3 - Two (or Three) Card Characters

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

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. 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.

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 (like Superman), or item of clothing such as Dennis's stripy jumper. 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!

New pal

Been exchanging emails with an excellent comics teacher (and very nice man) in New Hampshire America! Marek Bennett has been running all sorts of interesting workshops and sessions alongside his regular school teaching. For those interested in learning a bit more about teaching comics, you'd do well to explore his stuff, including his blog (which I've added to my links on the right).

Workshops outline

click to enlarge

Here's an outline of what the school gets when it signs up for 4 days of creating comics with me, through Manchester Art Gallery's Artist's in Schools sessions.
They're in the middle of organising an exhibition of work produced by classes that have worked with myself and the other artists involved - will post on this v.soon.

Interview with me!

Hey folks, Matthew Badham has posted the interview he did with me on his excellent Overspill blog - go read it here now.
It's like being a proper artist that people are interested in!

Illustration course

Got loads of drawing I need to get on with in the next few days, so I thought I'd post something first.
Ran an 'introduction to illustration' course on Saturday at the Lowry. Eleven 11 to 16 year olds gave up their whole day - 10 til 5, though all seemed to get something out of it. We started by doing a bit on structuring the human figure, and constructing a well-proportioned wire skeleton stick man to flesh out. Once we'd had a go at getting the basic structure right, I did a few poses for them to draw from. They had a minute to draw the skeleton, then had to flesh me out from that -

One fantastic lad let me keep this in return for one of mine.

We also covered lettering (getting it centred, creating 3D and drop shadows etc), foreground and background, use of black and white contrast, and had a go at Steve Bissette's 3 Card Characters which I use all the time. I won't go into it now, but maybe I should do a set of posts describing the different games and exercises I do in these sessions.

We did something that I'd not tried before, and I must credit Lee Ford with the idea (one he's used with some Huddersfield students) - pluck horses names from the racing pages and illustrate them. The group loved it - partly because there was a smile of recognition from everyone at how they've always been mystified at the weirdness of these names but have never discussed it, and also the fun of such a ridiculous task - Count Kristo, Mr Fluffy, Hidden Bounty, and so on. Will do it again

As well as showing them TeenWitch and a load of my other drawings (including how I use my sketchbook), we finished with an illustration brief. I divided up Little Red Riding Hood so that everyone had a chunk to illustrate, allocated at random. Despite being the end of a very long day drawing, they all got stuck in and did a great job. Those finishing early were encouraged to come up with a cover design.


Same artist again, swapped for one of my demonstrations. I only got this B&W photocopy, so you have to imagine the red lettering and bloodshot eyes!

Rochdale project

6 page story produced with 3 Year 10 lads at Balderstone Technology College Rochdale. Similar to the 3 page comic strip made with the Sugar Group (see previous post), I transcribed the recording of an hour's conversation, which the group then edited, selecting which parts to use. I then drew out the panels and speech bubbles, then participants added drawings of themselves in the appropriate panels. Prior to this we did a practice by drawing self portraits in 5 mins then 2 mins, 1 min and 30 seconds (great way to reduce your drawings down to the essentials and speed things up). Finally I inked the figures and backgrounds.

Click to enlarge-

Yorkshire kittens

Group portrait of a really nice bunch I'm working with through Leeds City Art Gallery. I'll be giving them a print of this each this evening when I'm over there doing our second comics session. Note their copies of TeenWitch!

Thankyou Card

An amazing 6 page card made for me by Year 4 of St Clements Primary Openshawe, following our 4 day Creating Comics project.

Sugar Group pages

3 pages produced in collaboration with members of the Sugar Group (older diabetic Afro-Caribbean women) who meet at the Kath Locke Centre in Moss Side. As part of the larger Community comics project, I worked with these ladies on this strip. All the speech is taken directly from recorded conversations we had. From the transcription we chose the most important dialogue, which I then laid out into speech bubbles. The group then decided both what should be seen in each panel, and how they themselves wanted to be depicted - having seen the childrens work in which they depict themselves as animal characters (partly my influence) the group decided to be roses, a lily, a hummingbird and a butterfly.
The results of the whole project, including all the comics and drawings produced by the youth groups, will soon be available as a PDF.

Click on each page to enlarge.

Community Comics Exhibition

The result of a project I've been working on over the summer in Moss Side. I've been employed to gather responses to the JRF's study on social cohesion, part of the study having been undertaken in Moss Side. Working with three youth groups and one group of older people I've taught comic skills which have then been applied to making drawings and strips about how individuals feel about their area, it's perceived problems and poor media reputation.
I'll be posting the resulting artwork once it's been 'premiered' this week at Manchester Town Hall, plus a short report on the experience.

Bookseller magazine

Scans of an article by Paul Gravett in the Bookseller magazine's special October issue on graphic novels and manga. He's writing about the state of children's comics, and quotes me explaining some of my workshop observations.
Click to view larger -

My best feedback ever

A comment from one of the young participants of a 2-hour Creating Comics workshop at Holt Park Library in Leeds. Really nice group, so will be post a few of their 'jam comics' when I get a bit more time.