Can the monkey simply meditate his way out of this relationship?
5″x7″, brush and ink, paper, white gel pen, white glue, cat food cardboard
5″x7″, brush and ink, paper, white gel pen, white glue, cat food cardboard
Category: Brush and Ink
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Compbook Practice Pages
The paper in my composition notebooks is just average lined notebook paper. It helps have a hair dryer to dry down the page so I can keep moving.
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Drawing as a way to wonder about something
I like thinking something over while I’m drawing in my composition notebook with a brush. There is something about writing and drawing brush that helps my mind wander. It allows ideas to step forward.
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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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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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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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Drawing Toys
In my classroom at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, our drawing tables have toys on them. In the Comics Room are toys everywhere, on all of the shelves and in all directions. Casually drawing toys is something I have my students do when I introduce a new element, like drawing with ink and a brush, or trying a different sort of pen.
There is something about translating a three dimensional toy into simple line work that allows us to use the new tool in a steady way. I always have students work within a time limit: four minutes or less, and I announce the minutes remaining as they pass. This helps people keep their hand motion in a way that naturally invites the kind of personal line comics are made from.
Without a time limit, people either concentrate on trying to perfect one little part of the drawing or they give up. Most of my students can’t recognize the original character of their own line at first. Classmates usually recognize someones line work before the person making it does.
What I want to do is to find ways to keep my students drawing so they accumulate enough line work to recognize and accept their natural style. Even people who are certain they can’t draw have a specific line that will easily bend itself into comics. My goal is to keep them drawing long enough for this to happen.
