InkTober 2024 Archive: Cremini’s InkTober Adventure

Although I am relatively new to social media, I have long been an outside observer of it. One social media phenomenon that I have always found fascinating is InkTober, and once I had created my own Instagram (as an art account, no less!), I was determined to try it myself.

This year, InkTober’s prompt list was different from what it had been during years previous: instead of a selection of unrelated terms, the prompts all followed a theme, and this inspired me to build on the concept. I was on the phone with my sister when I first saw the prompt list, and with her eager encouragement, my plans quickly evolved from “I’m going to do InkTober” to “what if I added my own theme onto InkTober’s theme” to finally “what if I created a loose visual narrative featuring the character who is my site’s logo alongside an additional cast of returning characters.”

I knew that my October was already going to be very busy, and that this would probably take about twice as much time as I expected, but was determined to give it my best. Also, I think that Cremini is just stinking cute and was excited to have an opportunity to draw one of my own characters in a larger project. Despite being the logo for my site since day one, I have never explained Cremini’s origins, so here in the blog that is about his InkTober Adventure, I think that this is as good an opportunity as any to do so. If you are uninterested, no worries! Just skip past the next paragraph.

Previously, I worked in a middle and high school in special education, and while I was there, my partner (who taught social studies) and I ran an afterschool RPG Club every Wednesday where we played Dungeons & Dragons with the kids. It was often the best part of every week. One day, the group that I ran had made it to a town and wanted to spend the loot they had earned by doing some shopping. One of the students spent almost all of his gold (and much of the rest of the party’s as well) on an enchanted gem, and he was disappointed to find that later he could no longer afford to purchase the pickaxe he wanted from the blacksmith. Not one to be deterred, he used his druidic staff to Awaken a mushroom that was growing alongside the blacksmith’s house and offered her the “priceless gift of friendship” in exchange for the pick. He rolled high on persuasion, so I happily let it happen. Later, after the party had explored a lost dwarven kingdom, uncovered age-old mysteries, and defeated an ancient and imprisoned god, the one thing that they all wanted closure on was the blacksmith and her awakened mushroom friend. Knowing that I wanted to have something prepared for the last session of the school year, when they’d pass back through that village on their way home, I decided to draw the mushroom and give him a name. Thus, Cremini Shroom was born, and to everyone’s joy, did not disappoint.

The original drawing of Cremini from May, 2023.

This brings us to October of 2024 and Cremini’s InkTober Adventure. Many of the ideas of how to interpret the prompts came from that initial phone call with my sister while others were quite the struggle. Largely, this blog exists to archive my InkTober 2024 drawings, but I will include some details about my thought process and some opinions that I have about the pieces as we go.

Cremini’s InkTober Adventure

As the first post, this one set the style for the rest of the month. I created a frame, wanting it be postcard-like; choose the brushes I wanted to use; and picked some colors for a pallet. Overall, I am okay with the colors I picked, but by the end of the month, I was no longer pleased with the frame. I had wanted it to overlap the drawing to dissuade people from posting it in other locations, but I think that I made it too intrusive. If this wasn’t a challenge that you post everyday as it’s finished, this is definitely something that would have changed in a second draft. 

I am not sure what I was doing with Cremini’s proportions in this one, but his newly discovered friend, Croissant, is serving. 

I love the Boot & Breakfast Inn and coziness of smoke coming from the chimneys during the rain. This is one my favorite concepts to come from InkTober, but I think that I made the white plants in the foreground take up too much of the composition.

This one cracks me up. I’m not sure what it says about the state of my sense of humor, but I could hardly look at this while I was drawing because it made me laugh so hard. Additionally, I am very happy with the lighting and the way that it interacts with the rain; I pulled the colors from posters of Singing in the Rain, adding a nice classic reference to my absurd drawing.  

This one was a ton of fun. I was snickering to myself the entire time, seeing how many silly jokes I could hide in the passport. Also, the truly epic portrait of King Agaricus brings me joy. 

Now, if you asked what particular species of mushroom these two new friends are based on, well, I plead the fifth. But, Phyllis and Sigfried are quite magical and they love hikes! The fact that Phyllis forgot their water is a complete coincidence. 

Did I spend way too much time researching the Sun Salutation and thinking about which pose would the best to draw mushrooms, a sunflower, and a chipmunk doing? Yes. The leaf yoga mats were my sister’s idea, and I love them. The new characters attending Sigfried’s yoga class are Tiffany the chipmunk, Sunflower, and you can just see the top of Button’s head in the foreground. I like the composition of this one at lot and the level of detail, but I am not very pleased with how I did the lightning. You will see that the lightning is something that I experimented with a fair amount over the month, and I was much happier with where it ended up.

I am enamored with the concept of Samara’s With the Wind Traders as a group of wandering merchants who fly western salsify (a variety of giant dandelion) hot air balloons and, like the samara seeds they are modeled after, literally travel with the wind. I am not, however, very pleased with final product. Too much of the drawing is just dirt, and I am baffled by this choice in retrospect. 

I love this drawing. I laugh every single time I look at it. For once, I have no notes. 

From the first moment I looked at the prompts, I knew what I was going to draw for this day, probably because The Lord of the Rings is never far from my mind. I was definitely counting as I went to make sure that I had enough characters by this day to do the full ten silhouettes (the Fellowship + Bill the pony).

This is my favorite drawing from Cremini’s entire adventure. 

This was the first prompt where I truly struggled when coming up with something to draw. I could not figure out what to do for “grungy.” I only lived through the last couple years of the 90s, and I wasn’t very cognizant for much of it. I finally settled on using poses from Guitar Hero as reference, and though I think that it might have strayed more towards punk than grunge, I was mostly glad to have a finished piece to post.

Because I was not happy with my first drawing of the Samaras, it was an easy choice of what vehicle I wanted to “drive.” Other than the muddied colors of the sky, I really enjoyed how this one turned out, especially the way the lighting distinguishes the foreground from the background. 

This was, by far, the hardest day for me. I do not know what kind of prompt “rhinoceros” is, but oh boy did I struggle to get anything drawn for this day. I finally thought that Japanese rhinoceros beetles sumo wrestling was at least somewhat clever, but then I had to draw bugs, and I did not enjoy that. The whole thing was a struggle, start to finish, and it looks like it as well. If it were not for the nature of InkTober and its every day challenge, I would never have shown this to other people.

This one, on the other hand, is one of my favorites, and I had fun playing around with the lighting.

I am not proud to admit that it took me literally twenty-three days to realize that the solution of having too much dirt in each composition (because Cremini is smaller than most of the plants that would usually cover it) … was just moss. I also think that, color-wise, this is one of the stronger pieces from my InkTober.

It had been a while since I added any new characters to the adventure, so meet Clarence and Bloop. Bloop is in danger.

Here we finally get our first full look at Button, and I love them. This drawing is a loving and slightly teasing tribute to my mother who always has a very particular posture when taking pictures and has amassed a truly impressive collection of heart-shaped rocks.

While not my personal favorite piece from InkTober (an honor that is firmly held by the vibes of Day 14: Roam), it is probably the best drawing in Cremini’s adventure and the is one of which I am the most proud.

For the penultimate day, I decided to bring back some of my favorite characters from the month: Phyllis and Sigfried, Button, and Tiffany, and wanted to set it inside the Boot & Breakfast from Day 3. Almost the entire adventure happened outdoors, and I wanted to bring it to a close with a cozy interior scene.

Like Cremini, by the end of the month, my most sought after landmark was my bed.

Check out a video compilation of the entire project here!

Thank you to everyone who followed along with my first InkTober! I am equal parts glad and proud that it is over.

I am such a perfectionist and harsh critic of my own work that it was very helpful to have the goal of posting something every single day. Without this outside motivation, I probably would have shared only about 6-8 of these 31 drawings. It was very eye-opening to see almost equally positive responses to the drawings that I thought were not good and would have hidden away forever and those few that I was genuinely pleased with. It was not the lesson that I had anticipated learning when I started InkTober, but I certainly grew to be gentler with myself and more willing to share things even if I do not love them.

This certainly does not mean that my standards for myself have become any less exacting, but the needle has moved in a healthier direction. So thank you, everyone, truly.

To finish off, I’d like to answer the question I was most frequently asked about Cremini’s InkTober Adventure: Are you going to make this into a book?

The short answer is maybe.

The longer answer is that I have no current plans for a picture book of Cremini and his friends, but I am certainly open to it in the future. I am going to take a nice break from drawing him for a bit to stave off burnout, but I will certainly think about where I want to take him next.

Thank you for reading! Please follow me on Instagram @acbodnarart, subscribe to my blog for more, or check out my illustrations in the new children’s picture book Oscar Comes Home!