Weekend homework (due before Tuesday morning):
Please watch this interview with the official Godmother of Div. 3, Lynda Barry:
When you are done:
1. Make notes in your comp book about things that stood out for you in the interview.
2. Post at least one comment using “Leave a Reply” below, using your class name. Feel free to build on others’ comments. Possible ideas:
- what in what Lynda Barry said might be useful to you in your life?
- what in what she said might be useful to you in your work with The Black Cauldron?
- connections to previous learning, including things like mindset and Wagamese, and Science and Writing
3. Consider trying their 90-second drawing challenge with family members: give each other a shape and then put on 90 seconds of music and turn the shape into a self-portrait of you dancing.
If you’d like to see the drawings Lynda Barry and Tom Power did, go here.
If you’d like to take things a little further and listen to another interview between these two from 2015, go here.
If you want to take a deep dive into the Image World, go here.
Meanwhile:
Don’t forget to groove on Life!
One idea I think will be useful to me when drawing The Black Cauldron panels is to draw in your style. I like how Lynda Berry said people might not like your style, but it will help them want to draw because they will probably think if that’s all you have to do, then they can do it too. I think this idea will also be useful in everyday life because it reminds you, even if it doesn’t help you, it might help someone else.
I like how Lynda Barry talked about the persistence of art and how it’s in every child. For Black Cauldron I want to develop a new reality with my characters. I want to create a new world for Taran and friends. Another idea I like relates to being out of control. It reminded me of rebellion and revolution.
An idea that I really like is that music and art saved Lynda Barry. In the “Fire” section in One Native Life, Wagamese spends a lot of time discussing music and art. I think it’s because art and music have their own kind of magic of connection. For example, in order to understand what society perceives as “great” literature, one needs to know how to read, and often read at a fairly high level. But for someone to understand great music or art, all they need are eyes and ears. I think that’s the magic of art. Anyone, anywhere, can understand and love great art. In other words, it has the capability to bring people together.
I think something that will be really useful to me is the fact that we’ve already been drawing ever since age 2 or 3. I find that often I get stuck with The Black Cauldron. I finish the panels, and then there’s a gap that shows up. It’s like a hole in a bridge. I have this inhibition to draw, and I want to avoid drawing so much that sometimes i just outright go and move on to making more of the panel shapes. This idea is really useful because now I know that I’ve been drawing for years already. I’ve had lots and lots of practice drawing letters, and numbers, and shapes, so why should I be afraid? This will help tremendously.
One idea that I like is how human bodies are in a way that if there is something in the place of feet or hands, they will be perceived as hands. They don’t need to look perfect in comics. A snowball, thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb can be a hand and a C and a ? can be an ear. I think this will help us when we draw The Black Cauldron because it will remind us that not everything has to be perfect you just have to have everything done. Just because the pointer finger is longer than the middle finger that doesn’t mean people won’t think it’s a hand anymore. But if you end up spending all your time drawing the right hand and you don’t have time to draw the left hand, then people will think why does he/she not have a left hand? With a big project like Black Cauldron, it’ll be important to not spend too much time on one thing but to make sure everything is finished in your own style and Lloyd Alexander’s style.
One thing that I found really interesting from this interview is how she talked about that situation where she draws for another person and they’re like, “oh, it’s okay, you have a dream, even if it’s a bit late…” She didn’t seem resentful in any way, and I really admire how she can just accept that some people think that her drawing style is simple, or bad, and brush it away. Sometimes when one of my mother’s friends come over and I’m practicing artificial harmonics (gag), they’ll wince and give me a sort of backhanded compliment, like, “Well, it can only get better from here…” except in Chinese. And then next time they come over, I’ll try really hard to ignore them, and when they try to start a conversation, I’ll just answer yes or no. It’s like in Survivor. If you hear somebody wants to vote you out at tribal, you’ll try to vote them out instead. Lynda Barry is proof that not all people have to be like that. That not all people are (guess the word)s.
I think a unifying trait between many successful people is the control of shame. A lot of people spend a lot of time worrying and stressing about whether or not people care, whether or not they’ll notice. Lynda Barry did something very audacious, she let go of that, she told herself to not resent or be hurt by the criticism she receives. When people reach a certain level of power or fame, they will always, always, get criticized. But the people who move up that ladder of power and fame are usually the ones who can control that criticism and stay relatively unaffected. The people who reach the top of that ladder are the people who use the criticism. I think it’s an important lesson to remember that often the criticism you get may still contain substance and things that can help you improve.
when lynda barry talks about drawing in your own style, i think that it could be helpful for tbc, but also is incredibly good life advice. i think that you could use the idea of drawing as a metaphor for life. it is much better to live your life your own way than to blindly follow someone else. if you do be yourself (which is something i bring up a lot), you most likely will find more enjoyment in life. yes, for some people social approval is crucial to their mental and emotional well-being. however, i, myself, will take lynda barry’s words a reminder to ‘draw in my own style’ and live life in my own way.
like i said earlier, i bring up this point a lot. to be yourself no matter what. i can say this quite easily because it is, in fact, easy for me to be myself. i rarely find myself needing people to like me, of course, this often leads to disputes. i personally think that i care too little about social approval, while a lot of people care too much. i think i could learn to mellow out my amazing perfectness while still being able to ‘draw in my own style’. if that makes sense.
An idea that I found helpful was that you don’t have to be perfect. This is within a lot of Lynda Barry’s work and the drawing activity in the end. The drawings were not perfect representations of themselves and had many mistakes. Yet it still was an accurate depiction of them. I say it’s because of the main attributes of the characters. In our index cards, we are asked sometimes to draw the main features of ourselves and other people. And that is what I think represents people. Not their visage, but their main attributes and personality.
An idea that I appreciated was how Lynda Barry talked about finding your talent when you are young. A lot of us experience disappointment from both our peers and ourselves when we haven’t found a “talent” yet by the age of twelve, and I think that’s a very unrealistic ideal. For example, my parents are always telling me to make up my mind on what job I want to have in the future. I know they just want the best for me, but it’s a little discouraging when they say “you need to start hyper-studying right now because it’s already too late.” I think talent and passion can happen at any time, even when you’re an adult, and that there is no need to rush.
Something Lynda Barry said that I think will help with Black Cauldron/life is that she copied/drew inspiration from the artist of “Zap”. With Black Cauldron, it’s the idea that copying from other people can actually enhance your work, which I guess we already do through our channel. For life, it’s the idea that you can learn from everyone. Or, you know, steal (you know that saying, “good artists copy, great artists steal?”). It’s also like the Wagamese chapter, where he talks about learning from his dog Molly.
Within this interview, Lynda Barry talked about not having to be perfect in every little thing, this is shown in the activity that they did, nothing about her drawing was perfect but it still had an essence to it. I can 100% apply this to my life especially since I tend to get very perfectionist when It comes to drawing and can and will erase my whole drawing cause I messed up. I can use this in my Black Caldron work by not worrying too much about minor errors and mistakes.
One idea from the interview with Lynda Barry that I thought could really help calm my nerves while drawing panels from the Black Cauldron was that you don’t have to be good at art to draw comics, and comics don’t have to be one style. This reminds me of Star Wars – Uncut and how the object that you draw doesn’t have to be perfect as long as it is in the place that it is meant to be, and we perceive it as that object.
Something that really stuck with me is how Lynda Barry said that drawings don’t have to be perfect in order to be a comic. I believe this would really help ease the feeling of “oh this HAS to be perfect!” or “if this isn’t like the Mona Lisa then I’m a failure!”. Personally, I usually have the tendency to make everything perfect but end up having one panel drawn in the spawn of 5 hours. It’s really useful to just think about simplicity and imperfections are okay.
Something that I found interesting is the fact that four year olds aren’t afraid of drawing but almost everyone else is. I don’t think we should be afraid of drawing, it’s part of what we do everyday, there’s no reason to be scared because I’m pretty sure that you’ve gotten better at drawing since I was four years old and I’ll continue to get better and better, nobody is going to judge you so there’s no reason to be afraid. I think this can help with The Black Cauldron because it will help us not spend that much time on one thing so we can balance it out with the other stuff.
I think the main reason as to why four-year-olds aren’t scared of drawing is their capacity and acceptance of error. Something I’ve learned so far in life is that being afraid of error is pointless and completely unnecessary. When people accept that errors are going to happen (because they always will), they tend to be more relaxed and make fewer errors in return, and when errors do arise, they are mentally prepared for them.
I really liked that part where Lynda Berry said “I want other people to look at my drawings and say, ‘I can do it too!'” This is very motivational and can help any person who feels uncomfortable drawing to begin their journey. This has helped me not to be afraid about how my drawings look and what my style is.
When Lynda Barry said that if she didn’t draw a picture then she wouldn’t be at the interview, it reminded me of how Wagamese has done many small things that make him the way he was. Such as, talking to a boy who was in a tough position and then learning many lessons from that boy. Like in the Earth intro, Wagamese says he has found many people, places, and things that have kept him rooted/grounded. For Wagamese, drawing the picture was meeting, talking, and spending time with others or in different places. And that interview for Wagamese would be finally being able to share his ideas, becoming a wonderful author, and being remembered as an amazing person.
An idea that I thought was really cool was the fact that we have been drawing since we were very young, and we have so much experience with different styles of drawing. Sometimes we don’t realize that we have been drawing for so long, and that no matter what your style is, you have a lot of experience in drawing, and that you CAN draw because you have been doing it for years.
One interesting idea that came up for me is about how much of an impact people can be on your lives. How much influence a role like a Teacher, can affect (or is it effect?) you. Having someone who demotivates and breaks you down can be something that’s really hard to come back up from. Someone who builds you up can give you new heights, more possibilities, and most importantly, confidence.
An Idea I found interesting was how Lynda Barry said that she doesn’t have an “art style”. Even as a professional cartoonist that has received the genius grant, she doesn’t have a “reliable” style. She just draws in whatever style she feels. It’s also not what you’d expect from a “professional”. It has a simplicity and messiness to it that gives it life. Like what Lynda Barry said when students look at her work, “That’s all I have to do?” Anyone can draw in her range of styles and it has a nostalgic feeling to when you weren’t judging your own work.