When I’m not reading comics, talking about comics with my friends or making my own comics, I teach comics. I predominantly run one-off workshops in schools and libraries, mostly to excellent children and young people. But I also have a few students that I teach privately, one-to-one. One of these students is the lovely Poppy.
I’ve worked with Poppy for a little while now - in lessons we generally talk about drawing techniques, try out different art mediums or materials, and chip away at putting together original comics (Poppy will be selling her very first comic at the upcoming Zina Warrior Print Fest). One of the drawing activities we did recently was a daily character challenge. During one lesson, Poppy and I came up with a list of 30 characters (e.g. a fortune-telling mermaid or a goth unicorn), one for each day in June (each of us taking turns to come up with a character). The aim was to draw a character a day, with the only restriction being that they had to be drawn on post-it notes.
I absolutely love these kind of challenges, although I have to admit that I can also find them very hard. I really struggle to put time aside for myself just to draw (when it’s for no reason other than fun). Also sometimes my perfectionism can sneak in and stop me enjoying the thing I love most - telling stories with pictures.
But having the restriction of the post-it note was really helpful for me to finish this challenge. It gave me a boundary to work within and meant that I felt more inclined to push that boundary (like trying to fit in full scenes onto my small little post-its and not just characters). And I was really happy with how a lot of them turned out and even prouder of myself for pushing through the days where I wasn’t so happy with the work and still sitting down and doing the next day’s challenge. Perfectionism in my work is something that I struggle with A LOT (although you wouldn’t necessarily know it from looking at my wonky imperfect art) and I have to keep catching myself when I get stuck In a perfectionism spiral and remind myself to just put pen to paper, and it can’t be perfect but it can exist.
In the end I had a lot of fun designing these characters (there are definitely a few that I wouldn’t mind maybe turning into full-comics ideas) and it was particularly fun to do the challenge with a friend and see how different or similar our characters turned out to be. Here are some of Poppy’s favourite designs:
Looking to take on a fun drawing challenge? Why not try out our post-it note drawing challenge for yourself (and a friend)!
All you need:
Pen
Post-it notes (your choice of colours)
A month with 30 days (so you can draw one a day)
Our character list below!
If you do decide to take on the Poppy & Gina post-it note drawing challenge, let me know! I’d love to see your versions of our characters.
Poppy and I will be selling physical zine versions of this list and some of our favourite characters at Zina Warrior Print Fest. If you’re on Kaurna land (Adelaide) on the 8th October, come along and say hi!
Following on from my last post about how the design of the characters in my graphic novel, Oh Brother, have changed over the 7-ish years I’ve been working on the book, this post is about my absolute favourite thing: drawing emotions!