Prompt: monster (my monster is actually the drained fly; I prefer spiders to flies)
#Inktober52 is a weekly ink drawing challenge, one ink drawing a week for the entire year, 52 weeks a year.
I know I could never do #inktober for October, it just gets too crazy when I try to do something EVERY single day. But I am excited and challenged by the #inktober52. I think I can manage 52 weekly drawings inspired by prompts from https://inktober.com/. The part about having a week to complete a drawing helps me out.
“Jake Parker created Inktober in 2009 as a challenge to improve his inking skills and develop positive drawing habits. It has since grown into a worldwide endeavor with thousands of artists taking on the challenge every year.”
Here are my February drawings.
Prompt: dragonfly
Prompt: camping
Prompt: egg
Are you enticed to join me? It’s fun to play and use my imagination. And maybe I’ll learn a new trick along the way.
One of my favorite “substitute teacher” activities I loved to do with older students was a word game that ties right into this poetry form. I only realized this after I had difficulty coming up with a poem, and then went back to my old sub/word play game to give me a list of words from which to work.
The word play game consisted of me writing a very long word on the (back then) chalk board. Usually “supercalifragilisticexpealidocious.” I would then set a timer and instruct students to play with the word and come up with a list of words they could make using only the letters of the word on the board. True, this is a giant word, so the possibilities were nearly endless. But that made it easier for the students. If only I had gone on to use our word lists to make up fun poems!
I discovered this fun method in a poetry book I picked up at the library. It just looked enjoyable. And it is. Check out or purchase this book and play with some words yourself.
Lemonade and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word
Can you tell I am ready for flowers, green, and hiking in the mountains? This will come, after the snow melts, the fog dissipates, the mud dries, and the earth springs forth with life.