While I won’t share all of the fruits of my progress through Barry’s exercises, I’m particularly fond – even though it’s difficult to make out my face, especially in C (vomiting) and D (passed out) – of the results of the Batman exercise (in the center card I’m making an omelette; don’t think I’m vomiting because of my omelette):
Barrys’ instructions:
"For today's attendance card, you'll be drawing yourself as Batman doing something you did in the last 24 hours. Include your entire body and we need to be able to see your face. You have 3 minutes... Repeat this 3 more times. Draw yourself as Batmana. screamingb. depressedc. vomitingd. passed out.Include settings."
First day working with the third new thing I'm teaching myself (along with learning to speak semi-competent Japanese, the and an intelligent, long-term approach to investing (read: not crypto or speculation), as per Benjamin Graham's book – though now I’ve probably opened the comment-field floodgates to sp@m; great) is how to draw or, rather, how to (re)learn how to draw, or rather, how to at least somewhat improve what I'm doing with my will-forever-remain rudimentary Attendance Cards and translate it over to drawing well-enough to convey some of my word-ideas in comics form – first Informality notwithstanding – in interesting ways that feel as one with the words I concoct; the work of Tadao Tsuge, especially, is a major inspiration (as is Jonathan Hickman's debut, THE NIGHTLY NEWS, and Bendis's early Jinxworld comics – TORSO, in particular).
General plan is to do at least a little bit every day. Current texts: Lynda Barry's MAKING COMICS (a return to regular practice, and where I'll start, doing an exercise each day, usually at the start of my second workblock); Ivan Brunetti's CARTOONING: PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE; Scott McCloud's MAKING COMICS – though as more of a general reference than anything; and I'm even pulling out my old, battered copy of HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE MARVEL WAY that saw heavy use in my early double digits – though I've little interest in drawing comics the Marvel Way, no matter how much I adore 60-70s Marvel comics.
Suggestions for further horizons broadening welcome.
I've long considered drawing to be the missing piece in my storytelling practice: an increased recognition that the only way some of my work will come to fruition is through drawing, through comics or, rather, comics and text in my own weird hybrids. Maybe I'm finally returning full-circle to the eight-year old who wanted to draw comics with 34 years of mileage behind me?
Finally returning to Lynda Barry's MAKING COMICS exercises (beyond my daily bastardizations of of her Attendance Cards exercise – perhaps a useful way for me to expand my brain in a decidedly expanding-challenged time. Barry's rules for this one:
"Paper, divided into six frames... each frame will take three minutes… you will be jumping around the page, drawing in this order: Frame 1, 6, 3, 4, 2, 5...
1. Draw the monster as a newborn in a certain setting.
5. As a kid engaged in some kind of activity
3. As a disgruntled teen doing something you did as a teen
4. As a young adult enjoying themselves
6. middle-aged, at work
2. At its funeral. It lived to be old. We can see its body in this picture."
My results:
Remind me never to use the snake-monster again: he was a pain to reproduce. Earlier (much earlier, it seems) efforts live here.
Another Tuesday (seems to be the stuck day) of stuckness in one of the WIPs, another Tuesday with an exercise from Lynda Barry's MAKING COMICS, "Monster Draw Near," which asked that I "1.) Pick a monster (from the Monster Jam page) and copy it into the first frame (of four quadrants)... 2.) Draw its parents in frame two... 3.) ...draw it as a toddler with an older sibling ... 4. ... as an elderly monster dancing with its true love…”
Can kind of make out an elderly couple dancing in the fourth frame but they kind of look like potatoes with a hat so IDK. Particularly fond of screaming toddler monster in the third. Enjoyed this one – loved that I got to use an earlier character.
Pervasive stuckness this morning so another Lynda Barry exercise (MAKING COMICS, pp. 61-62) was required. This time, "Scribble Monster Jam," which involved a paneled and quartered piece of paper, four quickly drawn shapes, two minute monsters, and an index card with four complete sentences – "Something you have to do / a line you have memorized from a poem or song / a question you have been wondering about / a specific command by a king or a queen" – which I was then required to add to one of my drawn panels of my choosing.
Dialogue translations from Tylerglyphics: REMEMBER TO PICK UP THE PIES... LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS... SPEAK, MORTAL!... IS THIS MY LAST NAME?
Still stuck – though fun was most certainly had.
Latest effort at Lynda Barry's exercises in MAKING COMICS didn't unstick me from my stuckness in The Work (though it did provide a direction for the Etudes – more when I fully flesh out the notion) but it was a fun bit of something different. The rules for "Blind Bones":
1.) Close your eyes and use your yellow marker to draw an entire human skeleton in one minute... 2.) using orange, close your eyes again and draw another skeleton right on top of the yellow one... 3.) Do the same thing using blue"
And my results:
Definitely a useful way to distract myself from the day's work – and hopefully, perhaps, new and different ways to see what's in front of me – or behind closed eyes.
Banner day yesterday of site transformation, rebalancing: added pages for Attendance Cards, for VIOLENTLY ADORABLE, and Frequencies and "latest" (back) to the About page LINKS. Hoping that Squarespace adds a Mastodon social link icon soon but I suspect it will fall under their "such and such takes awhile to implement so please be patient (while we try to add stuff and break everything)" canned response.
Also nifty: the inspirations behind my new Principles page dug my efforts.
In word-land: banner morning this morning of getting back into the fiction groove – one of those rare mornings when I have a lot to write here but also managed to get a lot done in The Work: usually the amount of writing in this space is in inverse proportion to the amount of writing in The Work – of finding what wasn't working (efforts to combine – didn't need to combine stories, only to switch the medium of one) and how to – possibly – make it work for me again; also set a goal of releasing a new Etude by year's end.
I have now listened to Mr Leonard Cohen on vinyl for the first time and it was like listening to him for the first time ever – and this coming from someone who has a piece of his wisdom tattooed on his arm, "(if your life is burning well), poetry is just the ash."
Related: this was also my first time listening to music via physical media in years and I seem to have forgotten how, the patience, the focus it deserves. Efforts underway to return to that sort of patience from streaming befitting the investment in aural physicality. As I replied to K when she asked, "Why vinyl?": streaming is an e book, cd a paperback, vinyl the hardcover.
If you haven't checked it out, that Amazon Prime documentary on the music of Bond, featuring Billie Eilish and a ton of others, is fantastic. Helped to crystalize an unrealized goal I had as a music student: to have written a song as beautiful (and tragic) as "We Have All The Time In The World" and a score as rousing and exciting as ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (still my favorite Bond film).
Today's (and all moving forward) Attendance Card drawn in 4'33": Barry said she had her students draw for the duration of a song, so I decided to draw for the duration of John Cage's 4'33". Initially conceived card as a shrug but turned into what I can only approximate as a "Hallelujah" response to Mr Cohen on vinyl.
Took some time out of an otherwise uninspiring work session to do another of the humbling exercises in Lynda Barry's MAKING COMICS, this time, "Close Your Eyes and See Me." The instructions:
"Set your timer for one minute, then close your eyes and draw a bacon and egg breakfast with coffee, toast, and silverware. Do it again. Draw... a mermaid... a giraffe with spots... the Statue of Liberty." – Lynda Barry, MAKING COMICS p. 54-55
The results:
I'm particularly fond of number three, my tiny giraffe / brontosaurus hybrid (Jurassic World, indeed) with a tiny neck disconnected ears and similarly disembodied spots. Enjoying myself.
Did another exercise, "4 Drawings in (About) 12 Minutes,” from Lynda Barry's wonderful MAKING COMICS. Rules: – four full-body silent self-portraits in attendance card format, three minutes each. "Draw yourself as: an astronaut in space; turning into an animal; turning into a fruit or vegetable (no bananas); turning into a monster.”
Without further babbling, the fruits of my sketchy toil.
Note: I turned myself into a monster in both cards two and four, though I suppose it could be argued that card two isn't a monster but rather some strange German Shepherd / duck / T-Rex hybrid. Derbzisaurus Quax. Rahr.
Spent the morning on side projects – more detailed post coming in a bit – and, among them, started Lynda Barry's MAKING COMICS – which has already given me a new thing – her Attendance Card exercise - for this space:
We begin each class by drawing a self portrait in response to a prompt. We draw for the length of a song I've chosen, about 3-4 minutes. I ask that you draw without stopping for the entire length of the song and include your face and entire body." (p42)
This first one took a bit of liberty with her rules (this took longer than four minutes and I cocked up the date/name order), but the next ones will follow those rules, more or less (will use a timer instead of a song because that would be another choice I have to make and I have a thousand 3x5 index cards from an earlier consideration instead of the class-required 4x6s that I need to use). Prompts, not sure. Handdrawn status updates. Will do these at the start of the work day and publish without text or title beyond my zk dating; any text pieces will be written throughout the day.
Who knows if this will become a regular thing or if this is just a passing enthusiasm - but it's, so far, a wonderful alternative to more writing to get the brain in a writing mode for the day's work. All Attendance Card comics can be found, eventually, in the Attendance Card tag.