Learning New Languages

Comix and Italian

After being completely frustrated during our trip to Sicily earlier this year, I have been hanging out on Duolingo, trying to learn a few words of Italian in case I might return someday.

I’ve also been paying more attention to learning how to speak in comix. There’s no Duolingo option for that, but fortunately, SAW (Sequential Artists Workshop) offers a ton of interesting content dedicated to all things graphic novel/comics). Thanks are due to thanks to

Suzan Colón

for the grand suggestion - this is a terrific group!

I’ve attended a few of the Friday night SAW sessions (#fridaynightcomics) and even in the few sessions I’ve managed to get to, I’ve been picking up nuggets and, yes, being in the company of others who are creating comics, I’m drawing more.

This evening’s session (led by Fionn McCabe) was called, Icons, Patterns, and Textures. The idea was to break away from literal visual interpretations of, well, anything and let symbols and abstract shapes step in to help tell the story.

After thinking of a moment from childhood in which I experienced a strong emotion (in my case, blind terror, intense even if it was completely unfounded). I don’t know about you, but going down to the basement when I was a kid was a fate worse than death, particularly when returning to the safety of the main floor.

I’d RACE up, imagining some hideous creature was going to reach through the spaces between the steps to grab my ankles.

It was super cool to see some of the examples of work done by other attendees who embraced the idea that you can depict complicated things (telephones ringing, anger, people, Barbie dolls) with a few quick lines, shapes, and perhaps a splash of colour.

After imagining the set of my horror show (the Basement of Doom), I did a few scribbly sketches to see how I could depict the key players, objects, sounds, monsters with basic shapes.

Because the scariest aspect of descending into the basement was the open-spaced steps, I wanted to show those as random, disconnected, very dangerous bars that could only mean bad things for anyone attempting to descend with them underfoot.

[Oh - the other brilliant thing mentioned today was the various benefits of using Post-it notes for the ‘panels.’ The version of my sequence shown below uses that strategy. As Fionn mentioned, it’s possible to overlay one note on top of another and do a quick tracing of key elements so they stay in the same place from one panel to the next. I played around with this idea for the floating stairs and the basement setting.]

In this panel I decided to abstract the jangly ring of the phone by using the spirally wire from days of yore. This will mean nothing to people born more recently than I, but for my brother (the minimalist eyes and hair on the right) and me (pigtails and glasses), the limited length of the phone cord meant my mother had to be summoned to answer the ringing phone. Though we were well trained in phone etiquette, when we were little we usually let the adults take calls as they were never for us anyway.

Wherever we lived, Dad set up somewhere to paint and my mom found the darkest place in the house to build a darkroom. Often, that meant somewhere down in the basement. If Mom didn’t hear us call (to answer the phone, deal with a minor injury), someone had to go down into the basement to summon her.

There were a few rules when it came to the darkroom. Number 1 was DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR OR YOU WILL RUIN EVERYTHING!!!!! [The dim red streak sneaking out around the edge of the door was from the glowing red lamp she used in there as photo paper wasn’t sensitive to red light.]

Once down there, I felt very small. The silence from the darkroom was unnerving. Going back up past the lurking monster lying in wait to grab my ankles was not my idea of a good time.

Because I was taking a loooong time (I was dithering - couldn’t decide whether to bang on the door or barge in or run away), my brother called out to see if I was still alive.

Turns out she hadn’t been in the darkroom at all. She flicked the switch and flooded the very ordinary basement with light, leaving me feeling more than a tad foolish.

Lessons learned from this exercise:

1. you really can say a lot without drawing much

2. my experiment with armless humans wasn’t too successful

3. this was FUN! I will definitely play around with more abstract scribbles in future vignettes
   
   As for the Italian lessons… ciao for niao!