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Finding the story by re-painting the scene
I find out so much by drawing the same scene several times. It’s something I do when I’m feeling stuck. Instead of trying to think my way through the story, I draw the characters again in the same way. The drawing is already figured out so my task is uncomplicated. I just need to copy it, draw the same scene again. The kind of thinking I do when I’m copying a painting is the kind of thinking I need for the story which seems to deepen on it’s own when I do this. These are drawings I made to help me with a book I’ve been working on for a very long time. Brush and ink on old file folders.
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Comics line from 1300 BC
The line used to draw this figure was made in Knossos about 3,300 years ago. This same line can be seen coming out of brushes in the Comics Room at UW-Madison. Comics are ancient.
(Source)
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Painting it over and over
The character, “Sea Ma”, showed up one day and my urge to paint stayed with me until I’d painted her enough times to have a feeling for what she was about. This is one of the beautiful things about being a cartoonist. We get to know our characters by just drawing them again, calling them forward with repeated shapes and lines, getting to know them by the variations or an unintentional slant of a line that change the creatures entire mood.
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The “Meanwhile” Knob
A kid once told me that the perfect time machine had three knobs: Future, Past and Meanwhile. When I’m working on a project that slows and stalls for some reason, I’ve learned to practice collage during the ‘meanwhile’ before the thing I’m working on becomes accessible again.These collages keep my hands and eyes active and ready for when the images in my project return to me.
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Comics from the 7th century
The kind of drawing we have come to call ‘Comics’ has been around for a very long time.
Characters from a 1,300 year old Coptic tapestry created in Egypt.
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Classroom Character Jam
These characters were drawn in 60 seconds. We started with a grid of 16 chambers on an 8.5 x 11 piece of copier paper that had a caption area at the bottom of each rectangle. We all used black Flair pens. First we passed around the pages, each of us writing something in the caption area like a personality type, or a proper name, or an occupation. We had just 15 seconds. When all the captions were filled, we passed the pages again, drawing a character based on the caption in 90 seconds and then passed the paper again. Each page features 16 characters drawn by 16 different classmates. It was an intense exercise that gave everyone 16 original characters to work with for later assignments.
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Final Project Covers
Some of the 32 page ‘zines made by my students at UW-Madison
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Four Year Old Draws Firetrucks
How does a kid become attached to something so specific? This kid loved firetrucks. For the year that I worked with him, firetrucks were all he drew. He drew them rapidly, then hung them on the wall witha piece of tape and then drew another one. He’d also imitate the siren, doing it suddenly and startling the kids around him. He drew them fast and with complete focus. What is drawing doing in this situation? Something that was inside is now made visible to the outside.
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Young Four Year Old Draws Family
There is a big difference between someone who has just turned four and someone who has been four for most of a year. This image was drawn by someone who just turned four. She showed me the drawing and asked me to write her name and what is going on in her picture. When I draw with kids, we use Black flair pens on index cards. I love the way the black pen lets me really see their line work. I find myself gazing at the drawings they make. They give me something I have a hard time naming, but it’s tied to what I’m doing when I’m drawing comics.
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Four year old draws parents
The line confidence kills me.
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Ancient Lines
Line work from twelve thousand years ago looking just like the line work we make in the Comics Room. The line language is the same.
Found in Turkey
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Embroidery
Needlework is soothing.
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Caught by Rabbits
Copying a photo in four minutes or less is a good way to introduce a new drawing tool. On the day I introduced brush and ink, I had my students all copy the same photo at the same time. I counted down the minutes as they passed so students could find a working pace.The photo was of a little boy with two people in rabbit costumes on either side. What I love the most about his exercise is the signature line of each of the students. Same photo, same materials, same time frame and something wonderful always shows up.
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Firetrucks
Many of the four year olds I work with have something they are especially interested in. The kid who drew these fire trucks rarely drew anything else. He’d finish a drawing, tape it up, and start another one. Working in series is something my professor taught me when I went to college. It’s something that seems to have old roots that need reviving once we leave the neighborhood of childhood.
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Compbook Collage
At some point I will get stuck in whatever project I’m working on. This always happens. It’s as if what ever is moving the work forward needs to take a break. I’ve found that if I stop trying to make things work and switch to making collages in my composition notebook, it keeps my hands in motion and keeps me ready for when whatever it is I’m following decides to start up again.
I don’t think very much about these collages as I’m doing them but much later I’m always surprised to find them looking so fresh when I open an old composition notebook.
9″ x 7″, crumpled magazine pages, watercolor, white glue on notebook paper. January 2019
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Fruit and Numbers
A four year old I was drawing with pointed out that drawings of fruit and drawings of numbers looked similar. He thought a lot about fruit and vegetables.The first time I saw him he was holding plastic fruit in both hands. For the entire year that we were together, he was usually carrying at least one piece of plastic fruit.
One day he told me he could teach me how to draw dragon fruit. I didn’t know what dragon fruit was. He drew it slowly so I could copy him. Then he showed me how to draw more fruit. One of my favorite things to do is copy kids in real time while they draw.
When he asked me how to spell chayote, I was sure he meant coyote. It took him awhile to convince me there was something called chayote I didn’t know about and you could eat it.
