This past week we left the cat with my sister while the whole family traveled to Seattle to spend Spring Break with my folks. The cat is… glad? that we’re back?… and has resumed the same level of toothy, bitey love for us morning, noon, and night (as you can see).
This comic is actually a cleaned-up version of a comic I did at a school career day visit right before Spring Break. I had an hour with a bunch of 10-12 year olds and I wanted to teach them how to make a simple three panel comic. I suggested they draw their morning afternoon and nighttime routine. I hooked up my iPad and drew one to get them started and this was what I came up with.
Here is the original draft:
I don’t often share my drafts, mostly because this is where I feel the most insecurity as an artist. I don’t have any formal art training, and I feel like it comes out the most in my sketches. I also have a significant tremor in both hands (nothing serious) so all my first drafts are incredibly wobbly. I see underdrawings by other artists and it makes me feel a bit goofy calling myself an artist. I have to concentrate very hard to hold my pen still, and even then, I usually end up redrawing each element (a foot, a facial expression, a hand) many, many times before I like the look of it.
Because of my tremor (and my adult ADHD) I really struggle to make comics at all, so I grant myself an added level of accessibility by using an iPad. I used to feel a bit sheepish about this, it being not the traditional/formal way, but I’ve had lots of practice lately in giving myself permission to do things the way I need to, so I no longer feel embarrassed about drawing almost 100% digitally. I even roll my eyes a bit when other artists dismiss digital drawing as not being “real art.” I made something, does it really matter if I made it in a way that was more accessible to myself? Also, no amount of formal training will take away my tremor, so I’ve just got to work with a medium that can be altered easily and redrawn a million times.
When I went to do my school visit, I thought about doing an already-made (i.e. polished) comic to give the kids some inspiration for their own, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was more important to show this sloppy, wobbly, unfinished part of the comic-making process. We all need permission to be terrible at something before we’re good at it—and I’m kinda terrible even still. (I do think that the scratchy/wobbly one is still funny, if not funnier, than the polished version, so being terrible is not even all that terrible.)
The kids then came up with some really excellent comics, so I’ll share my top 3:
The first one requires a bit of explanation. It’s of a girl who has five cats, who love to lay on her face (the cats are brilliant—those facial expressions are just genius). She then has her head face down on her desk at school, with bits of drool pooling at either side. Then she goes home to five still very needy cats. I love the consistency of her face not being visible to the viewer—the comedy of that is just so good:
This next one had everyone laughing out loud, and is pretty self-explanatory:
It comes with a part 2:
Kids have the darkest, most delightful sense of humor. It’s so ghoulish and I love it.
And now for my favorite comic (ok, my kid made this one, but I still think it’s my favorite). It’s a bit of a riff of my first one, which I love. Instead of morning, afternoon, night, it’s the course of an entire lifetime in three panels.
You just can’t escape a biting cat, even in death. (Also I have no idea why one of his classmates is just a tombstone in the first panel, but I love it.)
We were able to project all these on the board for everyone to see, and by the end of the class everyone was laughing. Kids are brilliant… and way funnier than I’ll ever be.
And as for now, it’s good to be home and making comics. I didn’t take out the iPad at all while I was away, and that was just the right sort of reset. I went on lots of walks, played games, did puzzles, caught up with my folks, cooked and ate lots of good food, stayed up late, and even got caught in a mini blizzard leaving the cabin we all stayed in. We left the cat (whose name is officially Moonshadow Cat Stevens Kitten-McCatterson) with my sister, and he appears to have forgiven us for this grave offense.
I hope you’ve all been well in my absence, and if it’s Spring wherever you’re at, be sure to get out in it. It’s glorious out there.
All my love,
💀Becca Lee, the Haunted Librarian💀