My sixth year of Inktober
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Inktober 2021 day 16- compass:
Z-21 was online and inbound. His gyroscopic compass eye spun in its socket, searching endlessly. It was always oriented to his target. Z-21 was a intergalactic bounty hunter and he was on his targets six. The creature wasn’t far off now. He had been planet hopping on the hunt for his bounty for 17 cycles.His targets name was Epsilon Earl. A minor criminal, gun runner and smuggler and a . . . hamster. It was a type of Earther rodent of the cute and fluffy persuasion. His space hamster ball was rolling around the blasted landscape of Zucchini 5. It was only a matter of time until Z-21’s compass eye target him. Then the fur would fly!
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Inktober 2021 day 17 - collide:
Bee jousting was a good way to gain the Queens favour. It was also a test of martial combat to keep the young knights from hacking themselves to death over perceived slights, love triangles or just overtly high testosterone levels. It kept the violence to the weekends and imposed supervision and rules. In the very end, it actually helped to keep the knights in fighting trim in a time of peace.Mounting their honey bees, hornets, or bumblebees, their squires would solemnly pass them their blunted lances and curved shields. After several warm up buzzes the two adversaries would rocket at break-neck speed towards each other and collide together in a flash of yellow and black. Often a knight would fall to the ground unless his mount could rescue him. It was not a good way to go, but those were the breaks in air to air combat. If you didn’t have wings of your own, flying was probably not the best idea.
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Inktober 2021 day 18- moon:
The moon viewing festival, or Tsukimi, was alway held in Japan during the mid autumn harvest moon. It’s a time to gather with your family, drink a little sake (if you’re old enough that is), eat soft, delicate mochi (rice cakes) and enjoy a quiet, serene night viewing a full moon.Asuka loved to watch the bright, ghostly moon with her Akida dog Yuki. They ate sweet, soft mochi, sipped green tea, and cuddled
while they looked for the rabbit that was on the moon (an old Japanese folk tale). Yuki was a great companion and Asuka loved him ever so much. It was really the time spent together under the moonlight that mattered. If you don’t enjoy the fleeting moments in life, they soon pass you by. Love really is about who you chose to spend those moments with, even if it’s just looking at the moon and eating delicious mochi! -
Inktober 2021 day 19 - loop:
Brigid was a tagger; a branch of Celtic Druidry. They were the wise people, judges, healers knowledge holders and holy people all rolled into one. In Celtic law, Druids had to learn everything by rote, having to memorize all of their vast knowledge and be able to recite it word for word. Written knowledge was banned in the Druidic faith, as it risked secrets falling into unwise hands . Druid law would not allow their insight into the seen and unseen world to fall to greedy people like the Romans.Brigid’s sect was a little different, as a ‘tagger,’ her specialty was carving the sacred runes of their faith onto enormous stones. They were signs of power, and only other Druids could decipher them. She used her stag staff to incise the infinity loop rune deep into the sarsen stone. Winston, her owl familiar, hooted at her twice to warn her of nearby Roman patrol. They had been wiping out the Druids, one by one, to weaken the Celtic people.
She had best be on her way. Brigid had other stones to tag. The people needed to know that they were not alone, that the Druids were not all gone. They would persevere, they were eternal . . . Infinite.
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You know that it’s been a long Inktober when you forget to post your picture!
Inktober 2021 day 20 - sprout:
The seedlings were about to sprout! It had been a long, cold, blustery winter in dormancy. Thankfully the ice had finally began to melt and Father Winter had released the world from his tight, frigid grasp. Spring had finally come with its warm breathe of air and nourishing rains. The dry earth had soaked up nature’s lifeblood and new sprouts drank deeply. Incubating in the warming soil, plant life was renewed as the tirelessness earthworms tilled and replenished the awakening soil.Little sprouts would soon stretch their very tiny, curling arms up to the mother suns powerful rays, drinking, drinking, growing, growing. It truly was a majestic time of year, until they all started crying at the same time. Sometime being Mother Nature was a ‘B.’
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Inktober 2021 day 21 - fuzzy:Old Mrs VonHoots hair was a right mess. She couldn’t do anything with it no matter how hard she tried! It was just a bloody, fuzzy, hot
mess. It was probably her genes. Her mom had frizzy, barn owl hair and her dad was a hoot owl with a mop of his own. She’d gotten the double whammy from both sides of her family! How could two owls with such bad hair get together?! What had they been thinking?Hopefully Flo could do something with it. She had tried every other hairdresser and none of them could do anything other than break their feather combs in her unruly hair. Oh well, if all else failed their was wigs. Or maybe she would just ask Flo to shave it all off and she would move somewhere warmer. It worked for chihuahuas.
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Inktober 2021 day 22 - open:Larry the worm couldn’t wait for Harvey to open his gift. It was a real surprise that he wouldn’t be expecting. What do you get the worm that has everything? Well, a human in a can of course! Larry had bought it at a gag gift place and he had picked out the ‘salt and peppered humans’ flavour, as he knew that Harvey was a picky eater.
Larry was quivering with anticipation for the moment that Harvey would open his gift. Inside was a powerful spring that would shoot out the flailing human and hopefully scare the poop out of him! Larry was a real jokester, that’s why everyone loved him! Just wait until they tried to use the compost pile and found out that he had put Saran Wrap on top of it!
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Inktober 2021 day 23 - leak:
Mopbot 3000 was having one of ‘those days,’ as his master called them. He was following his assigned, daily, programmed schedule of mopping the observation tunnels. It was also his duty to constantly check for leaks, as they were in plastic tubes, 1200 fathoms below the oceans surface. An underwater lair required a lot of maintenance and there were always leaks to mop up on the daily.It was certainly an anomaly from his usual day, according to the graph that he had been plotting on his off time in his maintenance closet, where he recharged at night. Most days it was the same protocol day in and day out. Today at 9:22 hours was an exception: there was a tentacled, sentient creature, swimming in a unusual, fluid-containment device that hovered above the ground wandering down the tunnel. It was large eyed, excited, had a ‘fanny pack’ and was leaking it’s own fluid that it had brought with it, in a trail behind it.
Mopbot 3000 followed the mysterious creature as it meandered down the tunnel. The curious sea creatures outside the tunnel peered inside and watched intently. Pulling out his trusty mop, Mopbot 3000 mopped up the fluid leaking behind the creature and followed the unusual being. Today was certainly an aberration in its protocols, he would have to update his graph tonight!
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Inktober 2021 day 24- extinct:
Humans were extinct. The experiment was over. First they had tried Dodo birds as the first sentient beings on Earth. The Humans had been the backups. Unfortunately, right off the bat, the humans killed the dodos and ate them. Regrettably, Dodo birds had actually been incredibly wise and serene creatures, but they had been overly trusting and couldn’t comprehend the pointless violence of humans.Plan C was raccoons. They already had thumbs, which was half of the problem solved already. They were being prepped and fitted for their tiny space suits. Unfortunately, they would have to find another planet as the humans had botched this one. Once they could get the raccoons out of the garbage cans, they would rocket off of this planet.
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Inktober 2021 day 25- splat:
Zappo Owlstein hated spacesquid; they were the seagulls of space. They bred like rats and clogged up the interspace trade channels. You would be flying along, listening to your favourite tunes, with your feet up, flying on autopilot and then, right out of the blue: ‘Splat!’ If you were lucky it was only one, but more than likely it was a dozen or more. Tentacles, and squid fluid stuck to everything. The windshield wipers wouldn’t even work, as the tentacles would clog up the works.Zappo would have to pull over to the nearest spaceship Wash Center and get a good cleaning. It was one of the perils of space travel, but it could always be worse. Once, a space whale chased Zappo for a week trying to rub up against his ship to scrape the barnacles off of itself. He had barely escaped with his life that time. Spacesquid were bad, but at least they didn’t try to make love to your spaceship!
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Inktober 2021 day 26- connect:Even robots liked to connect. It made you feel like you weren’t alone in the world; that there were others like you out there. There were many ways to connect: with art, with culture, with information, with books, with the things that you both loved, even with food. Robots needed to share one thing that others didn’t: electricity.
G-unit was low on juice, but SR71 had plenty of charge. Everyone needed a bit of a boost every now and then and SR71 didn’t mind. He could always go to the Battery Bar later and knock back a few rechargeable batteries. Now that G-unit had enough power to make it there, maybe she would like to come too!
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Inktober 2021 day 27- spark:Frankie Jr. sparked up his lighter, ‘Old Sparky’ and lit up a dart. He used to smoke Franklin Extra Cools with Mint, but his new favourite was dynamite with extra TNT. His gang was making a move on old Drac’s territory and it was time to make a scene. The blood suckers had been making a move on Big Franky’s crew and it was time for payback. When you were the reanimated dead nobody could suck your blood unless they like it congealed, but Drac’s crew had tried anyway.
After Frankie Jr. blew a gaping hole in their crypt, their goons would have a rough night. The sun was coming up soon and everyone knew that vampires hated sunburns. As the sun began to rise, spreading its bright, orange rays down upon the filthy city streets, Frankie Jr. lit up another TNT dart and prepared to toss it into the Vamps flop house. It would be one hell of a rude awakening!
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Inktober 2021 day 28- crispy:
Tempura was life. It was a crispy, golden goodness that wrapped the shrimp or vegetable in a perfect wrapping of hot, crunchy deliciousness. Most people didn’t know that tempura wasn’t even originally Japanese. The first Portuguese traders that arrived in Japan had taught the locals how to fry in hot oil, as the Japanese had never cooked anything in that manner before.Oh, but the Japanese had certainly perfected it, like they did with many other things. “It was one thing to invent something, but it was another things to prefect it!” Chef said, as he dipped the delicate prawn into the flour to remove the moisture, then into the delicate tempura batter. Pressing the juicy prawn into the crisp panko crumbs, he then slid it gingerly into the gently bubbling, hot oil.
“Ohh, it would certainly be delicious!”
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Inktober 2021 day 29 - patch:
Aisha had had it with zombies. They were worse than a menace. Every time she had thought that she had patched her final hole in her wall, another zombie head-butted a hole in it! She had certainly gotten to be an expert at patching holes, that’s for sure! Aisha had put a lot of thought into this renovation and she had been excited to finally paint the room in a soothing shade of green. Now it would be a few more days until she could complete her redecorating job.Putting down her putty knife, and container of drywall compound, Aisha picked up her shotgun instead. It was time to go shoot some fools. She was almost out of drywall compound and she wasn’t going to do this a third time!
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Inktober 2021 day 30- slither:“What was that sound?!” Gasped Franklin. It was not a normal kids footsteps, excited running, or even the funny sound that rubber boots made. It was a very distinctive sound. It was more of a slither. The only other person on the dark street was a weird kid in a cruddy ghost costume.
Franklin hoped that it wasn’t a bully. He had hardly managed to get any candy yet, as most of the houses had their lights off this Halloween. He hoped that the bully wouldn’t take the little that he had. Franklin was just outside of the gates to Saint Roch’s cemetery, which was the worst place to get jumped, as no one was around at all to help. Hearing a loud hiss behind him, Franklin let out a loud yelp. Gripping his Ghostbuster proton pack tightly, he slowly turned around . . .
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31ink illustrations in 31 days and my sixth year of Inktober completed! It was a lot of fun and I think my best work so far (I don’t hate anything too much!).Inktober 2021 day 31- risk:
It was a calculated risk and Hector was hungry; really hungry. He hadn’t caught a fish in some time and his cupboard was bare. All of his salted fish had been eaten quite a while ago and the fish just weren’t biting anymore. Then he saw it. His dog, Apollo, barked up a storm when it breached: the biggest fish that Hector had ever seen in his entire, long life! He had almost choked on the olive that he was eating!The strange thing was that it just floated there with its mouth open; waiting. Fishing rod in hand, Hector dangled his hook and line three feet above its open mouth and waited, pondering. It’s gills flexed and it breathed rhythmically, as the gentle current bobbed the enormous fish up and down.
Was it a trick? Would it pull him into its mouth with its might bulk? Apollo kept barking furiously to get his attention as he stared at the giant, waiting fish. Was the fish depressed? Was it committing suicide?! Maybe it just wanted an olive? It was certainly a risk . . . But he was hungry.
