Before we begin using a traditional dip pen, I like to have students use an ancient sort of pen. This pen is a stick with the end cut at an angle to make a point. We play around with this for awhile and then we move to a smaller stick and play with that, and then we move to the dip pen. By then we’re used to the way the ink moves on paper and also used to nothing bad happening when we find we can’t quite control our line.
Category: Drawing Comics
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Drawing from Pictures
These are three minute line drawings from magazine photographs given to students in an envelope. I find them so compelling just as they are. The instructions are to think of line drawing as making a map of the photograph. We start with three minutes to get the big shapes in and then another minute or so to add details. Afterward we write an eight minute story from one of the character’s points of view, describing what is going on in the scene, first person present tense. These were drawn in 2023.
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Student Copy Cat Drawings
One of the best ways to learn to make comics is to copy other cartoonists. I think of it like a musician covering a song. In the Comics Room, one of the things we do is color layered drawings, beginning with a version in yellow, followed by orange or red and then blue, all one on top of the other. Then we use black, either color pencil as in these drawings or in ink. There is something about drawing in quick color layers that helps us really find the image. When we’re drawing it four times on the same page we become familiar with the picture in a way that is physical, like driving through a new neighborhood four times, just repeating the route in order to learn the lay of the land quickly.
Drawings from Making Comics 1, Spring 2022
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Character Jam Scrapbook 2022
Round-robin exercise, each character was drawn by a different student in 2.5 minutes.
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The comics drawing line in the10th century
Drawings from the Book of Deer (Scottish Gaelic: Leabhar Dhèir) (Cambridge University Library, MS. Ii.6.32) is a 10th-century Latin Gospel Book with early 12th-century additions in Latin, Old Irish and Scottish Gaelic. It contains the earliest surviving Gaelic writing from Scotland. (wikipedia)
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Compbook Scrapbook
One thing I love about the composition notebook is its casualness. It’s different than a sketch book. There is something about the lined paper that already lets me know this isn’t that critical. And when I use it for both drawing and writing, it feels not like a thing, but more like a place I can ride around, like a roller rink. If I stay in motion, I get somewhere
It’s easy for me to paint and draw and write on compbook paper or old file folders like it’s easy to sing when I’m alone in the car. It’s a bare-handed way to catch and re-conjure so many different parts of the day. I like seeing what will show up on its when I have my compbook open and hands in motion. I know that writing and drawing at the same time is never a bad idea. And I know that making things without knowing what they are or are for is also never a bad idea.
The images below made their way into the world somehow.
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Word Bag Comics
This comic was made by a student who pulled the word “Stairs” from their Word Bag. In our class, the word bag is an envelope filled with little pieces of paper that have nouns written on them. This exercise asks you to start by drawing eight quick frames in your composition notebook, and then pull a random word from your word bag, and then you have about 40 minutes to make a comic about your relationship to that word. You must make the entire comic in one sitting. You’ll have about three minutes to write and draw each panel, and about fifteen minutes to add some quick color.
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Struck by Cupid’s Arrow
Two Three minute student attendance card drawings during Valentines week. Assignment: Draw yourself being struck by Cupid’s Arrow. Draw Cupid.
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Round Robin Juxtaposition: Giving a Body to Worries, Wishes and Needs
This is an exercise that begins with writing for five minutes in your composition notebook about the things that concern you: things you have to do, things you’re worried about, things you wish were different. The next step is to fold a piece of copier paper into quarters and divide the spaces by running your flair pen down the fold lines. Set a timer and draw any animal in 90 seconds. If you are doing this exercise with others, pass your paper and then draw another animal in the next box. Repeat this until all four spaces contain a drawing of an animal.
Pass the paper again and look at the piece you wrote in your compbook. Find a worry, wish or need and write it in a speech balloon as if the animal is saying it. Pass the paper and repeat. In my classroom this results in a page that eight different people have contributed to.
What happens when we give a body to a concern? This is one of the things comics can do.
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Exercise: Solid Black, Patterns,Moody Characters
Your assignment: Divide a piece of copier paper into 16 chambers but folding it twice long ways and twice short ways and then draw your Flair pen down the creases. Choose a character from the Face Jam exercise and copy it into the first panel on the left. Change the characters mood into its opposite in four frames. Repeat this with three other characters, getting all your simple line work done first, then go back and add patterns and solid black. This will take time and it is very good for your hand to practice making good solid blacks with a Flair. Don’t be tempted to get your solid blacks done faster by using Sharpie or a fatter black marker. The idea is to give your hand the practice it needs to do this with just a Flair pen. This is a good time to listen to some music or a podcast or playing a show in the background while you draw.
