CHILDHOOD: Mothers and Classmates

IT’S OKAY IF YOU DIVERGE FROM WHAT’S “TRUE.” SOMETIMES A GREATER TRUTH IS FOUND IN LIES. GOOD STORIES ARE MADE UP OF BOTH TRUTH AND LIES.

1. Today in your composition book we will be working in What It Is. We will do the exercises on pages 151-154.
2. Next we will do the exercises on pages 159-162.
3. Now, make a comic of one or more pages, based on 1 or 2 above.
4. Retell a scene from your fairytale in the form of a “mash-up.” Put your superhero in your tale and see how that changes the story.

MASH-UP: Slang. a creative combination or mixing of content from different sources.

• See “Song of Myself!” p. 373 of your D & Q Anthology. This is a mash-up of Whitman’s optimistic poem with a mad-scientist/superhero-type vibe.”
  
• Another “Mash-up” is the Teletubbies video I showed  earlier in the semester, which is a mash-up of happy Teletubbies with a dark, melancholy tone, both visually and musically. https://nobodyputsbabyinahorner.wordpress.com/2015/03/28/teletubbies-in-black-and-white-set-to-joy-division/

DON’T WORRY IF THINGS DON’T SEEM TO COME TOGETHER. CREATE AND ACCUMULATE. YOU WILL EVENTUALLY FIND A PLACE FOR YOUR THOUGHTS. IF NOT FOR THIS CLASS, THEN SOMEWHERE ELSE DOWN THE LINE.

• On April 8, 12, and 14, I’d like us to discuss some of the comics in your D & Q Anthology. So I’d like each person today to choose an author and a comic to talk about. We’ll do it as a round table discussion. I’d like it if no more than two people choose the same author/comic. As soon as you’ve made your choice today, please write your name and your choice on the board.
• Talk about why you were drawn to this author/comic. What do you see in the art and the story? What techniques can you learn from? What does the comic give us? Make us feel? Why is it great that this comic exists? What does it add to the conversation about being truly alive?
• During the last two weeks of class, you will be presenting your final project to us. You can do this by putting your work on a blog, using Power Point, or just bringing in your original art and displaying them. We want to know all about your project. Why you chose to do this project. What you hoped to convey with the project. Where you think you succeeded. Where you think you could have done better. What the challenges were. What the rewards were. Where you will take the idea from here. And so on.

Tellings and Retellings

 

1. IN YOUR COMPOSITION BOOK: Read and do the exercises in What It Is, pages 139-147.
2. From your D & Q Anthology, read “Callisto” (95), “The Hymn of the Pearl” (138) “Jane Eyre” (602) and “Freyfaxi” (627). ON WHITE PAPER: Create a 2-page (or more) comic based on another source. Don’t ask questions: just do it.

USING REPETITION OF TEXT

This assignment comes from page 164 in Lynda Barry’s What It Is. Please don’t look at this page until after you have finished the assignment.

On page 164, Barry makes a series of statements about memory. She provides images to go along with the statements. I want you to use the same statements and provide YOUR OWN images. You will make 12 panels of all the same size.

Note how she repeats certain words for emphasis. 

Pay attention to your lettering! Be neat and think about how you want to situate your lettering on the page. Think about how the lettering and images work together.

MEMORY…

Title your piece “Memory. A Comic based on the thoughts of Lynda Barry.”

1. What is it? The ordinary is extraordinary.
2. The ordinary is extraordinary (repeated)
3. The ordinary is something we want back when someone we love dies.
4. When someone dies or leaves or falls out of love with us (note the repetition)
5. We call it “little things.”
6. We say, “It’s the little things I miss the most.” The ordinary things. (note the repetition)
7. It’s the little thing that brings them back to us unexpectedly. We say “reminds us.” But it is more than reminding. (note the repetition)
8. It’s a conflagration.
9. It’s an inundation…
10. Both fire and flood is memory.
11. It’s spark and breach so ordinary, we do not question it…
12. The atom split. The little thing. (note the repetition)

Week after Spring Break

For the week after Spring Break, we’re doing creative exercises. You’ll be generating drawings and text and creating narratives from them. The preliminary work is done on notecards and the finished work is done on 8 1/2 x 11 paper.

Tuesday

• Take 10 index cards and divide them into stacks of 5. Cut one stack in half. On these half-cards, write down something you overheard in a public place x 2; something you said to someone earlier in the day x 2; A catch phrase or slogan x 2; a question x 2; an interjection x 2. So that’s five prompts, two responses for each.
• Now on the other five cards: draw the following images (no words allowed): the funniest thing you can think of; the saddest thing in the world; something sexy; something scary; something boring or mundane. Spend no more than 3 or 4 minutes on each card.
• Now match the images with text from the half-cards. Choose the best two and recreate them on 8 1/2 x 11 paper.

Thursday

• Label the index cards A-O. Draw the following images (no words allowed). I will tell you later what to do with the images. Don’t want to ruin things by giving it away. Spend no more than 3 or 4 minutes on each card: A. The beginning of the world; B. The end of the world; C. A self portrait (entire body) D. Something that happened at your last meal E. An image from a recent dream F. Something that happened in the middle of the world’s existence G. What happened after “F”? H. Something that happened early this morning; I. Something that has yet to happen; J. Choose any panel and draw what happened immediately afterward K. Repeat panel “J” but from a different perspective; L. An intense closeup of something you drew in A-K; M. Something that you wish would happen; N. Something you wish hadn’t happened; O. Anything unrelated to A-N.
• Arrange cards until you find a narrative. Use at least 8 cards. Recreate the narrative on 8 1/2 x 11 paper.

Stretching Story, Stretching Time

Silent panels

“In a myth or fairytale, one doesn’t restore the kingdom by passivity, nor can it be done by force. It can’t be done by logic or thought. So how can it be done? Monsters and dangerous tasks seem to be part of it. Courage and terror and failure or what seems like failure, and then hopelessness and the approach of death convincingly. The happy ending is hardly important, though we may be glad it’s there. The real joy is knowing that if you felt the trouble in the story, your kingdom isn’t dead” –Lynda Barry, What It Is, page 54

*YOU SHOULD BE USING A NON-PHOTO BLUE PENCIL TO DO YOUR PRELIMINARY WORK, AND THEN YOU SHOULD INK OVER THAT.

By now you have chosen a lesser-known story from Anderson or Grimm. You have read your story and you know the plot. What we are going to do tonight is to work at stretching the story so that we aren’t simply illustrating it, so that we are bringing something new to it. Your assignment is in three parts:

1. First, in your composition book, draw a portrait of your main character. Create a brief profile of your character. Then answer: What does he/she want? What are his/her obstacles? Who is the monster or villain? Does your main character have special tasks to perform? If so, what are they? What is the outcome of each task? Does your main character fail or seem to fail? Is there a sense of hopelessness? How does your character transform by the end of the story? Did you feel “the trouble in the story”? How can you portray the story in such a way as to let the reader feel “the trouble in the story” and know that his/her kingdom isn’t dead? (Isn’t that one reason why we create, after all? So that our own kingdom doesn’t die? So that we can move others so that they have the experience of being alive?)
2. Second, on 8 1/2 x 11 paper,  in 4 or 6 panels, set up a preface to your story. The panels must be wordless and they must NOT convey any part of the plot. You may include objects, setting, or other characters from your story, but NOT anything that actually happens in the story.
3. Finally, look at your plot and find a place in the plot where you can create four silent panels that stretch time. Create these panels.
4. You’ll be doing several exercises with your fairytale. Please label this assignment on the back: “Stretching Story, Stretching Time” and put the date on it.

From Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

Remember: Panel repetition is a way of stretching time.

Another way to stretch time is to alter the panel shape:

From Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

5. On 8 1/2 x 11 paper, redo #3 by altering the panel shape.

6. On 8 1/2 x 11 paper, redo #3 by going borderless:

 

 

From Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

7. Gutter Crossing. On a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper, Create a series of panels(at least 2) based on a scene in your fairytale in which you cross the gutter(s). Crossing gutters drives the eye–and the action–forward.

Artwork by Lydia Munnell, class of 2015

Retellings: Repetition

 

The Birth of Suburbia. Photograph by Rosaleen Ryan.

Another way to tell a story is as a retelling of an old story. We have already established that an image, all by itself, can tell a story. Consider the photograph above by Rosaleen Ryan. It is a modern version of The Birth of Venus by Botticelli.

The Birth of Venus by Botticelli

This type of story works by CONTRAST. A tension exists between the high and the low. A great and profound myth about creation vs the limitations of suburbia.

1. First, copy both images in your composition book, the Ryan and the Botticelli.
2. TECHNIQUE: REPETITION:
   • Repetition in the visual arts can be thought of as a recurring shape, color, object, motif, or other element within a work of art.

   You are going to repeat the same object (the woman in Ryan’s photograph). First, on a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper, make four panels, all the same size. Draw the Ryan image four times, each time making some change, however dramatic or slight, to the background elements or to the object itself. The last panel should be an “aha” moment, where your story comes together. You may create more than four panels, if necessary.

3. Somewhere in your first panel, you should include your name and the statement, “Based on a photograph by Rosaleen Ryan.”
4. Turn this work in at the end of class.

Stories: Using Other Sources

Image by David Dunten, class of 2016

The poet does not see the world differently, and everything in it. He does not deliberately go into training to sharpen his senses; he is a poet because his senses are naturally open and vitally sensitive. But what the poet sees with his always new vision is not what is ‘imaginary’; he sees what others have forgotten how to see. The poet is always stripping away the veils and showing us his reality. –Karl Shapiro

We have already seen in the interview with Seth that poetry and comics are related in terms of condensed language and rhythm. Here’s another way: When you make comics, you are showing “what others have forgotten to see.”

So your panels have to do more than illustrate the words. The illustrations should become part of language. What you choose to include in each panel is important.

Tonight, you’re going to create a strip of at least 12 panels about “The Man-Moth.”

“The Man-Moth” is a poem by Elizabeth Bishop. We’re going to use parts of her poem to create a wordless strip. Because you won’t use words, your readers can either find a copy of Bishop’s poem and try to match the images with the words or make up their own story using your images. The brain is hardwired to make sense out of what it sees. People will create stories from the images you provide. 

FOLLOW DIRECTIONS!

• Use your image of the Man-Moth that you created last week. Make any changes you think are necessary but try not to lose the eccentricity of your character.
• Your first panel must have the title of your story and your name. Somewhere in this panel, you must say: Based on the poem “The Man-Moth” by Elizabeth Bishop. This is the ONLY panel that should contain words, although you may include “sound” words, like “boom, pfffft, pow,” etc.
• When producing strips of more than one page, ALWAYS include a header on each page. See example below.
• Keep all pages oriented the same way, portrait or landscape.

• For this assignment I want you to experiment with different size panels and different placements on the page. Each page template must have gutters between the panels. Here are some different orientations. For this assignment, use only rectangles or squares for your panels. Panels = Time. If you want to create a sense of a lot of time passing, use wide panels. The more narrow the panel, the more quickly the panel tends to be read.

Here are the parts of the poem you will use:

• He emerges from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks
• and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.
• He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky, proving the sky quite useless for protection.
• He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.
• Here, above, cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight.
• The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
• what the Man-Moth fears most he must do
• although he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt.
• Then he returns to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits,he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly.
• The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed.
• Each night he must be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.
• If you catch him, hold up a flashlight to his eye. It’s all dark pupil, an entire night itself
• Then from the lids one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips.
• Slyly he palms it, and if you’re not paying attention he’ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over, cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.

Where Do Cartoon Characters Come From? Part II

Read page 138-142 in Barry’s Syllabus.

Tonight I want to try to trick you into drawing more primitive images. I want you to get your brain to shut up for a bit. I want you to see:

1. How expressive simple drawings can be
2. How much energy simple drawings can have
3. How the simple ones can lead to more creative, unique and awesome complex ones
4. How much freedom you can find with doing simple drawings
5. How simple drawings will break your attachment to your present way of drawing, leading to new insights. If you are a practiced artist, you’ve already developed habits, muscle memory that will cause you to create the same images again and again. It’s good to shake up things from time to time.

You will need…

• 10 sheets of white paper (to be turned in at the end of class)
• Non-photo blue pencil
• Black marker (Size 1.0 would be a good size)

*You will make 10 simple drawings.

*For each drawing you must close your eyes. You may open them briefly to reorient yourself on the page; but absolutely no peeking while your pencil is moving. Why? To allow you to create directly from the IMAGE that is in your brain, with no corrections. To reach down to a deeper place for your imagery. To create “happy accidents.”

*You must use your non-dominant hand. (FYI: When working on Nightmare Before Christmas, artists drew concepts, characters, and settings with their non-dominant hand to give the film an unsettling look.)

*Draw with the non-photo blue pencil first. When you have done all of the drawings, go back and ink them in, making any changes. This would be the time to exaggerate features to make more intriguing images. But don’t pretty them up. Try to keep the eccentricities of the images; if anything reinforce those eccentricities.

*Put your name at the top of your drawing and tell what the drawing is. Do this with your eyes closed.  Put the date on the bottom of each drawing. Do this with your eyes closed, also.

*I will post your most expressive drawings here at the Lab.

These are the images I want you to draw:

1. A castle
2. An elephant riding a turtle’s back. The turtle is in the water. The elephant holds a bell in its trunk.
3. A man whose head is the head of a moose. The man is dancing.
4. A king
5. A Queen
6. A giant with four arms, each of which ends in flames
7. A creature with a woman’s body and the skeletal head of a bird. The creature is sitting on a nest.
8. A man carrying a child through a snowstorm. The child is carrying a torch.
9. An octopus with wings
10. A creature that is part man, part moth, a “Man-moth”

My One-Minute Drawing with my eyes closed. Drawn with my left hand.

IF YOUR IMAGES FOR THE “PLANET” ASSIGNMENT ARE TOO SOPHISTICATED, PLEASE REDO THEM. DRAW WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED AND WITH YOUR NON-DOMINANT HAND IF YOU WANT TO. YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN’T SPEND ANY MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES ON EACH PANEL, PROBABLY LESS. IF YOU ARE DOING IT RIGHT, THE PROJECT IN ITS ENTIRETY SHOULD NOT TAKE MORE THAN ONE HOUR.

 

Where Do Cartoon Characters Come From?

I think when as we get older, we forget how easily we created stories when we were little. We were always drawing fanciful creatures and putting them into all sorts of predicaments. We let our imaginations run wild.

Look at the drawings above. The simple ones were made by children. The more detailed ones were made by adults and based on the children’s drawings.

Tonight I want you to be free, like a child is free, to create a story. The subject of your story is: YOU ARE THE FIRST EARTHLING ON THE PLANET …

choose one: DREAMSTREAM, GREATGRIP, SNOWHELM, STONEFURY, TRYON, KEYTUNE, SNARTH, GRION, FLURN, DRADE, SWONE…

…or choose your own name. 

Anything can happen. Nothing is impossible. Don’t do a lot of planning ahead. Create as you go.

You will create the people, animals, and plants of your planet and tell a brief story about them and your earthling.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. First, read “Where Do Cartoon Characters Come From?” on pages 144-145 in Syllabus. 
2. Your drawings must be simple and childlike, like the children’s drawings above and like the ones in Lynda Barry’s Syllabus. See pages 70-71. NO STICK FIGURES.
3. No rehash of Star Wars or Star Trek plots or anything derivative.
4. Draw them with non-photo blue pencil first and then ink them in.
5. Black and white only.
6. Draw on 8 1/2 x 11 paper to be turned in at the end of class. If you don’t finish in class, you can finish outside of class.
7. Length: Five pages, minimum (can be longer). Four panels per page (total of 20 panels). Panels must be all the same size. Your page should look like this:

Tip: Use your chisel tip marker to draw the panels.

FYI: For your next homework assignment, I’ll be asking you to make a “grown-up” version of one of your childlike creatures, any size, using your choice of media. Use bristol board or similar heavy paper (one of your Fanboy sheets will work for this).

Just for some mood and inspiration, check it out: https://nobodyputsbabyinahorner.wordpress.com/2015/03/28/teletubbies-in-black-and-white-set-to-joy-division/

Song lyrics by Joy Division:

[Chorus]
Walk in silence
Don’t walk away, in silence

[Verse 1]
See the danger
Always danger
Endless talking
Life rebuilding
Don’t walk away

[Chorus]

[Verse 2]
Your confusion
My illusion
Worn like a mask of self-hate
Confronts and then dies
Don’t walk away
People like you find it easy
Naked to see
Walking on air
Hunting by the rivers
Through the streets
Every corner abandoned too soon
Set down with due care

[Chorus]

Characters

When we write a story, we are writing about characters.

What are characters?

Let’s say this: Characters are wishes. They arise out of hopes and deeply felt needs.

Superman represents wishes, the hope for “truth, justice, and the American Way.” But where did he actually come from? Who created him and why?

The Superman character was created by  Jerry Siegel (1914-1996) and Joe Shuster (1914-1992), two Jewish teenagers from Cleveland during the time that Hitler was rising to power.

Superman shared some traits with American Jews. Like them, he had arrived in America from a foreign world. His entire race had been wiped out in a holocaust-like disaster on his home planet, Krypton. Superman’s parents sent him to Earth in hopes that he would survive. German Jewish parents likewise sent their children to England in so-called “kindertransports” in hopes they would survive.

Like Siegel and Shuster, Clark Kent was mild-mannered by day, but the real man was virile and indestructible. So Superman represents Siegel and Shuster’s wishes to be virile and indestructible. This story must have resonated among many American Jews who felt powerless to help their people in the death camps.

Superman obeys the Jewish religion’s command in the Talmud to do good for its own sake and heal the world whenever possible. Siegel and Shuster had created a mythic character who reflected their own Jewish values.

Let’s look at another character: Eric Draven from The Crow

He was created by James O’Barr

James O’Barr was feeling helpless because his girlfriend had been killed by a drunk driver.

His life was a dead end and for him there was only one way to go: he had to create a story that would give him power over the situation. Through Eric Draven, O’Barr would avenge his girlfriend’s death. O’Barr worked on The Crow for many years.

Eric Draven is O’Barr’s wish for retribution and return, his wish for reunion with the beloved.

• Both Superman and Eric Draven represent the wishes of the people who created them.
• Take a few minutes to explore your wishes. Make a list of several wishes (at least 20), big and small. It doesn’t matter if the wishes can ever come true. Wishes can be powerful on account of them being unrealistic.
• As always, create both words and pictures.

What Is A Story?

• In your composition book, in words and pictures, answer the question, “What Is a Story?” Use a whole sheet of paper. Fill it up.

 

 

 

 

 

This is an activity that has two parts.

• The first part: Copy this art work into your comp book. Put the image in the center of the page. It shouldn’t take up more than 1/4 of the page. You’ll notice that the image is ICONIC. An ICON is a person or thing that is revered or idolized. An ICON has been repeated so many times that it has a built-in meaning:

 

 

• On the same page on which you copied the image, tell me, in words AND pictures, “What’s the story?” Use a whole sheet of paper. Fill it up. You may wish to explore both the “official” meaning of the icon and your own interpretation.

 

• Copy this image into your comp book. Again, put it in the middle of your page and don’t take up more than 1/4 of the page with your drawing. This image tells a story, too. It’s by Andy Warhol. One story is that Warhol grew up in a religious family and attended church regularly where he internalized the religious icons in his church. He took the idea of a religious icon and transferred it to popular culture, essentially to make a statement about how we worship celebrity. But this image can tell many stories. What do you see? What’s the story?  Tell it to me in Words AND pictures.  Put the image in the middle of the page and don’t take up more than 1/4 of the paper.

 

Icons are immediately recognizable. Madonna and child is recognizable the world over and has been repeated countless times. And anyone living in the second half of the 20th Century immediately recognizes this image of Marilyn. So icons have power to convey meaning.

• Now, make a new page. Copy one of these iconic images into your composition book again, but this time juxtapose it next to something unusual, something that we don’t usually associate with that image. What happens to the image? What happens to the story?

 

 

To show how Icons work and feed into each other, here’s another:

This is a work celebrating Warhol’s religious upbringing, his connection to religious icons, and his influence on our thinking. Warhol himself becomes an icon.