Inktober . . .

October = Inktober

New month, new challenge. 

A pen and ink drawing every day for 30 days (yeah, right) 

and a list of prompts to help spur me on.

Still, once in a while something like this comes along that artists like me are inspired to participate in just to get creative juices flowing.

 Day 1 : Fields here in the Great Plains are being harvested. The cut corn looks sheared like carpet. Little piles of corn that missed the grain trucks are on the sides of the gravel roads. Grain trucks lined up at the elevators in queues a mile long. Here on the prairie is where the work of providing food for the world is done.

Day 2 : The prompt word is 'noise' and leaves constantly dropping all around is the inspiration. On a dry patch of what used to be mud but is now cracked earth is a single leaf from an old mulberry tree. Leaves crackle as they blow across the rough dirt. In short order, the trees will be nearly bare and the ground covered with mulberry, maple, oak, and leaves from all of the shrubs and plum thickets.

Day 3 : The prompt word is 'collect' so I arranged three of my little collection of lustreware bird toothpick holders. I can't resist buying one of these guys whenever I find one (rarely) and I do think they're pretty cute.

Each of these three drawings has reminded me of the lessons in composition, value, and sensitivity in line. Lots more to learn but these challenges are so valuable in the process of art.