Category: Making Comiccs
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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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Attendance Cards: Cupid Strikes
Student attendance card instructions: Draw Cupid taking aim at you. Draw yourself getting struck by Cupid’s arrow. 3 minutes per drawing
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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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Lesson Plan
First day of Making Comics 1 and there is a lot to remember. I write down the different steps on individual cards and lay them out on the counter at the front of the class. When we complete them I put them on the pink chart. There are always cards left over at the end of class, things we didn’t get to that I’ll save for the next class.
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Exercise: Minnie the Moocher’s drawing lesson.
Materials: black Flair pen, copier paper folded into quarters, a timer, about 45 minutes of uninterrupted time.
Watch the beautiful black and white cartoon Betty Boop in Minnie the Moocher.
Set a timer for one minute, close your eyes, draw one of the characters from memory. Repeat this three more times. Make sure to draw whole bodies.
Set a timer for two minutes, keep your eyes open, and draw one of the characters from memory. Repeat three more times
Set a timer for four minutes and draw yourself dancing with one of the characters.
Repeat but draw yourself having coffee with a different character.
Repeat, draw yourself with a third character and you’re both fishing.
Last frame is the fourth character surprising you with flowers while you are at the stove cooking.
Make sure you draw entire bodies and don’t include any words. These should be silent drawings.
If you’re doing this in a classroom or with a group of people, it’s good to stand up and walk around and look at everyone’s drawing.
The value of this exercise is there are so many different kinds of drawing going on. You’re using the same pen, paper, and characters drawn from memory, but the characters show up in a completely different way when you are drawing them with your eyes closed. When you draw with your eyes open, the line really changes and the type of concentration you experience also changes. When you come to the third part of the exercise and draw yourself with a character dancing, your drawing has to include interaction, you have to imagine the place where the scene is happening and what might be in that place. What kinds of things do you need draw to show that you and a character are having coffee together or you’re out fishing? The thing that’s surprising is that if you just start drawing yourself with a character, the scene seems to unfold by itself. This is a very good thing to experience. This is very good for you.
Drawings made during class by a student in Making Comics 1, UW-Madison
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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.
