Draw your day as batman

Lynda Barry is one of my biggest influences when it comes to teaching. Her books, Syllabus* and Making Comics* are wonderful resources for inspiration and for helping you get into the practice of drawing and writing every day. I have gone down the rabbit hole of searching for every video, podcast and book she has done. I highly recommend you do too! You will love her.

Did you miss me last week? I finally caught covid from my daughter. She coughed all over us for two days before we found out she was positive. It was a complete shock really - I honestly didn’t think we would get it! Oh naive Denise! We are all healthy and recovered now, but during these past few weeks, I have not had one ounce of motivation to draw or put together this newsletter. Luckily, my energy returned and I’m excited to show you one of the last warm-up drawing assignments I did with my students before summer break started.

In Making Comics, one of Lynda’s drawing exercises is to ‘draw yourself as batman doing something you did in the last 24 hours.’ Before we jumped into drawing ourselves as Batman, I asked the students to draw Batman from memory, then I showed them an image of Batman to see how close they were. There is something really wonderful about drawing a character from memory. I quite like how unique the character can end up looking. Then we drew 4 panels of our day. Here are my results:

I think I would make a pretty amazing Batman. Your turn to draw your day dressed at Batman!

-Denise

(Originally published on my Substack Newsletter, Playtime)