Happy June! I’ve been working on this doodle project for the past month or so, and it feels like the perfect time to share it as the calendar page and summer turn before us.
This 3-page comic/graphic nonfiction piece is far from perfect (see: several leaning, hand-drawn panels), but that is part of its charm. I worked to the utmost of my ability and found its creation both relaxing and challenging—the pitch-perfect blend for a new project.
I hope this project encourages anyone reading/perusing it and this blog to dig into your own projects you’ve long wanted to give a whirl. Removing perfection from the table and just going for it can lead to some very meaningful, pleasant hours of creativity.
I started with a little scrap of paper filled with names that my dad found and gave to me, and I instantly knew I wanted to write about the list in some way.
I’ll share some photos, some recommended reads if you’d like to create your own 3-page comics, and some thoughts about craft and creative process after the piece. Without further ado:
And now, to part the wizard’s curtains for the process-and-resource-recommendation portion of our day🤗:
While it could have easily become a poem or an image in a short story, a different idea tickled my mind. Who knows how genre decisions and project formats land so perfectly, but while holding the uneven-shaped list it ran through me that it would be great for a three-page comic/graphic-prose treatment.
And I set to work a few hours later.
I decided I wanted to hand-draw my panels. I read a fair amount of graphic novels, and I love both computer-program created and hand-drawn work as a reader. I knew I’d share this project, and I wanted it to have a part of me baked into the drawings as much as the diction choices in the writing (like handwriting, hand-drawn boxes are each distinctive, a bit wobbly/crooked, and perfectly imperfect—like a fingerprint). I also wanted to alternate the sizes and shapes of the panels on the second page to switch things up and really lean into the “hey, this-was-hand-created charm.”
I took the concept through three drafts: the first was for loosely figuring out the story and making loose sketches (practicing compressing large items into small drawings relatively in scale) and sometimes just a word or two of what I wanted to draft in the next draft in my doodle notebook.
The second draft, which (at the time) I thought was going to be the final draft—silly me!—was for further refining my concepts. After I realized the second draft wouldn’t be final, I grabbed an index card before redrawing my panels afresh for the third time. I narrowed down two or three panel texts that just didn’t excite me to draw and replaced them on the card with new ideas. I used the card as a checklist of my panel ideas. Even some of the index-card ideas didn’t make the final cut, as the final comic kept evolving.
Armed with the goldenrod index card, I drew every time I had some spare time in the afternoons or evenings (with grading and tutoring and editing, there was only time to doodle 3 to 4 boxes at a time).
Black-and-white, uncropped version, straight from the scan I made a little over a week ago.
I thought for a while that I’d keep the comic black and white. I really debated for a few days if I’d break out my colored pencils or not. In the end, I decided on adding hue to select panels, creating a smattering of pops of color, and I’m glad I did. Here’s what a page of the b & version looks like, for the curious:
I used a photo of my parents that I love and keep on my dresser to inspire one of the illustrations from the first page. Once all of my drawing of panels and doodles were prepared, I took a break of two or three days and then a few days at the end of the month to color.
Here’s a mishmash sampling of what I learned from drawing my first 3-page nonfiction comic:
*It’s okay to variegate. Some people I drew all of, some were torso up, and some were a face—I intuitively decided how to represent each person. I already knew I’m not great at drawing people, but hey, they turned out much better than I’d anticipated; that is: no matter how much or how little of the figure I drew, they do resemble people. Not too shabby! 😊
Some doodle practice on scrap paper. Seriously, tap shoes are a BEAST to draw accurately—at least, for me. 😂
*Unexpectedly, drawing tap shoes and hands on the drawing of myself were, by far, the two hardest things to draw. I used correction tape (a bunch of it) and drew the shoes and my hand at least five or six times. Starting over and over.
*Colored pencil doesn’t like to color over correction tape. Like, it’s the equivalent of gargling with salt water on a sore throat—it kind of hurts to see how little adheres, but you keep going until a little hue adheres and then stop and repeat…about six times each. Then, it’s stop time. What’s cohered, cohered and what hasn’t—well, I’m not a professional artist, and imperfection just makes it more authentic and fanciful. 😉
*If I had it to do over again, I’d redraw Thomasina (the cat) bigger to fit into the longer box. I probably could have planned that better, but I’d already drawn her a few times and didn’t think I’d do better, so I accepted that good was good enough, and sailed on.
My fancy-pants index card, side two, that I used to outline what should stay and what should go and new ideas before draft 3. Checkmarks signified drawn panels, and the x were ideas that didn’t end up in the third draft.
*The index card helped tremendously in drawing later drafts! I’ll definitely do that again in future projects. I’ll probably make the card first or at least earlier next time.
*That feeling you got as a child when coloring—pure relaxation. It was great to revisit that.
*Planning the ending two or three panels’ text was the hardest part of the story to finalize—working to some kind of a satisfying yet resonant ending both narratively and visually required me to rethink my original draft’s ending at least three times before landing. Admittedly, this might not yet be the very best possible ending, but it satisfies me enough for now that I still feel ready to share the comic. Like with writing or other art projects, some endings feel slightly off, some feel just right, and most others just feel at a point that it’s ready to share and move onward—and that’s all very normal.
A favorite photo of my parents as teenagers that I used as a reference photo for one of the panels. This was one of my few non-phone-retrieved reference photos.
*Even things I thought I wouldn’t be able to draw well (here’s looking at you microphone, cityscape, person shrugging, and ultrasound) turned out better than anticipated when I took the time to use reference photos on my phone. Who knew my phone would be one of my best resources for a hand-drawn comic? I enjoy combining hi-tech and low-tech tools.
*Complicated initial doodle ideas for scenes could most often be better expressed through a simpler, zoomed-in illustration. For example, instead of drawing a table and a whole meal and a kitchen scene, doodling three bright peapods in a row was just as compelling, and coloring in the juicy green was quite relaxing.
*The space outside the panels can be employed sometimes, too. My turn-the-page red arrow and my “Fin” (for the end, in French, as in some old movies) encouraged me to take up space in the white space, so to speak. Next time, I’d love to do some doodling that starts inside a panel and breaks out, so to speak—when I’ve seen that done in graphic novels, I’ve always found it entertaining and meaningful to the story.
*Scanning and cropping from a sketch notebook takes extra time but is worth it.
*My palm trees in my first two drafts looked better. Sometimes, redrawing does not make a more realistic, lifelike doodle—and that’s just a natural part of the process.
*Overall, this was a really fun comic to create—it stretched my imagination and positively tested my ability to tell an ultra-compressed narrative, illustrate the idea concisely, and also to make my handwriting somewhat less rushed and more legible than on the daily. Methinks I’ll make another one of these when the right idea lands sometime.
Want to learn more about creating graphic novels and comics? Some books/resources that I’ve found engaging and encouraging:
Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics is a classic.
Lynda Barry’s Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor encouraged me as both a doodler and an educator. Lynda’s work inspired me that although I’m not a classically trained artist, my art work doesn’t need to be pristine and perfect to be creatable, shareable, and meaningful—this book is packed with unfussy, down-to-earth creativity exercises, too.
I also love her Making Comics.
Lucy Knisley has long been one of my favorite autobiographical graphic novelists. Her work is lively, cozy, candid, and entertaining. Her Relish: My Life in the Kitchen is a feast for the senses for foodies and a great place to start reading her work.
I also enjoyed reading Lucy’s infertility and pregnancy graphic novel, Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos, and (where I started my journey reading her work years ago) French Milk, about a six-week trip to Paris she took with her mother as an early twenty-something.
If you’d rather not spend your precious writing-and-doodling time drawing panels, there are books which have pre-drawn panels you can use, such as this one (along with many others), to skip ahead to writing and drawing.
Kate Bingaman-Burt’s streaming class, Drawing the Everyday Every Day at CreativeLive, is very down-to-earth, entertaining, and start-where-you-are inspiring.