Day 2 of October and Inktober and it just wasn’t happening. The day was so busy. The girls were off school for a “well-being” day, but they do just fine entertaining themselves. I struggled through the day balancing work and church needs. I also really needed to do work organizing the studio and putting together furniture for the new hallway, but I never got to those.

By late last night, I finally found my little pile of Inktober supplies and sat down to try and make something. It was late, but I pressed through. I’ve decided to mostly switch over to Peachtober prompts. I always prefer those as they are often autumnal, cute, and much easier to tackle than the darker and more conceptual Inktober prompts. I had watched G, our 12 year old, do a drawing earlier in the day. She is really into the idea of doing a daily drawing and she had a lot of fun coming up with something for day 2’s prompt of “chimney.” I was a little jealous of her time, determination and joy at tackling it.

I wrestled with ideas late last night and finally painted something. It took way longer than I wanted and I really don’t like it at all. It’s also the wrong season as I combined snow, an elf, and a chimney. I’ve been debating how much I want to share of it. I think there should be more space for making and not sharing. It takes pressure off. So, I’m only sharing a bit of the chimney as that fits the prompt and it fits 2 of my 3 loose rules for the month challenge. And I really do want to focus more on the playing with gouache rule than trying to have the perfect illustration to present each day. I guess it fits the other rule too as there is a story, just only I know it.

I went to bed without sharing it as it was super late at that point and I wanted to process.

I listened to a podcast last week while driving to the school for a pick-up. The Illustration Department is often on rotation for me as I love listening to other illustrators share about their joys, struggles, tips, and thoughts. I queue up all the interviews I want to hear in his huge list and they play one after the other.

The one I’m thinking of here was with Robin Preiss Glasser. I know her best from a favorite picture book during our NYC years: You Can’t Take a Balloon Into the Metropolitan Museum. She mainly talked about her huge success and run with the Fancy Nancy book series.

What I really didn’t know about her is that she was a ballet dancer for 30 years prior to becoming an illustrator. She shared about that switch, but one thing that really stuck with me is at one point she talked about how illustrating is a lot like dancing in that you don’t show up to the ballet studio every day and say, “OK, I’m going to dance fantastically today.” You show up, do the stretches, the movements, the same routines again and again. It doesn’t matter whether they are good or not. Whether you feel like dancing or not. Whether your body does it all correctly or not. You show up and do it. Some days beauty comes from it. Other days, not. The point is not ultimately the one final performance for those moves. The point is the accumulation of skill and strength that is built over the daily discipline of showing up and doing it all again and again.

This hit me. I know that you need to just draw, draw, draw, and paint, paint, paint and hope that out of the mass that you produce, there is some tiny percentage that is worth sharing and using. But finding the time and pushing myself to do it has always been a struggle. It’s why I love Inktober and deadlines and things that force me to just push through.

So, I keep thinking about her words even as I’ve done 2 paintings that I don’t like so far this Inktober. It’s OK. With every wrong brush stroke, and messed up paint, and weird composition, and poor color choice… I’m learning stuff. I’m working those muscles. I’m accumulating information. And hopefully at some point I’ll see the beautiful dance er… illustration come out. Even if it is 1 out of 31. That’s what being an artist is. The process is really the point.

So here I head into day 3. Show up. Make something.

discipline

Inktober 2026