Process From Prompts to Pictures

Albert's Transformation - The Musings of ARClark

Plain and simple, prompts save me from creative block.

Inktober is a collaborative, prompt-based drawing challenge that has been going on since 2009 online, and I was initially drawn to it because I was getting art-lazy. However, when I came across this challenge, the thought of making it through a daily drawing where other folks could see if I was completing the task was encouraging. And being able to see what the other creative minds were coming up with is always an incentive. During Inktober, artists are provided a prompt during the 31 days of October and each day, create new drawings based off of a daily word. Piggybacking off that, Inktober52 became a weekly challenge that continued throughout the year with weekly prompts. This little fellow you see pictured was from the 2024 Week 11 prompt “Raccoon”. Feel free to check out Instagram for other #Inktober52Raccoon (s)!

A lot of choices go into the early stages of planning (or not planning).
Some beginning questions I can think of:

• How many times do I have to create this? 

• Do I want to make this a landscape, portrait, abstract?

• How many objects are going to be interacting?

• What is the mood going to be?

• Is there a chance this can be used anywhere else?

• Are there any current events that relate to this? 

• What creature would look the [meanest/silliest/scariest/most adorable] in this situation?

• Or if the creature is known, what would be a funny or beautiful juxtaposition to play out?

Some of the guesswork has been taken out for me by formatting these images for Instagram. That is - the layout will be a square, and generally, the whimsical/illustrative choices are already determined by my style. “Raccoon” was the easy part. 

Now where do we go from there? 

The choice to make it a raccoon playing guitar while the moon is out was likely influenced by my love of music and this raccoon’s nighttime mischief habits. Sometimes it goes deeper or not, depending on the time available or what sparks. But the important part is showing up to the drawing because something is better than nothing! And the ones that are not so great don’t always make it out to the public. I could probably have a whole wall full of “these are the rejected drawings that I might have learned something from but making an exceptional drawing was not one of them”.

I was challenged by the other members of TLC (The Literary Canvas) to flip this image and give it a horror-genre reboot which resulted in 2 separate images. This is partly because I forgot to ask follow-up questions (‘but guys, if I make it horror does it have to be the exact same scene or am i just running with a whole new image?!’) and partly because I wanted to see what I would come up with.

Same sitting-raccoon-playing-music scenario, but now the genre was horror. The scene changed here, but the character is still in the same position; still plucking away, but hopefully, the little ukulele is slightly creepier when you realize it’s surrounded by candles, ooze, and mange.

And the second alternate horror image is still the “raccoon” prompt, but the scenario is taking inspiration from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now, adorable little Leatherface has a chainsaw and is ready to cut some cords of wood most likely and probably nothing else (wink). Also, framed by the eerily bright sunflowers, lengths of rope, and organic bones.

The difference between these images is a good example of why, if you are expecting a certain result, it helps to be incredibly specific. Because “Raccoon” ran a few different ways here simply because I was free to choose my design elements, the story, the style.

-OG Image Generator AC Out.