Notes From The Salon: June 18th 2016

We just had our most recent meeting of the Pittsburgh Comics Salon last Saturday at Biddle’s Escape. Good vibes. Real lively.

Comics makers of all ability levels came out and held it down, all eager to explore the medium. I brought lots of quality books for folks to peruse and copy from. – Schulz, Hernandez Brothers, Tamaki, MOME, Mai – I led some easy drawing exercises while we caught up. It’d been a busy past two weeks since the last Salon. A couple participants were working hard on deadline so they soaked up the camaraderie and solidarity while they put the finishing touches on their pages.

After everyone was warmed up we moved on to the main event: a single page composed of 15 panels. The ancillary focus of this salon would be exploring the intuition inherent in composing visually and more generally the power of modular grids.

I’d like to share the activity with you all so that you can try it out at home.

Materials: Scissors, scotch tape, 3x colored markers, 2 sheets of copy paper.

Instructions:
This will take a little over an hour to complete.
1. Rule out a 2×3 live area and then subdivided it into 15 equal chambers like below. Make your live area smaller than 5.5″x8.5″ (so you can photocopy it into a standard 1/2 letter zine). Make some copies of this grid or draw a second grid.

2. Cut out the first 15 chambers that you drew. Stack them together.

3. Draw the following on each new small rectangle with your markers,
(Focus on one drawing at a time. Take your time with these small drawings). Unless otherwise stated, do NOT write any word balloons or captions.

IN THIS ORDER:

The silhouette of a landscape
An object that peoplpe use with their hands floating in the middle of the panel.
A person in profile
A different person in profile facing the opposite direction
A pattern or an abstract combination of doodles
Another pattern. Think abstract expressionism.
Another silhouette of the landscape you drew in 1. but from a different vantage point.
The object from 2. but where it lives when it is not in use.
Show the object when being used by one of the people that you drew in 3. or 4.
A shot where we see the entire bodies of the people that you drew in 3. or 4.
Write: “Meanwhile”
Write “And so”
Write “But”
Write a date using the Month/day/year format
Emanata, isolated and floating in space, copied from a nearby comic book.

4. Arrange and rearrange your 15 panels into a sequence that you find intuitively satisfying, that perhaps begins to suggest a clear story in your mind. Take fotos of your sequences as you go along so you can look back them easily. You’re on the cutting room floor, so you can sequence all of these panels any way you want.

5. Need to add some new panels to make your sequence click? Draw a new panel. Take out what doesn’t work and pop in what does. You’re the boss. Tape your sequence down when you are satisfied.

6. Set a timer for 5 minutes and free write (by hand) for that long. Reflect on the images you’ve just drawn. Do you imagine conversations? Is there a conversation that’s coming to mind? Do you hear a monologue? Write it down. It can be anything.

7. Set your text and drawings down for a moment and take a break. Get a drink. Go to the restroom. Take a smoke break. Whatever you need.

———-Break———–

8. Now that you’re back – with a colored pen, go through your writing and highlight any words or phrases that stick out to you, that you think would work well in your sequence.

9. Write the highlighted words out neatly on paper and cut them out. Juxtapose these words against your images. Move them around. See what happens.

10. When you find set of image and word combinations that you like on this grid, tape your words down and photograph your page. That’s it! You just cooked up a new page of comics.

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Below’s a look at what it all looked like in action at the Comics Salon: