One would assume there would be rules or provisos that would limit participation to draftsman, draftspersons? draftspeople? People who draw real good. But, there doesn’t seem to be. There’s no one policing this thing. It’s anarchy. It’s chaos. I’m in.
I thought it would be a fun creative challange to take on the prompts as a collageist. And, a challenge is has been. One that has become more and more challengeing each and every single fucking day.
So, I thought I’d take you through what I’ve done so far.
Day 1 - “Dream”
This one was easy. The easiest of the week. So much so that it instilled in me a false sense of confidence that only lasted until day four.
I had some calligraphy ink laying around and a stack of index cards. I did washes and brush strokes. Splattered, made marks, and tore off the interesting bits. Pieced it together. Cut out magazine letters. And, broke out the labelmaker.
Going into this I wanted my approach to the prompts to be more textual than visual. As strange as it sounds collage is one of my most important writing tools. It's selection and removal. Collection and placement. The Fragments become an assembly. The assembly becomes something whole. This is what writing’s like for me. It’s taking scraps and making sense. And, it’s also about alluding to something without making it explicit. It’s giving hints without giving anything away.
Day 2 - “Spiders”
It was a question of how do you talk about spiders without talking about spiders. Without showing spiders.
I’ve been reading Mark Forsyth’s book, The Elements of Eloquence. He talks about a rhetorical technique called Merism, in which “you don’t say what you’re talking about, and instead name all its parts.” Rather than name the parts of a spider, I wanted to do it mimetically, through enlisting prevalent cultural memes relating to spiders. I was hoping that by gesturing towards a line from the Itsy-Bitsy Spider, you’d conjure the image of spiders.
Day 3 - “Path”
I tried to be clever in my first two and not use the prompt word in the collage. Yeah…this is as far as I got with that idea.
A few years ago I had a podcast called, The Process & The Path, so maybe it was nostalgia more than laziness. I also a had a short exchange with
about how the process is the reward, perhaps that was still on my mind. In fact, let’s go with that, and not the lazy part.Day 4 - “Dodge”
This where things started going south for me, hard and fast. I spent most of the day in a low simmering panic because I had no ideas whatsoever. I couldn’t get the movie Dodgeball out of my head, and that was in no way helpful. But, the old adage is true, if you can dodge a wrench, you can, infact, dodge a ball.
In desperation, I started flipping through a magazine and managed to piece together this phrase.
Day 5 - “Map”
One of the things I wanted to do from the start was use only inked paper for the main components of the collages. I didn’t want to rely on magazines for anything other than text. This was another abandoned ideal once the reality of the challenge came face to face with me immmense lack of ability. I may not be a gambler, but I know when to fold ‘em. I managed to put in one small piece of an ink stained index card in the bottom right corner, becasue, despite my creative weaknesses, I’m a man of principle.
Day 6 - “Golden”
Fuck me…they just keep getting harder. Turns out I reached the extent of my artistic fortitude by day 2. Only two things saved my ass on this one: 1) May daughter bought me this gold ink for Father’s day, and 2) I’m a huge nerd.
I made some erractic golden brush strokes on previously inked index cards. And, referenced a line from “The Riddle of Strider” from The Lord of the Rings.
Day 7 - “Drip”
For. Fuck’s. Sake. Welcome to my downward spiral.
In his book, Horns, Joe Hill writes the following:
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be kicked in the nuts as soon as they try to get back up.
After this one, I know exactly what he means.
I had the idea to write a haiku and to write it out with a sumi brush.
I came up with the poem:
A heart poured out slow
Until there is nothing left
Drip by drip by drip
Not a great poem, I’m aware. But in an earnest cursive script, I was sure the aesthetics would make up for it. Oh, how young and foolish I was. To say that it didn’t work is like saying the Hindenberg disaster was a bit of an oops. I almost quit Inktober completely.
Bob Ross said that there are no mistakes, but he didn’t see the shit I made. Believe me when I tell you, there was nothing happy about these accidents. May his afroed-holiness rest in peace.
I tore up all my failed attempts and tried to glue them into something usable. I made it work. I made it though. Only 24 more days to go.
I’m revaluated the value of sobriety…
Inktober has proven to be an excellent method of disabusing me of my unconscious naivety. It’s been more difficult that I imagined. It’s tested my patience, and pushed my creative thinking. But, it’s been a lot of fun and I’ve met some great people that are also taking part in the inky festivities.
If you’d like to see more contributions be sure to check out
, , , , andAnd if you fancy a taste of masochism, give it a try yourself.
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Dude, don't sell yourself short! These are great!
Thanks so much for the mention! I didnt realize you were using calligraphy ink on these! 😍