Helllloooo GUT!
It’s Day 6, and you have been drawing every day for almost an entire week. YOU ARE AMAZING.
How is the week of play treating you? Are you still imagining different uses for circles?! Are you noticing a bit more ease in your hand, mind, and/or heart? Did you smile at least two times while drawing over the past two days? If yes, high five. If not, please check your pulse. (Rude, Wendy. Rude.) (Sorry. But, seriously. Check.)
A few people have mentioned the impact of the ten-minute limit, so I wanted to address that real quick. The point of the timer is to create a safe container to help you let go of expectations and worry about being “enough”, while supporting your burgeoning drawing habit. If it’s working for you, awesome. If it’s stressing you out, then as Art Auntie Kathleen says, “Toss it out the window.” You can also try using these GUT-member-made playlists as timers. Drawing to music is the best. When the playlist is over, pencils down.
Okay, less is more. Let’s keep going. Today we are doing a fun classic that’s been handed down through the ages. Or at least from cartoonist Chris Ware to Ivan Brunetti, Ivan Brunetti to Lynda Barry, Lynda Barry to me, and now me to you.
The comic artist and educator Ivan Brunetti wrote a slim and incredibly useful bible on cartooning called…
Cartooning is a brilliant guide to sequential visual storytelling in 75 short pages based on a class Brunetti teaches. Below is one of my favorite pages — all about expressive eyebrows. (See below how Brunetti’s caption cites Chris Ware with reverence? That’s how we do. In a time of grab-and-go on the internet, it is essential we cite our influences so others can benefit from them, too. No creative hoarding, please.❤️)
Lynda Barry’s book Making Comics is much like Brunetti’s Cartooning in that it’s a written translation of a class on comics she teaches. But of course, it is entirely Lynda.
At the start of each semester, she steals a version of the cartoon character Brunetti teaches and uses it to kick off her class.
And so, dear friends, the GUT and our 30 Day crew will follow suit. Today we will steal Lynda’s theft of Ivan’s theft of Chris… etc. (Shout out to Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist. Always love to give the book STEAL a plug. And good news: Austin’s got a new book coming out this year!)
Today we draw our own fun, silly, ridiculous self-portrait characters. (Foreshadowing: These may or may not make a return later in the 30 days...Mwahahaha.)
And with that…. Pencils at the ready…
