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Drawing Words and Writing Pictures
http://dw-wp.com
Activity #1
Action Within a Drawing
One of the primary things we look for in comics is some kind of story: a narrative. That narrative can take many forms, but one of it's central functions is that it gives the impression of time passing, or action happening. It's a kind of magic, really; you read a comic about a baseball game, and you can mentally "see" the ball getting hit, the runners circling the bases, and the shortstop throwing the ball home.
At the most basic level, comics tell stories by creating a sense of movement and of time passing within each drawing. Let's look at how this works. In this activity, you will learn how to portray different kinds of motion within a single drawing. The challenge is obvious: your drawing doesn't literally move. How can you bring it to life?
Materials
Instructions
Following is a list of five moving objects. Sketch them in five separate drawings, each one a single image (not in a sequence). Don't draw a panel border around the image.
Talking points
Post a photo of your drawing to the Google Classroom webpage. Look carefully at all of the drawings. Compare different versions of each object drawn by your classmate. Which drawings are most successful at depicting movement? Which are not working, and why? Make a mental list of all the techniques people use to imply motion.
Activity #2
Action Within a Panel
People "read" drawings in comics much like words: Although drawings are aesthetic objects, their primary purpose in comics is not to look pretty but to carry information about what's happening in the story. And, just as with readers of texts, readers of comics tend to start each panel at the top left and read across to the right, then down, back to the left and across to the right again.
Let's look at how to incorporate multiple actions within a single drawing. Also, pay attention to how putting a panel border around that drawing affects the reader's understanding and the rhythm of the image.
Materials
Instructions
Draw boxes on three separate sheets of paper, each one about four inches high and six inches wide. Then draw each of the following three scenarios:
Scenario 1: A ball crashing through a window into a kitchen and rips through a newspaper of a person sitting in the room. The person reacts to the window breaking. Optional: A dog catches the ball in midair after it comes through the newspaper.
Scenario 2: Person 1 trips person 2. Person 1 is laughing, person 2 is trying to catch him or herself and is knocking over a lamp.
Scenario 3: Two guys are fighting. Guy 1 throws a rock at guy 2. Guy 2 is hit by the rock, which makes him accidentally shoot his gun into the air. The bullet hits and breaks a chain holding up a heavy lamp over guy 1's head.
Talking points
Post a photo of your drawing to the Google Classroom webpage, and look at it carefully, and at other students' work. For each panel you can ask some or all of the following questions:
*emanata: the various sweat beads, motions lines, curlicues, and stars that emanate from comic characters.
Activity #3
In this chapter's activities, you have practiced drawing situations that were scripted for you. Now you have an opportunity to reinforce what you have learned by drawing an original single panel drawing depicting a number of actions happening either in sequence or simultaneously.
Materials
Instructions
Draw a 5" X 7" panel border, and create a drawing (in pencil) that contains the following elements:
http://dw-wp.com
Activity #1
Action Within a Drawing
One of the primary things we look for in comics is some kind of story: a narrative. That narrative can take many forms, but one of it's central functions is that it gives the impression of time passing, or action happening. It's a kind of magic, really; you read a comic about a baseball game, and you can mentally "see" the ball getting hit, the runners circling the bases, and the shortstop throwing the ball home.
At the most basic level, comics tell stories by creating a sense of movement and of time passing within each drawing. Let's look at how this works. In this activity, you will learn how to portray different kinds of motion within a single drawing. The challenge is obvious: your drawing doesn't literally move. How can you bring it to life?
Materials
- Printer paper
- Pencil
- Eraser
Instructions
Following is a list of five moving objects. Sketch them in five separate drawings, each one a single image (not in a sequence). Don't draw a panel border around the image.
- A Person Running
- A Car Speeding
- A Ball Falling
- A Person Staggering
- A Newspaper page blowing in the wind
Talking points
Post a photo of your drawing to the Google Classroom webpage. Look carefully at all of the drawings. Compare different versions of each object drawn by your classmate. Which drawings are most successful at depicting movement? Which are not working, and why? Make a mental list of all the techniques people use to imply motion.
Activity #2
Action Within a Panel
People "read" drawings in comics much like words: Although drawings are aesthetic objects, their primary purpose in comics is not to look pretty but to carry information about what's happening in the story. And, just as with readers of texts, readers of comics tend to start each panel at the top left and read across to the right, then down, back to the left and across to the right again.
Let's look at how to incorporate multiple actions within a single drawing. Also, pay attention to how putting a panel border around that drawing affects the reader's understanding and the rhythm of the image.
Materials
- Printer paper
- Pencil
- Eraser
Instructions
Draw boxes on three separate sheets of paper, each one about four inches high and six inches wide. Then draw each of the following three scenarios:
Scenario 1: A ball crashing through a window into a kitchen and rips through a newspaper of a person sitting in the room. The person reacts to the window breaking. Optional: A dog catches the ball in midair after it comes through the newspaper.
Scenario 2: Person 1 trips person 2. Person 1 is laughing, person 2 is trying to catch him or herself and is knocking over a lamp.
Scenario 3: Two guys are fighting. Guy 1 throws a rock at guy 2. Guy 2 is hit by the rock, which makes him accidentally shoot his gun into the air. The bullet hits and breaks a chain holding up a heavy lamp over guy 1's head.
Talking points
Post a photo of your drawing to the Google Classroom webpage, and look at it carefully, and at other students' work. For each panel you can ask some or all of the following questions:
- Does the panel read correctly? In other words, does the readers eye easily follow the sequence of events in the order you intended? Have a classmate use a finger to follow the path he or she perceives.
- What are alternative ways of arranging elements?
- Does effect clearly follow cause?
- Do actions themselves follow left-to-right reading order (Into the future? Or into the past?)
- If movement is generally against reading order, i.e., from right to left, is it forceful enough to make the reader follow it? Other things you might look at include body language and facial expression, motion lines, and emanata*.
- For Scenario 3, look for compositional solutions that cause a reader's eye to follow the action in a clear trajectory, possibly circular, and not necessarily in standard reading order.
*emanata: the various sweat beads, motions lines, curlicues, and stars that emanate from comic characters.
Activity #3
In this chapter's activities, you have practiced drawing situations that were scripted for you. Now you have an opportunity to reinforce what you have learned by drawing an original single panel drawing depicting a number of actions happening either in sequence or simultaneously.
Materials
- Printer paper
- Pencil
- Eraser
Instructions
Draw a 5" X 7" panel border, and create a drawing (in pencil) that contains the following elements:
- two characters
- one or more props (objects)
- an action and its result
- the reaction of one or both characters shown in facial expressions or bodily gestures