Quick stage setting: Soon after I moved to Portland, someone from last year’s certificate program told me about the “weird old guy in his 40s” from their class who made comics no one understood. From about the midpoint of last semester on, I’ve felt like this year’s weird old guy. Which sucked for a while, but two friends have convinced me it’s something I should embrace. (!)

During the first half of the first semester, our instructor Nicole truly made me feel as if I could accomplish anything and everything I ever set out to do. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that good about my writing or like I have a voice worth hearing. No one person should have power to make me feel I do or don’t have a voice. But a good teacher, I believe, is someone who instills confidence in her students and who makes them want to take chances. Nicole did that for me. Even when I submitted work that was only so-so or that showed visible signs of struggle, she spurred me on and encouraged me.

The first comic I ever created and submitted to workshop was received well. The second comic, the one about love, confused people a bit. The script for this three-pager received an okay response, and though we didn’t officially critique the comic itself, comments were mostly positive.

At the midpoint of the semester, we switched instructors. The first assignment Jesse gave us was a photo comic, and I had a really great time creating it. I loved the concept and the execution and spent five days laughing about the story while I worked on putting it together. Alas, when I showed it to Dan he didn’t get it at all. That night, prior to workshop, I asked Jesse whether he ever created comics he thought were hysterical that people didn’t get, and he said all the time.

I titled this comic “Say what?” but later I wished I’d called it “That art of deflection,” because to me that’s what it’s about:

When I presented the photo comic to class, it was greeted with mostly silence. Pretty much to a person, the other creators’ comics were funny, so prior to my dud the room was filled with laughter. Jesse read mine and said, “I hate these kinds of conversations. They make me want to live alone!”

His comment called to mind two things—a short story I wrote that I think is really funny and that Dan finds utterly depressing; and a career counselor who once told me I’d likely not become a famous writer because I was too much of a niche taste.

That night, a visiting cartoonist read us a series of elephant jokes, then Jesse assigned one to each of us and asked us to make a comic out of it. All of the jokes were from a book I had as a kid, so I incorporated my assigned joke into this autobio comic:

I had a difficult time with the following week’s assignment to create a “How To” comic using no words. My lack of drawing skills hit me hard as I struggled to create a comic instructing readers how to write a story. It took a long time to draw, and I was never happy with it. In addition, I tried out new tools to ink the comic, and the results basically sucked. We were working on page layout, as well, and as I inked the page I realized two panels, one above the other, read as too similar, so I cut them out with an X-acto knife and rearranged them using tape. Alas, when I did that, I inadvertently flipped one of the panels upside-down and didn’t notice until I’d already made 12 copies for class. Suffice to say, even with my explanation of what happened, the comic was difficult to understand.

Here it is in all its badness. (The middle panel is supposed to be our protagonist washing dishes at a sink, but it doesn’t quite read that way!)

In the process, I did create this wonderful little guy, though, who I like very much:

By the time we got around to working on our final projects, I was feeling pretty insecure. What did I want to do? What was I actually capable of producing?

For the thumbnail stage, I created a pantoum comic…a series of images repeated using a specific pattern, based on a poetry form called a pantoum. This piece actually generated a lot of discussion as the class attempted to suss out a narrative from the wordless piece. It was fascinating and fun to listen to the group create a story about a dog, its master, etc. etc.

Later on, I colored it with pencils:

My initial thought for the final project was to create a series of one-page pantoums, but in the end I decided to move forward with a different plan: to write a new poem then illustrate it. I actually loved most of the process. I love writing poems, even if they suck, and wrote in my head every morning as I walked around Sellwood. I loved working the language. I loved, too, abstracting the images, even as I struggled to do so. But when the time came to present my work for critique, I was petrified.

Lucky for me, only half of my classmates were there that night. I almost held back my work-in-progress, but I decided to go ahead and present. People didn’t seem to get or enjoy the piece. I don’t think they liked the poem. Jesse wasn’t keen on the pages with only abstract images. To his credit, he did try really hard to get people talking. Still, It was a tense and unpleasant experience.

When I got home that night, I felt pretty lousy. But a couple of days later, as I kvetched to myself and my pal, Claire, and fretted about what to do for my final project, I came up with the idea to combine imagery from the poem’s four pages into a one-page abstract painting/comic sans poem. I traced some boxes, added imagery, did a bit of an ink wash and sponge painted the background. I fell in love with the resulting piece, which I turned in as part of my final project.

During the five-week semester break, I filled up a brand new sketchbook, which was extremely satisfying!

Here’s Dan, then 10-second Dan:

Here’s a little coloring:

This semester, our two instructors—Lisa Mangum and Dunja Jancovic—are really into abstract comics, which has spurred me on. We’ve completed a bunch of exercises (which I’ll share next time), and my current focus is on completely non-narrative comics. I’m enjoying the work and am producing a lot. I suspect it’s still not my classmates’ thing, and an overall sense of community is still missing for me here in Portland. But Lisa and Dunja insist that if I keep following my path and stay true to my vision, I will find an audience and my tribe of fellow creatives.

I do miss my artist and writer friends in various spots around the world and wish I could bring them all here for a week’s retreat and play. In the meantime, I will keep on keeping on.

We’re midway through the term and switching to a new instructor, John Isaacson. We’ll focus on narrative structure, plot, character, and more. To begin, we’ll adapt a story or poem into comics form, which I’m really looking forward to! I’ll continue my abstract work, too, since that will make up the bulk of my final project (which will likely be a 12-page comic, although I’m considering other forms as well…more on that another day!).

When you’re sitting in a circle with ten or twelve writers who speak in turn about the story at hand, a few things can happen: 1. Repetition. Sometimes this can’t be helped because there’s only so much to say about a particular story, yet everyone wants to have their say. Even if their say was someone else’s say ten minutes ago. 2. Tangents. These are creative writers, remember? Staying on task isn’t necessarily a major skillset. 3. Smartypants comments. Often, though not always, someone in the room needs to prove how clever they are by referring to obscure literary theories or devices, or going off on a very dry intellectual tangent. 4. Anger or hurt feelings—often on the part of the writer whose work is being critiqued. (Full disclosure: I’ve been told at times I come off as a nonstop talking smartypants, but lately I’ve been trying really hard to contain that part of me!)

I was thrilled to learn Nicole (and presumably Jesse—we’ll see!) uses the basic tenets of The Amherst Method, a kinder, gentler workshop form. That is, we share positive feedback first; any “criticism” is presented in as positive a way as possible. (There’s more to it than that, of course. You should read about it!)

Still, I figured the issues listed above with fiction workshops might apply here. Repetition, for sure. (Our class has 11 students.) Tangents, probably. Maybe some hurt feelings or a smartypants. Who knew?

Our first-ever workshopping session took place in Week Three, so most of us had only known each other for a short time. Nicole introduced the Amherst Method and the process called “going into the box,” which essentially means the author/artist can preamble a bit about the work (not much), then must remain quiet and “invisible” as the others critique the work. At the end, the author/artist comes “out of the box” and can comment or ask questions.

Each person received a copy of the comic to be critiqued and had a few minutes to review it. One thing should have been obvious but only hit me during that first workshop…comics are easy to read and assimilate. If you handed out even a 400-word short-short, people would want time to read and reread, make notes, linger over phrasing. But you can read a one- or two-page comic in a few minutes. Plus, it’s much easier to refer back to as people make comments. (That’s not to say you wouldn’t notice more if given more time, of course.)

I can’t recall who went first that night, but I do remember this: Immediately and spontaneously, we simply began a conversation.

One person spoke up. Others jumped in with their comments, seconded what someone else said, asked for clarification from a speaker—pretty much without being prompted by Nicole. No one tried to outdo another speaker; no one scoffed at what anyone said. I’m not sure if Nicole had meant for us to go around the table and each take turns commenting (I think she did), but we kind of just took off and she didn’t seem to mind. We talked over each other a bit, as happens in groups, but always the floor was ceded and everyone got their say. Nicole guided, when necessary, but mainly it felt like she was a fellow participant. Meanwhile, each author/artist remained happily “in the box,” with no hint of throat clearing or foot stomping or anxiety.

That way of conversing and interacting has continued through three critique sessions, and each time I’m a little bit amazed yet also giddy. I don’t know if everyone else in the room understands how rare this is, and I hate to even speak it out loud for fear of jinxing it. But for whatever reason, this group of people in this time and place makes for a pretty kickass workshop. And that makes me very happy indeed.

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Ah! But this post’s title does double duty, because our second workshop assignment was a relationship comic. Our story could focus on a specific incident or be generally about love. I went for the latter, and made it kind of a gag comic. (Funny to me, at least!) I also did two different layouts. Personally I like the second, more jumbly one better, even though it’s a bit harder to read.

The initial character (yes that’s a jumbled-up woman) was inspired by the Picasso dogs exercise from Drawing Lab by Carla Sonheim. I was way too pleased with myself when it hit me to use a photo of George Clooney as my indicator of hunkiness. I giggled all week.

[ADDENDUM 11/11/11: I should note for the record that I actually created the jumbly layout first -- not sure why I posted its photo second? But then I was reading about layout, gutters, and margins in Drawing Words & Writing Pictures and figured I should attempt a more "proper" page layout.]

“I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.” — Lloyd Dobler

This exercise called to mind one from Carla Sonheim’s online class, The Art of Silliness. She had us make faces a couple of times  — first, using food then using office supplies and whatever else we had lying around. I spent hours making faces and taking photos of them, and then started seeing faces everywhere. (I won’t post the hundreds of photos I took!)

Pistachio shells, cough drop, coffee beans

A fresh-from-the-oven pumpkin pie with coffee bean eyes

Office supply faces With cameos by rocks and seashells

Dog cookies, wine cork, rocks, seaglass, pieces of old car stereo, office supplies, clementine, barrettes, clothes pin

Gears, microchips, pieces of old car stereo, a top, barrettes, shells, seaglass, office supplies, bracelet, bottle caps, Post-Its

Seaglass, shell, and rock faces

Pizza and salad

Lunch

And, just ’cause, here are some random pix of my doggies:

Gizmo!

Mini the Moo on Sauvie Island

My co-curator, Amanda Wright, did an excellent job hanging the show. She also made some art in response to my writing. Here’s my written piece:

Every Angel
By Amy Souza

Every angel is terrible. They like to remind us who we are, who we’ve been, show us who we might become if we could muster the energy to try again. For this we hate them, because part of our nature is not wanting to know the truth even as we seek it.

Define them as you will: heavenly creatures, ghouls from the depths, figments of an imagination poisoned by church-fed guilt. Angels exist, and they’re out to get you.

Don’t believe me? What about that time walking toward the park, when you stepped right over the legs of a greasy man slumped along a painted wall? The kind of man you normally don’t notice, but the deep blue façade made you look. You thought, he’s drowning and he doesn’t even know how to swim. Remember the tiny pricks that crept up the nape of your neck as you kept walking? How your breath quickened and suddenly you felt transported to the room where, ten years earlier, you’d looked your withered father in the eye and said, No I did not come home to help you? You flinched at the sound of that girl’s voice, spiteful and small. Tried to erase the image as you jaywalked across the avenue. You wondered why the scene came to you, blamed randomly firing neurons, as if science could deliver all mystery to its rightful place.

Yes, I’m saying that man was one. What he looked like is incidental. You maintained stride, pushed away the unknowns, but he’ll return. They are quick to disguise, angels, which makes sense. They couldn’t do their work otherwise.

And here’s Amanda’s response, on her blog.

Last week our homework assignment was to create a one-page diary comic — basically, taking events from a day in our real lives and turning them into a story. Heck, I do that all the time in my mind! My tagline could be “imposing narrative structure wherever she goes.”

Although I’ve completed in-class comics assignments and some exercises from Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, I consider this my first real comic. It’s the first story of my own creation, and the first time I sat down with my sketchbook and jotted down a story in image and word form at the same time. Normally, I jot down ideas for a story then try to figure out how to illustrate it. For this one, the process was simultaneous, and it felt really really good. (Interestingly, I was reading a book today aimed at kids – So You Wanna Be A Comic Book Artist — that states people write scripts for comics before actually thumbnailing. I’m thinking that’s a generalization — like, some people do that, some people don’t. Some people thumbnail while also writing scripts. Some people…well, you get my drift.)

The process of small revisions as I moved from concept to rough draft to first draft went smoothly — not much hesitation as I solved little problems, changed phrasing, altered which text went where, cut and pasted panels in a John McPhee-esque way to try out different structures. It’s probably not how you’re supposed to make a comic (all that cutting and glue-sticking), but it worked for me! Storytelling and all it entails, like organizing, pacing, sweating over word choice, deciding what to put in/what to leave out — all of that is transferable to this new medium. I knew that in theory; I’m getting it now for real.

Again, there are things I would change in a final draft, but this was a super satisfying process — fun and energizing, which is what creative projects should be, right?? — and I’m actually really proud of the results, despite the rudimentary drawing. Prepare for more photos than you ever wanted to see.

Initial story idea in my sketchbook--morning after tossing and turning

Panels on marker paper (using ShinHan Touch Twin markers and a Micron pen)

Cutting up panels and rearranging

More cutting and arranging

And more...

And more. (I decided I liked the vertical layout much better.)

Might it work with a funky colored background? (Decision: No.)

I tried to cram it all onto one page until Nicole's voice popped into my head: "Don't cram!"

Final (first) draft, page 1

Final (first) draft, page 2

In my library travels, I discovered a book called Abstract Comics. Despite the fact that not one woman’s work is included (grr), it’s an interesting book. Unlike abstract painting, a comic should tell some sort of story, right? Sequential art + abstractness = ??? I’m not sure yet, but I decided to try my hand at abstracting the diary comic. The story without words is already kind of abstract-y and gets across the tossing and turning (although I do think the text intensifies the angst and adds some humor). Would the comic work if I made the “character” even less recognizable as a human shape? Here are my attempts–all very similar except #5. (My faves are #3 and #6.)

Abstraction #1

Abstraction #2

Abstraction #3

Abstraction #4

Abstraction #5

Abstraction #6

Oh, and despite the huge pangs of guilt I feel at spending more money, I moved into a studio space last week. It seduced me with its high ceilings and big windows:

So great to have a dedicated place for painting!

Now if I could just feel less sick…

ADDENDUM: I’m really proud to say I furnished that studio for 67 bucks. Thank you, Craigslist, Freecycle, Ikea, and Salvation Army!

At Del Ray Artisans, Get Sparked! Art inspired by writing opens this coming Friday. I just got my postcard in the mail, featuring one of my paintings. My co-curator, Amanda, did the graphic design and is handling all of the onsite curation, including hanging the show. I can’t wait to see photos!

SPARK 13 also just ended this past Friday and the work is starting to go up now. The round should have taken place during the time we were driving across country, but since I didn’t think I could handle administration from the road I postponed it till September. Of course, that meant the first day coincided with my first night of Comics class. Oops. I didn’t do as much publicity as I normally do, so we had a small crowd — 22. (Usually we have 50 – 95.)

A bunch of people signed up to respond to Charisse Cecil’s work. Charisse was a longtime SPARK participant and a really great person. She died suddenly a few months ago,and frankly I still can’t believe it. I’m happy that her voice lives on through this project. Her work is also featured in the Del Ray show.

For this round, I traded work with my friend and colleague, Bobbie Troy. Here’s Bobbie’s response to my artwork. I don’t know if I’m thrilled with my own response to Bobbie’s poem, “Emptiness,” but part of SPARK is creating something with limited time so that’s what I did. Did I resolve the skirt? Not sure. I’m still on the fence and might end up replacing the digitally manipulated image with the full-color image.

My friend, the artist Sukia, also responded to one of my poems during this round. I was honored that she wanted to use my writing as her inspiration, and I love the resulting work! Take a look.

And for anyone reading this who doesn’t know….SPARK is open to everyone, and it’s free to participate. The next round will take place in November so let me know if you’re interested!

I got Fiona’s title, “Hell Yeah, Doggies!” and drew a weird dog (which resembled a wolf/coyote/Greta hybrid) standing on two legs, with its other two paws in the air, making a “signs of the horn” gesture. (I’ll see if I can get a photocopy of it to post later.)

My title was “Dogs’ Day Out,” and Moises made a pretty awesome cautionary tale about a dog going out on its own. (A tree fell on it.)

Then we did a spontaneous drawing exercise in which we had three minutes to draw a car; then one-and-a-half minutes; then 30 seconds; then 10 seconds. We repeated the exercise with a cat. I can’t draw cars to save my life, but my kitties are at least recognizable as feline-like creatures. To my surprise, the best cat of the bunch? The 10-second one, in my opinion. It’s really just a hint of a cat, and I like that.

Here they are, in order:

Three-minute cat

One-and-a-half-minute cat

30-second cat

10-second cat

In other news….as of today, we’ve lived in Portland for one month. The move was difficult–3,200 miles is a long way–and my life since I got accepted to the program in June has been pretty much all about packing, culling, selling, storing, giving away, saying goodbye, driving, unpacking, buying, setting up, and settling in. But you know what? It was totally worth it.

Yes, you read that right. I will be learning how to make comics. I love reading single-panel cartoons and comic strips, but it’s not a form I considered trying in the past. Yet it’s a great fit. Comics creation brings together lots of things I like–writing, drawing, and storytelling…specifically sequential storytelling. In fact, with my background in fiction writing and television production, along with my visual way of thinking, I should be a natural at this. Alas, I am not.

In grad school for TV, the thing I sucked most at was making storyboards. The reason, I think, was twofold: My drawing skills aren’t great and I think too quickly. So sure, I’m a visual thinker, but those visions come at me fast. My brain flits from here to there and back again like lightning. You know that story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” that plays with time? It’s like that. I can live an entire life in my mind in two minutes.

That has always been a challenge for me when trying to get my stories out, whether as short stories, screenplays, or even feature articles. Slowing my mind down enough to capture thoughts is hard freaking work. I think that’s one reason why my stories are so much more interesting in my mind than they are in reality–I struggle with the process of getting words, images, thoughts from my brain out to my fingertips and into some solid form. (I’ll bet other writers and artists do, too, but from where I sit everyone else makes “creation” look so easy!)

I rarely created storyboards in school unless forced to for a graded assignment because taking one image at a time seemed incredibly sloooow and tedious. Sometimes I planned shots, but again, only when forced.

In the real world of segment producing, I never storyboarded. I did pre-interviews, listed shots I wanted to get and shared that with my cameraman, but flew by the seat of my pants on site, because that’s the reality of production. The scene looks different than you’d imagined, or your interviewee inevitably says something new and even more interesting than they did on the phone, requiring different shots. Only after we’d packed up and headed home did the story reveal itself, as I reviewed what was actually captured on tape, because only from that raw material could I create sequences and scenes.

I actually loved that style of producing-on-the-fly….capturing what was there, seeing what was interesting and getting as much as possible on tape. You can’t do that as much with fiction movie-making, particularly if you want a low shooting ratio, and probably if I’d stuck to my plans and shot list my life would have been easier — a lower ratio means less tape to watch and log — but the end result far less satisfying to me.

This perhaps will be my main challenge with making comics. I must improve my drawing skills, yes, but even more so I must slow down enough to tell a good visual story. It’s not enough to see it in my mind; I must translate that for you all to see. And I can tell you from storyboarding experience and from my one timed experiment in class this week: That sounds easy and like a no-brainer (and the theory certainly is simple to grasp), but doing it? Not so much.

This week’s in-class assignment was to draw a four-panel comic illustrating a “family secret” in about 30 or 40 minutes. First we were asked to write a family secret on a piece of paper. I figured we would trade and have to draw someone else’s story, so I wrote “My grandmother was a moonshiner.” Then we were told to illustrate what we had written down. I froze. “Shit. I don’t know the rest of the story.” See, in my family, the secrets remain hush-hush. I could have easily riffed on someone else’s idea, but went blank thinking about Vo-Voa and her moonshining empire. So I switched to the one “secret” my classmates don’t know (but everyone else by now does): My brother’s job.

So many problems immediately presented themselves. I can’t draw a camera, or my brother, or the White House. Not only that, I had just four panels. How to break down the story of my brother’s success (that, to me, began when I was six and continues to this day) into four pieces? Instead of making thumbnails in my notebook, I started drawing on Bristol straight away.

Big mistake. I’m not a strong enough illustrator to dive right in like that. Plus, I wasn’t sure what the “story” was. I filled the final panel with what should have been the second image, so didn’t have room for the image I decided to end on. I considered cutting the paper up and taping it back together, but wasn’t sure that was allowed, so instead I turned the sheet over and started again…meaning I had even less time to render something comprehensible. But, because I’m pretty okay with making a fool of myself and knew I needed to beat the deadline, I just went for it, using all of my stick-figure-drawing prowess to illustrate what turned out to be a pretty wordy story with the cadence and word choice of an eight-year-old:

The whole class then went to the photocopier, shrunk down our pieces to fit a 5″x8″ comic, and Jesse Reklaw (one of our instructors) turned it into a mini comic. It looked super awesome in part because our other instructor, Nicole J. Georges, drew the front cover. (I didn’t want to paste her image here w/o her permission so you’ll have to take my word for it.)

Anyway, when I got home, Dan gave me bigger kudos than I deserved, and I laughed pretty hard when I realized I’d written “1700 Pennsylvania Avenue” instead of “1600.” Um, yeah, 1700 is the photographer’s entrance…right.

Also, we didn’t see “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof”…we saw “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Let’s chalk those up to nerves, not age and a deteriorating brain, okay?

Here are a couple of other things I drew this week that make me smile (the last one a reference drawing for what might end up being a comic about my brother’s job…if you know my brother, you know he takes as many pix of the crowd as of his boss):