Updated 14 September, 2017, to fix a link to nowhere!
Updated 19 September 2017 to change two links from internal URLs to Sharonda.ink URLs.
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It’s getting to be that time of year again! If I lived in a place that had an autumn, autumn would be coming!
As things stand, I’m gearing up for “autumn” in southern California by pondering inks and pens, hoping I have enough paper, buying silly Halloween things at Target, and loosely planning my drawing schedule. (For those of you not in the know, “loosely planning” loosely translates to “procrastinating, but doing so thoughtfully”.)
Luckily, the fine folks at both The Inktober Initiative and Drawlloween are helping with that last bit by getting their respective prompt lists published nice and early.
Yay, plancrastination!
See below:
The official 2017 #inktober prompt list. Pass this along, would ya? pic.twitter.com/quzxi9t6f5
— Inktober (@inktober) September 11, 2017
Hey there my spooky scribes and sketchers! The 2017 #Drawlloween Calendar is here! New prompts, new fonts, and an actual Friday the 13th th… pic.twitter.com/GiE5Iu1tZY
— Drawlloween (@drawlloween) August 23, 2017
For an extra hint of procrastinate-y goodness, I’ve compiled the two calendars above into one handy-dandy table that you and I can both bend to our own purposes:
| Date | Inktober | Drawlloween | Combo/Alternative |
| OCT 01 | Swift | Return From The Dead | |
| OCT 02 | Divided | Summon Day | |
| OCT 03 | Poison | Tombsday | |
| OCT 04 | Underwater | Pumpkin Wicked This Way Comes | |
| OCT 05 | Long | Full Moon Follies | |
| OCT 06 | Sword | Folklore Friday | |
| OCT 07 | Shy | Cobweb Crawlers | |
| OCT 08 | Crooked | Deep Sea Denizens | |
| OCT 09 | Screech | Fanged Fiends | |
| OCT 10 | Gigantic | Martian Mayhem | |
| OCT 11 | Run | Swamp Citizens | |
| OCT 12 | Shattered | Ah! Reel Monsters | |
| OCT 13 | Teeming | Friday the 13th | |
| OCT 14 | Fierce | Owl Be Back | |
| OCT 15 | Mysterious | Cornfield Capers | |
| OCT 16 | Fat | Carnival Carnage | |
| OCT 17 | Graceful | Toadsday | |
| OCT 18 | Filthy | Crypt Creeps | |
| OCT 19 | Cloud | Nightmare Nomads | |
| OCT 20 | Deep | Dr Jekyl & Mr Friday | |
| OCT 21 | Furious | Cadaverous Cowboys | |
| OCT 22 | Trail | Ghast Christmas | |
| OCT 23 | Juicy | Sewer Settlers | |
| OCT 24 | Blind | Aw, Hex | |
| OCT 25 | Ship | Do As I Say, Not As I Voodoo | |
| OCT 26 | Squeak | I Know A Sarcophoguy | |
| OCT 27 | Climb | Franken Friday | |
| OCT 28 | Fall | Ghouls Rush In | |
| OCT 29 | United | Sunday Bloody Sunday | |
| OCT 30 | Found | Cauldron Crones | |
| OCT 31 | Mask | TRICK R TREAT! |
I plan to use this table for combining prompts from the two great October draw-offs, and for linking to whatever drawings (or maybe even short bits of creative writing) I actually complete for each Inktober and/or Drawlloween day.
Feel free to do the same, if you’re so inclined.
No matter which calendar you choose to use this year, October is still a long, humid way off.
In the meantime, you can see a few of my pieces from Inktober 2015 (along with a set of Halloween-themed Mac OS icons I made eight or so years ago) on my portfolio page at Sharonda.ink, or check out my crudely drawn Halloween Survival Tips one-panel comics from 2007.
If you’re still inclined to come back after looking at those, please, please do! This post will be appropriately updated, whether what’s appropriate is annoyingly frequent, disappointingly rare, or incredulously just right.