It’s Much Too Early!

Remember Cheeky? The mischievous “monkey mind” part of my brain that loves mixing things up, putting odd ideas together, and shaking things all around just to see what sort of “hokey pokey” dance he can come up with…? Yeah, that Cheeky.

He hung out with me all through October last year, giving me ridiculous prompt ideas for Inktober. Together we learned a lot about trees — the subject for our project — and we had a lot of fun.

Then, when November came around, I figured I’d seen the last of Cheeky Monkey Mind, at least until early fall of 2020.

Since we moved between then and now, I wasn’t sure if Cheeky even knew where I was.

But, never fear, Cheeky is here! He found me, and he’s already whispering in my ear about Inktober.

I explained that this is only July — far too early to be thinking seriously about what we’ll be doing in October.

But you know Cheeky. At least, if you were following along last fall, you know him. He’s a bit persistent, refuses to take “no” or even “not now” for an answer, and loves scrambling around for ridiculous ideas.

So, what will we be doing for Inktober? No idea. It really is a bit early to think too much about it, but I did make sure I was signed up for Jake Parker’s Inktober newsletter. This way I’ll get the prompts a little sooner that those who aren’t signed up. Here’s the link in case you need it:

Inktober Newsletter

I do have a few thoughts about Inktober and what I’d like to do. Last year, you might recall, I thought dip pens would be the way to go. That ended badly. I discovered that I don’t do dip pens. At all.

This year my thoughts are on alcohol inks. But what to do with them? That is the question, of course. Cheeky has come up with a few possibilities, but I’m not too sure about the whole idea yet.

Cheeky has also suggested birds as a theme, or maybe fish. Maybe, but maybe not. In fact, I’ll say probably not. I enjoyed using trees as our theme last year, and while I do want something that ties all my Inktober art together, I’m not sure I want it to be quite so specific and limiting. Maybe I want a little more freedom this year.

I do like the idea of creating a narrative with Inktober, but again, I’m not sure that’s really where I want to go. Maybe I want to move in a completely different direction and use Inktober’s prompts as writing prompts, writing short poetry for each day or even weaving a story together with words as well as with drawings.

Inktober has become a time of year I look forward to. After failing the first few tries, I finally made it all the way through in 2018. In 2019 I made it through again. I’m hoping to do the same in 2020.

Working on a month-long project can require a bit of planning and preparation, so maybe Cheeky is right after all. Maybe it’s not too soon to begin thinking about Inktober.