3 - Two (or Three) Card Characters

photo by Paul Tamburro

Not the snappiest of titles, but the most popular drawing game I do by FAR. I had a group of 16 year olds in Carlisle delighted to repeat it 4 times, and we could have gone on. This exercise works just a well with kids and adults, despite actually being quite a challenge and not a doddle. I must thank Steve Bissette, Earth's best comics teacher, for introducing me to this.

I expect that I will be adding to or at least adapting this particular post in the future, as I'm not sure how well I've written it yet.

Preparation - you need to make youself 3 sets of cards. My first batch got worn out with enthusiastic use, so my current ones have be done using good card, laminated then corners rounded off -


Set 1 - ANIMALS. I've got - octopus, giraffe, bear, sheep, walrus, puffin, tortoise, otter, donkey, reindeer, owl, cow, panda, monkey, camel, rat, dolphin, zebra, duck, crocodile, elephant, penguin, hedgehog, pigeon, tiger, chicken, squirrel, lion, fox, snail, (and then what seem to be the easiest ones-) bee, cat, dog, mouse, pig, and rabbit.

Set 2 - PROFESSIONS and PASTIMES. Ive got - drummer, clown, trombonist, doctor, photographer, builder, magician, police officer, writer, guitarist, bus driver, diver, teacher, gardener, chef, cyclist, astronaut, cowboy/girl, hiker, milkman, decorator, burglar, farmer, train driver, sailor, artist, violinist, scientist, vet, pirate, (and then the easiest tend to be -) tennis player, footballer, golfer, fisherman, photographer, and pop star.

Set 3 - EMOTIONS and STATES. I've got - shocked, weak, nervous, surprised, furious, in love, disgusted, drunk, tired, scary, fierce, puzzled, lazy, pained, shy, upset, overheated, greedy, bored, exhausted, confused, glum, crazy, joyful, freezing, messy, sneaky, overjoyed, strong, embarrassed, innocent, excited, (and the easier ones-) happy, sad, angry, scared.

These are what I use, but of course you can use your own ideas. Trying to come up with 30 emotions isn't particularly easy though.

What to do with them-
I'll start by explaining the game, without handing the cards out. I describe how this is similar to the guessing game we did before when we used the Charlie Brown self-portraits, only that the cards are going to tell you what to draw.
A demo is often a really good idea just to get it clear to everyone (plus kids love watching someone draw). I let someone pick an animal card at random for me, then someone else a profession.
Now if the group are older than 11 then I might consider using a third card as well, but more often than not just 2 cards is plenty. If I had a group that were there by their own motivation and in their own time, I'd take it that they would be slightly more confident with drawing and use so all 3 cards. Or, if I had a group over a number of days I might use 2 cards on the first day, then 3 the next. Adults find 3 cards very challenging unless they've warmed up to it, so I've probably only used the emotions set 4 or 5 times. Saying that, the Carlisle group were so into it they were crying out for a FOURTH set of cards, suggesting countries or historical periods!

Anyway, let's just stick with the 2 cards picked at random for now. Say we got CROCODILE and GARDENER - I have the class describe the particular identifiable features of these; long tail, bumpy back, long snout with huge mouth and sharp teeth etc, and a gardener might have wellies on, a sun hat, watercan, wheelbarrow, shove, fork, rake etc, and be stood in a garden surrounded by plants and flowers. So I draw this -


- all the time explaining how the trick is to keep both words in mind while you draw. If you drew yourself a crocodile, no matter how fantastic it might look when it's done, you'd have to struggle to integrate the gardener elements and tag them on clumsily. If you are thinking about both words at once, then you'll know that when you are drawing the jaws, or front legs, that you are going to want to have them clutching a watering can or shovel, and fit it in accordingly.
I tell them that the animal doesn't have to look exactly like it should - feel free to stand them up on their hind legs if that makes it easier, and use cliches if needs be (goofy front teeth for a rabbit, round ears for a mouse etc)- these are cartoony drawings that are meant to be silly.
The group are also reminded about what we did in the previous exercise - just including the important information and leaving irrelevant detail out - keeping it simple and clear, and filling the page. Going around the drawing with a solid black line shows how it's important to make your image bold and graphic.
Maybe if the group are not quite 'getting it', I'll do another example for them. Here's a tiger diver, where I've tried to emphasise his diverness by giving him the goggles and snorkel AND have him doing the action (even though they are two completely different kinds of diving), and his tigerness with stripes, claws and teeth as well as a bowl of Frosties to dive into.-




As I distribute the cards, I make it clear that you mustn't let anyone else see your cards or it will spoil the game of guessing at the end.
Everytime there will be groans of 'no way - I can't draw one of them - I don't know what it looks like', but I resist the demands to change their cards for other ones. I make it clear that I will be coming around to help everyone, so long as you make a start and try sketching it roughly first. I have learned a technique that usually stops some potential frustration with this by keeping the easiest cards on the bottom of my decks as I go round, and give those to whoever might lack confidence in drawing. Sneaky, I know.

So 10 minutes, maybe 15 is usually enough time for everyone to pencil their character and then go over with black felt tip. I collect all the drawings in and the guessing game begins. Depending on the group, I've found it often a good idea to ask all those that have been sneaking a peek at their neighbour's cards to keep quiet and let other people have a go at guessing.
As each set of words is guessed, the artists congratulated on their work - Well done! they've guessed it so quickly because you've done such a great job of making the words so clear to them. The group are asked if there are any ways to make the point any clearer - how might we draw a more chickeny chicken? How could you make it clear that this rabbit is a decorator not a builder? Now if we have the luxury of enough time, and the group are enthusiastic enough, then I might suggest that everyone do a 10 minute redraw, taking on board any suggested improvements.

This game is great fun but also quite a challenge (especially if you are brave enough to take a 3rd emotion card) - stripping the image down to the basics and deciding exactly what to include. It definitely encourages a kind of visual literacy, but is also a good opportunity to introduce the group to the idea that sharing your initial sketches and asking the opinion of others can be a very valuable thing. Having drawn what I think looks like a rat might turn out to look more like a mouse to someone else. I might be confident that my pop star is clearly that, while others might see some other kind of performer.


A common mistake is to emphasise one element more than the other. Say you are given elephant and train driver, this is what often happens-

- they've drawn the train and then squeezed a tiny little elephant into the drivers window - so small you can't tell it's an elephant. One way around this is to get stupid -
This is no way to drive a train, but at least it communicates both elephant and train driver in a clearer fashion.


Next Post -4 - Foreground, Midground, Background

2 - Draw Yourself

(all photos by Paul Tamburro, St Matthews RC High, Moston)

So following straight on from the Charlie Brown images, we have a quick chat see how many people feel they could draw in a similar style, and most feel they can. After all, he's a big circle, a C for a nose, dot's for eyes - how hard can it be?
Now let's have a go then, but drawing ourselves in this style, as if you are in a comic alongside Charlie Brown. Again, I stress that nobody is going to be marked on what they produce, and explain that as long as you have a good go at it then I'll be more than happy. The strugglers I'll go round and help.
Think about how much 'information' you need to include, and what details can be left out. I do a quick demonstration -



-Adding the pen in my hand at the end serves as a little clue to who the drawing is of, and is something that everyone can do with their drawing (do you play sports? A musical instrument?). I give them 10 minutes, and make it clear that no-one is to write their name on their drawing, as we are to play a bit of a guessing game with the finished pictures.
Everyone gets going in pencil first, then after a few minutes I'll bring the black felt tips around, explaining that they need to stand out bold and clear when I hold them up at the front of the room. We all start off with the simple structure of big circle for head, box for body and lines for arms and legs. Everyone is encouraged to add their own distinctive features, be it glasses, freckles, headbands, whatever.



Gathered in, we try to guess who each one is, and what clues in the picture have told us this. I like to go through all of them, finding something praiseworthy about each (clarity, comedy, expression, economy of line), but often we are pushed for time so I pull out 8 or so good examples.



I ask the class why particular images are easier to guess than others. Often it might be because they have filled the page and drawn them nice and big, or it could be because they've not cluttered their drawing with too much information. This is good stuff for them to mull over and absorb.


One of the nice things about this exercise is how quickly it generates 30 characters that you could do anything with - such as produce a school comic story. It's also nice to remind them that everyone's started off with the same simple structure yet came out distinct and unique; imagine the potential variety if we hadn't all used that same template...

Next post - Two Card Characters (sometimes 3 Card Characters)

1 - Character Brainstorm

First of all I should let you know that I don't claim 'authorship' on any of these comics games and exercises. Many of them came from my time spent at The Center For Cartoon Studies 2 years ago, under the expert tutelage of Steve Bissette, James Sturm, Alec Longstreth, Aaron Renier and James Kochalka. Some excellent ideas and techniques came from Sharad Sharma of World Comics India (their amazing work is a whole other post sometime). Other exercises will be versions of ideas from the books mentioned in my last post, and the majority are combinations bits culled from both.

OK - Character Brainstorm. This is a great first exercise, as 1) it gets everyone drawing straight away in a non-precious way, and 2) it gives me a chance to go around as see who is going to have a brilliant enjoyable session, and who might need a bit more attention or encouragement. Time allowing, I would start a first session with a quick 10 minute game of Consequences (draw a head, fold it over, pass it on, draw a body etc...) as it's great for loosening up, but only if I've got more than a day with that particular group.
Pencils and paper handed out, I give everyone 10 minutes to sketch AS MANY COMIC AND CARTOON CHARACTERS AS THEY CAN THINK OF. Not ones from your imagination, but existing characters. I make it clear that no-one is going to be marked on these drawings, so keep them rough and sketchy, and above all quick - if you can tell who it is from just their face, then don't waste time drawing the body - move onto the next one. You might be able to draw Spongebob beautifully, but all we want is the basic features or shape.
Once I've got everyone started, there will usually be a few who look stuck or claim they can't think of any. More often than not, if you've got one character down then there are sidekicks, friends, family or enemies that accompany them. Think about all the British comic characters, the American ones, and what about from cartoons? - not just new cartoons but all the old ones that you might catch - Looney Tunes, Disney, Hanna Barbera and on. What about films? - all the animated movies, old and new, CGI or traditional, all those you might see on TV over Christmas? Think about all the human characters, then all the animals (there must be at least 20 different cat characters, dogs, mice), all the robots, all the monsters or aliens?
After 10 minutes is up then it's pencils down and we count up how many we've managed to get down on paper. numbers will vary from 5 to 25, and those with the most get to tell everyone one or two that they think no-one else will have. More and more I'm finding I've not heard of these characters as they'll be something off Nickelodeon or an obscure Pokemon warrior.

I tell the class that as I've been walking round, I've noticed that lots of people have got the same ones, and I start to draw them on the board, allowing them to guess as soon as they recognise them-

The speed with which they identify Bart, Marge, Spongebob, Patrick and the rest is incredible - I ask them how they recognise them so easily. After mentioning that they are on TV a lot (and pencil cases, rucksacks, lunchboxes and so on), someone will point out that they all have identifiable shapes. After asking them if they know who Matt Groening is, I tell them how he designed the Simpson family to be distinctive in silhouette, and how we could pick out any of them from even a split second clip. We discuss how some characters might have a particular logo-

and how all of these characters can be considered logos or brands themselves, especially Mickey Mouse. Logos also need to be instantly recognisable,- a good test being if a child can recognise them before they can read the names -


I'm always a little dismayed when only one or two recognise Charlie Brown's shirt-

-so I draw Snoopy's shape alongside him them most give a nod of acknowledgement. Having told them a little about Charles Schulz and the popularity of his work, I show a few images on the whiteboard. Explaining how for 50 years, Schulz had to do a newspaper strip every day, that means drawing Charlie Brown roughly 4 times a day -


- and as the newspapers demanded a new strip for every day of the week, including Sunday, that means -


Here's where I get them to do a bit of maths, and work out (or just count) that Schulz would therefore be having to draw him 28 times a week,


112 a month,

Which is 13,44 times over a year. Now Schulz drew Peanuts and Charlie Brown for a staggering 50 years (or thereabouts), which would workout at 67,200 drawings of Charlie Brown -


Of course this is a massive generalisation and a bit misleading - CB didn't feature in every strip, not all strips had 4 panels, and so on, but it drives home the point, that keeping your character designs SIMPLE could end up saving you a lot of work and effort.
We discuss what difference it might have made if CB has been originally drawn with a normal shaped head, with realistic eyes instead of dots. Some kids might suggest that he wouldn't be as interesting, or as funny, and many click that maybe he wouldn't have managed 50 years of it.

I find it useful to get them thinking more about Peanuts than Spiderman or more dynamically rendered superheroes and characters. While loads of kids see the Marvel/DC style as the pinnacle of exciting comic art, virtually all will get frustrated by their own attempts at imitating it. Now I'd never want to put someone off from copying characters like these, it's a great way to learn, but I find if the bar is set at a more achievable (not necessarily lower) level, then even those who are rubbish at drawing will get so much more out of the sessions.


This all leads neatly into the next exercise I would do with a group, which I'll post over the next few days.

Creating Comics Workshops

I often find myself being asked to explain some of the exercises I use in my Creating Comics workshops, but have never sat down and written a proper full description. So, I've decided that I'm going to do a series of posts that will go into detail on what exactly I do with these groups. As pretty much all the drawing I'm doing at the moment is for the DFC and it's subscribers, I can't fill this blog with that, so the next best thing is to do this. Also I'm hoping that it will help me clarify in my own head exactly what I am trying to teach and what the participants might be learning from each particular game or exercise. In turn, this will hopefully start to form a series of posts useful for others running or about to run comics-based workshops.

Let me get these books out of the way first, as they are all extremely brilliant and inspiring for anyone serious about producing comics. Saying that, they are all too advanced for kids and so I don't recommend them to just anyone.


Scott McCloud's Making Comics covers everything that a cartoonist might need to consider. It goes into substantial depth exploring what can be achieved by manipulation and control of words, panel and page composition, drawing styles and so on. Great book for enthusiastic artists of say 14 and above, but far to dense and daunting for anyone younger.
His Understanding Comics has become the key text for anyone studying how comics work, but does get a little theoretical and is by no means a practical 'how-to' guide.


Ivan Brunetti's Cartooning came as a free supplement to the wonderful Comic Art annual (no.9) produced by Buenaventura Press. Brunetti teaches comics at college level, and most of the exercises described in this pocket book are aimed accordingly. Saying that though, Exercise 1.2 (in which you must doodle from memory at least 25 comic or cartoon characters) is very similar to one of the first games I would do with a room of 10 year olds. Brunetti writes extremely intelligently about cartooning, approaching his artwork more as designing simpified universal diagrams than anything else. This is also something I touch on when teaching - keep it clarity and simplicity should be the main aims, whether writing speech bubbles, designing characters or composing a panel.



This is no instructional manual, but I'm including it anyway. Matt Madden redraws the same one-page story 99 times, using sci-fi, noir, minimalist, etc, as well as experimenting with different viewpoints, emphasis, framing, you get the idea. I've shown this book to teens and older workshop participants simply to demonstrate to limitless options available to the comic artist, and the overwhelming amout of decisions that need to be made when constructing even the shortest narrative.
I'm looking forward to his new book Drawing Words and Writing Pictures, written with Jessica Abel, which promises to be a more practical guide.


Next Post - first exercise - character brainstorm!

Recent portraits

This is me 2 weeks ago, as drawn by sisters Amy and Hannah (in return for me drawing them).




This is Ruby, this morning, who posed in return for a dollop of smelly cat food.


And this is Katy, this morning, with just over 3 weeks until our due date - we are starting to realise that it's really going to happen soon. Looking forward to meeting whoever is in there.

Wild Animals I Have Known

Paid $15 for this two years ago, from a secondhand bookshop in Burlington Vermont. Have been dipping into it ever since, and finally got though it the other night. I've done no research on Ernest Seton Thompson, so all I know are his claims on the title page here -


Most of the stories are American, but I was surprised to find one account (of Wully the dog) is based near Bakewell in Monsaldale, and how he was a fantastic sheepdog, obedient and loyal, but would sneak out at night and eat as many as he could.
This book startled me with it's brave and elegant layout - blocks of text surrounded by these huge open margins on seemingly hand-torn pages. Apart from the fact that his illustrations are very fine and well drawn, I enjoyed how, like all good wildlife documentary, he combines the sweet with the cruel and horrific realities -


In his introduction, Thompson explains his approach to nature writing as treating the animals as individuals with their own particular characteristics, whether Lobo the Wolf or Silverspot the Crow. He goes into real detail in some cases, even attempting to transcribe squawks -


When I opened the book, my first impression was that someone had drawn their own sketches in the margin, straight into my copy. It's like Thompson has gone through the text and annotated it, just as you'll find notes in the margins of an old A-level Shakespeare book -


Thompson seemingly has this great insight into the lives of animals - or at least creates the impression he has. I was particularly taken by the way he describes Redruff the partridge's yearly cycle with these tiny little poetic diagrams - (click the image to enlarge - they are well small) -


Hey, American readers - is he a well-known writer over there?
I'll be looking out for his other stuff, if there is any, and highly recommend this book (if you can locate a copy) for kids and grown-ups.

The Ahlbergs

Missed this on Radio 4 yesterday, but thanks to Listen Again got to hear it this morning - Alan Ahlberg at 70. Alan and Janet Ahlberg's books had a massive influence on my own artwork as a kid, and continue to do so. I've always been captivated by their subject matter, sense of humour, the generosity with which they fill the page, and Janet's beautiful pen and watercolour illustrations. With my mum I caught an exhibition of their work in Halifax last year (touring from Seven Stories in Newcastle), and was amazed to see how much of her work was produced actual size, and how much of it there is.
The Old Joke Book kept me occupied for hours and hours, and since 1976 hasn't aged at all, still brilliant and inspiring.



Also on yesterday's Listen Again, Michael Bond (at 80) talks about his new Paddington book, 50 years after his first. I like Paddington.

New drawing den

Done my first few days working in my new office/studio/comics den/loft, and I'm well pleased with it. I've managed to fit in all my annuals, comics and piles of paper, leaving room for a desk to draw at. Will miss working in Manchester (and hanging out with the other office chaps, nipping out to see what's new in Travelling Man, lunch from Barburrito, Yadgar, Rustica, Bread and Butter etc), but just can't justify 1 - the cost of commuting, and 2 - the hour and a half wasted sat on the train. Plus makes sense to be on hand for bring up Popeye, who is now 6 weeks away. Going to have to make sure I don't get too isolated, so will make sure to drink fine ales on a regular basis, whether in town or with folks invited out here.
So no shopping or eating distractions, but the view might obstruct doing as much drawing as I should (note the passing coal boat)-

(click to enlarge)