Challenge #27: October 28 Challenge

Taking a Cue from our Fellow Sketchers

Abby's narrative summarized

Miti experiments with perspective drawing

Lauren's dialogue

Christine's narrative

Sandra's narrative in images

Megi's mandala

Andrew's directions!

Starting to plan for our next steps . . . .

Let's go back to Challenge #25 for a moment. In that challenge, you had an Open Sketch, a chance to sketch anything you wished, and then in the blog commentary, you described what you chose to sketch.

There are two parts to today's sketch:

Part #1: Look at the comments under Challenge #25. Choose a sketch that someone else did as his/her open sketch, and complete THAT as your challenge for today. Adapt as you see fit--using a different medium, etc. But try to maintain the spirit of the sketch completed by your colleague. See if you can connect to his/her thoughts and goals as you craft yours in the process of "stealing" the idea and making it your own.

Part #2: Now, start to think about how you would map out 5-10 sketches that you would do after this sketchbook challenge is over. What sketches would you want to do, for challenges 31-40? In the blog commentary section, write out what you intend to establish as your goal for the next 5-10 sketches.

• Do you plan to work in a style more consistent with Judith Moffat; for instance, journaling and sketching about an event, moment or travel?
• Would you chose to focus on a specific thing (pointy people or crystal cities) like Rob Dunlavey and play with that style or thing until you have exhausted it?
• Would you focus on observed things?
• Would you steal someone else's idea from the challenges that have been posted and try taking it in a different direction?
• Would you play with a medium, like the vine charcoal you are receiving? water color? collage?
• Would you reward yourself with a new medium and allow yourself to play with it?
• Would you experiment with styles only touched on--I will introduce you to image transfers in a concluding sketch, might you play with that idea?
• Would you further a narrative or start a new one?
• Would you expand your artistic vocabulary and try another style--working with perspective drawing, for instance, as Miti begins to do above? 
• Would you work to imitate a school of artistic style you admire to see what you can gain from practicing the movement of line and the play of color? 
• Would you toss it all into the air and start from scratch?

Whatever it is you decide to do, formulate 5-10 sketches that you would continue (ideally, daily). Consider this a tribute to this habit you have formed.

Challenge #26: October 27 Challenge

Compose our Stories

Joe's narrative perspective collage

We are down to the last few days of our collective challenge.  Very soon, you will be mapping out sketches for you to work on beyond this structured challenge, but before then, let's turn to one more time at our narrative.

Sandra's galaxy

Megi's collage

Kayla's collage

Compose your story--that is likely impossible since many of you are working with novel-length narratives. So your goal in this piece is to capture the essence of your story -- bring all the pieces we have been circling through into a whole

• Event
• Characters
• Self-as-Protagonist
• Proximity (Narrative Perspective)

Using any medium you wish and any style you wish (collage, water color, drawing, writing a short story, a poem, whatever), craft something that captures the essence of your entire story.

Here is the thing, I'd like to encourage you to work in a medium that is not your standby. So if writing is not your first choice, then maybe you should give that a try. That is what experimentation is all about. If drawing is not your first choice, give that a try. 

Discomfort can often be understood as "bad." Sometimes it is framed as "scarey" or "embarrassing." In some more tough cases, it is framed as "stupid" or "not worth the time." Hmm. It is interesting to think about that. In what ways are these responses defensive in nature. No judgment of ourselves, here. Just curiosity and interest. I wonder why that is the case? When did we learn that the unfamiliar is something to avoid? How did we learn that things should be one way, not another? How can we be creative if we get seduced by the familiar, if we stick with what we like, or know?

Let's reframe discomfort as "challenge." Be curious about which activities cause us discomfort, be curious about why that is the case, and consider using this sketch as a chance to explore that discomfort. 

Given that these stories have become increasingly more known to you, choosing to work in a style that makes you most uncomfortable will give you a chance to explore these reactions.

Challenge #25: October 26 Challenge

Open Challenge

Taking some time away from the narrative to let the story settle in

New materials have arrived. You can pick those up in my office on Monday (October 27) between 10:00 A.M. and 3:00 P.M. If that is not convenient, you can stop by on Tuesday between 9:30 and 10:30 or 3:30 and 5:30. Students in LCS 220 can also pick them up at class time on Tuesday. I will bring them to our class. These materials are going to help us with the last few challenges, so please do not delay picking them up.

For today's challenge, you get to assign one to yourself. What have you discovered so far about how you like to sketch or what sketch is one that has not been assigned that you have been thinking about. Assign it to yourself, right now. Make it a concise challenge with few expectations, other than that you move some medium around on the page.  

The important thing to remember (here) is that you will want to post on the blog comments about what your self-challenge ended up being. This will be very important to TWO upcoming challenges. So do not forget to do that.

Take a breather from the narrative, if you want, try something new, or go back to something old. Your choice.  Make sure to post what you did on the blog comments.

Challenge #24: October 25 Challenge

Square #4--proximity

Lauren's dialogue

In this activity, as we continue to build the story of our community, we are going to think about how close we are to the event.

This will help us to think about our point of view in the story. Many of you are very familiar with point of view and the way to convey narratives/stories from a first-person or a third-person perspective. For others, this might be something we sort of know about, but have not done much work with.

Let's play with different ways to tell our story of our community:

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What would a close up, right on top of the events perspective feel and look like? In the language of story-telling, we might call this a first-person narrative perspective.

Sometimes this first-person is the actual protagonist of the story, other times he/she is a witness to the event or maybe the narrator is telling a version of the story he/she has heard but not actually witnessed. But in all cases, this narrator is speaking in the first-person: This happened to me, I saw this, or I was told about this.

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What would a more distant, not directly involved perspective feel and look like? In the language of story-telling, we might call this a third-person narrative perspective. 

Sometimes this distant narrator will follow the story from the vantage point of one character's mind and thoughts, but still retain the distance from the character (not speaking in the language of "I"), other times this narrator will be a god-like figure that appears to know all and see all (an omniscient narrator), and in other cases, the narrator will try to convey events in a completely objective way (not directly entering the mind of any character, but revealing thoughts and emotions through dialogue and purely descriptive detail). In all of these cases, the narrator is not actually an actor in the story.

There are all sorts of alternative and creative narrative positions that can be considered, too. Second-person uses "you" in the narrative voice, but it is really hard to maintain and there are few well-known narratives that effectively maintain this voice. 

There are lots of great places to spend time thinking about how to construct stories and the importance of point of view to that. One of my favorites is Mieke Bal's Narratology. This is a great theoretical analysis of the different structural pieces of a story. For Bal, ideology is always embedded in the structure of the story. For us, this might mean, that the point of view we choose reveals some sort of philosophical, political, psycho-social belief we feel is essential to the narrative.

You might already have this feeling. You might be saying, "I have to tell this story from my point of view." Or, "this story needs to be told from the young girl in the third row of the classroom who watched Johnny Smith get humiliated by the class bully." On the other hand, you might still be considering various approaches.

For this sketch, you will create a collage of a range of different perspectives you can bring to your narrative, to get a sense of which one feels appropriate to the story and feels consistent with the tone,  feeling, and ideology (belief) you wish to convey.

Always keep in mind the narrative distances between you, your narrator and your characters. You are not directly either your narrator or your characters, even when the story is based on something real. These are your creations. So don't be afraid to play with the possibilities.

• Place in the center of the page a visual of your event. This can be symbolic, actual, etc.  It can be a photo, a cut/paste, magazine image, etc. Again, consider a symbolic representation of the event, rather than a literal representation. Try to use an image that recalls the other visuals you have used to represent this event, but is not a direct replication.  Keep pushing yourself to see the event in lots of ways.
• You will place a series of SIX visuals on the page around this central event, trying to get a sense of what proximity yields in telling the story. These visuals can also be pictures, magazine cut outs, can be symbolic representations, can be shapes, colors, and/or could be words.
• What would someone who is right on top of the story say or look like?  Would they be represented by red? By a jagged or a soft shape? Do you have a character who has lived this story as his/her story that you will speak directly through? Put a visual of that character. Or use words that might describe that proximity: "Too close" or "happily in the middle of it all."
• What would someone who is more of a witness to the event rather than an actual participant in the event say or look like? Would this perspective be more blue, the shape of eyes or a heart?
• What would someone who is telling this story from the distance of time or space say or look like? Would you have a picture of someone some years after the event? Or an image of the location some time later? If 9/11 is the event, would you have a picture of the building of the Freedom Tower?
• What would someone who knows everything, sees everything, can anticipate everything, look like or say?
• What would someone who speaks from the facts, objective description, look like or say?
• What would someone who watches someone else go through this event, seeing things through this character's eyes, following his or her moves, but not directly participating, look like or say?

In time, you will want to chose a perspective to work with, but before we get there, let's play around with what these different perspectives might feel or look like.

Send me some images of these. I am anxious to see them.

Challenge #23: October 24 Challenge

Square #3--fitting ourselves into the sketch

A Dialogue

Some sketches from our developing narratives:

Lauren's character

Krystin's event

Sandra's event

Sandra's character

Megi's narrative collage

Martha's event

Lauren's event

Joe's character

The protagonist of our community

Working ourselves into the narrative is probably both easy and really hard. If there is anyone we want to remain faithful to, it is a character based on ourselves. But we will only limit ourselves in the creation of our character if we insist on verisimilitude. Aim, again, for narrative truth, not necessarily psychological and physical actuality.

So let's try to get at this character called "you" in a more oblique way.  We can try to do that by creating a dialogue. Our goal is to learn about you-as-character by the things you choose to talk about in a dialogue.

Here's the challenge, and again there is a written and a visual part:

• Imagine that you are making a movie of your event.
• In this scene of the film, two characters meet (your character from challenge #22 and "you").
• The topic of the discussion should be the event, but . . . . neither character wants to address it.
• What would they talk about with each other as they circle around this event that is so obviously something to discuss, but they are pulling out every trick in the book to avoid the topic.
• Would this become a funny conversation? troubling? sad? weird? paranormal (in cases where one character no longer exists)? surreal? starkly real?
• What might you have to do to adjust yourself-as-character to accommodate this conversation?
• Make this a relatively developed, though brief, scene that can fill the page with the conversation dialogue. Write it in standard dialogue form, so it looks like a script from a play or screenplay.
• Visually, define the page with images of the things they are talking about, those things that serve as distractions from the event itself. Use collage or whatever medium you wish. This will give you a chance to think meaningfully about what these characters would turn to to discuss when trying to avoid the obvious.

To get started, just let them talk in your head. Don't edit, don't try to force things. Just see what they would do if they, for example, chose to avoid talking about dad's death by discussing pizza, or choose to talk about a murder in the neighboring town rather than discuss someone's new job, or commented mundanely on the Red Sox or the weather rather than address the real issue.

My guess is that this one might need some adjusting and reworking to accommodate all the different types of narratives developing out there. Try to remain true to the spirit of this sketch, but adjust to fit your needs. As an example of such an adjustment, the character you created in #22 may need to be tabled for this sketch and another character might work better. That's up to you.

I am really glad to see how powerful these writing/sketching experiences are for people as you work through these narratives.

Keep the images coming, and thank you to those who are sharing, especially when these images and stories are often very personal.  Please do not feel you must share, but when you wish to, I can speak for everyone, we are thrilled to see your images.

Send to thassele@bryant.edu

Challenge #22: October 23 Challenge

Square #2—Back to our narratives

Today, we are going to recall our narratives that we are constructing, and develop a character “sketch.” In this case, we will work with a creative writing “sketch” or description of our character, and add a visual sketch to help flesh that character out.

Choose a character in your narrative.

Again, remember that we are not aiming for historical accuracy but narrative truth. In other words, a character you focus on may be an actual player in the “real” event that you are exploring, or he or she may not be. Perhaps, the character you create is representative of some emotion or thought or feeling. Perhaps, your story comes from your youth and you do not remember it well: construct a character that can explain this event to your younger self. That person will have known things that your younger self could not have know. You will have to conjure up what those things might be. 

Keep in mind, this is a character (not a real person, even if based on a real person) so you are free to play with the boundaries of what that character knows or doesn’t know.

This person many not have been real, then, but he or she is real now, for the purposes of telling this story.

A Character Sketch:

There is a written and a visual sketch we will be doing:

The written sketch . . . .

There are lots of good templates for character sketches on the inter net. Feel free to google them if you want to elaborate on your sketch. But for our purposes, try to consider the following questions:

Name

Age

Appearance (height, weight, hair color)

The character’s favorite quote or philosophy

The one most important goal in this character’s life

The impact of your community event on this character

The visual sketch . . . .

Continuing our work with collage, look for actual or possible images of what this character looks like. If the character is a real person, you might put pictures of the person on the page (several or one), if the character is a purely imaginary construct, you might search the web for images of what this person could look like, or you could draw the potential character.  And/or you could use both mechanisms—actual and possible physical images of the person.  

Both the visual and the written will appear on the same page as you work through your character sketch. As you do so, draw on skills you have developed and are developing. Consider laying a background or not; etc.

Keep your images and such coming: thassele@bryant.edu

Challenge #21: October 22 Challege

Reaching the end of week #3

Selections from Dunlavey's work

Rob Dunlavey

Children’s Book Illustrator and Fine Artist

Improvisation and spontaneity were the key words from tonight’s presentation.  Bad weather, a USB drive that wasn’t compatible, and an awkward room, set the stage, but sketchers and presenter rose above the obstacles for an exploration of sketching.

Rob Dunlavey reminded us of a couple of particularly important things to keep in mind when sketching:

Don’t make it too precious.

Be quick about it! This was my favorite piece of advice, when asked about ways to avoid making our sketches too “precious” or a mini-masterpiece.

Dunlavey suggested to go outside when it is 10 degrees and sketch something. (That would certainly make me work quickly. I hate the cold.)

Another great piece of wisdom came from Dunlavey’s application of Paul Klee’s famous observation, “A drawing is simply a line taking a walk.”

Dunlavey encouraged us in similar fashion to consider taking a line for a walk on the page. And see where it goes. What travels does it want to make?

Grab whatever is at hand is another thought to keep in mind. He spoke of his own working studio, and that he always has a bunch of things close at hand. He mentioned that he knows he would never get up and go in search of some medium, so he keeps a bunch of items—some we might consider random—right next to him ready to be grabbed when the moment requires: house paint, ink, rags, corrugated cardboard, all sorts of texts, almost empty ink jet cartridges, etc.

Consider your own randomly assorted materials that you put in a pile someplace you usually sketch. Or (and I like to work this way) throw a bunch of stuff into a backpack and just carry it around with you.  A watercolor pan, some random color pencils, a few found leaves for texture: these doesn’t weigh that much.

Yet another piece of advice is to follow some "thing" that captures your interest as far as it can take you. Dunlavey has done that with his pointy people and his crystal cities. These images emerge for him, and he follows them until he no longer is interested. Examples of the crystal cities and pointy people are presented at the top of this entry.

Dunlavey sharing images from his multiple sketchbooks.

TODAY’S SKETCH

Our sketch challenge was as spontaneous as much of the wonderful observations that were a part of the evening.

START WITH SOMETHING

• Put some texture on the page.  Many of us grabbed salt (or I put some on the pages), cell phones, crumpled paper, corrugated cardboard from our coffee cups—anything and scratched a texture onto the page. Placing the cardboard on the paper and embossing our page with that texture.
• Or draw a rough sketch of something in front of you. Grab a chair and just quickly sketch it out: your TV, the cell pone, a tree outside your window. Don’t worry whether it is perfect or even realistic. Get some lines and shapes on the page.

Estefania adds texture to her page.

NOW, TAKE A STEP BACK AND SEE WHAT YOU SEE

• Looking at what you threw on the page, see what images emerge.
• Turn the page a bunch of different directions and see if other images or shapes or things emerge.
• Once something starts to come into focus, start sketching that “thing” out—maybe your drawing of the chair, actually turns into a baseball field, or a pointy hatted person (in the same style as Dunlavey’s work).
• If you can’t see anything, hand your sketchbook over to someone next to you and ask him or her to start pulling out what they see. Once she/he starts directing you into a potential image, see if you can take it on and develop it further. Tonight, Miti handed her page over to Shruti, and Shruti saw a peacock emerging on the page and started drawing it.






Alex's lines and shapes are held up for a
full audience shouting session--what do you see?

• Think of the game you played as kids—looking up at the clouds as they rolled by on a lazy afternoon—remember, you always could see some shape in them—a balloon, a bunny rabbit, something. Same here, what’s on that page. Bring it to life.

A shark! A goat!