Attendees: David Alvarado, Kevin Budnik, Angela Caggiano, Pete Clodfelter, Chris Dazzo, Nick Drnaso, Sanya Glisic, Betty Heredia, Erik Lundquist, Marieke McClendon, Jeremy Onsmith, Ness Rago, Naji Sierra, Matt Soria, Carl Zeller.
Documentarian: George Burnett.
Ringleader: Ivan Brunetti.
Our first week got off to a good start, with 15 attendees participating. We started with variations on two exercises from the Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice book. I asked the group to suggest some words, things we might like to draw today. We made a list and I chose some promising-looking words as the basis for our exercises.
First, we drew ever-quicker sketches of three items: Santa Claus, a unicorn, and a bathroom.
Second, we went around the room, round-robin style, and everyone said a word (person, place, thing, idea, etc.), and we had to draw that word in about 10 seconds. This second exercise took about 45 minutes.
Second, we went around the room, round-robin style, and everyone said a word (person, place, thing, idea, etc.), and we had to draw that word in about 10 seconds. This second exercise took about 45 minutes.
After a short break, we began our third exercise. We chose another word from our list of suggestions ("monsters"), and we had to draw 100 of that word in 30 minutes. So, 100 monsters in 30 minutes (could be 100 different monsters, or the same monster 100 times, or what have you).
This exercise was admittedly a poorly planned experiment; the basic idea was to force a sort of desperation as a means to jot down some unexpected shapes. The number of drawings and the time limit were somewhat arbitrary. Few people, understandably, got past 50 monsters, even in 40 minutes.
Jeremy made a good suggestion to improve the exercise: make it 30 drawings in 30 minutes. Since many people felt that, in the first exercise, a sort of "sweet spot" for the sketches was at around 1 minute, a 1:1 correlation would make sense. So, for those of you playing at home, try 30 drawings in 30 minutes.
Next, we looked over our drawings from the day. For our fourth and final exercise, we had 20 minutes to make a new drawing in some way inspired by, or riffing off, one or more of our sketches.
The final sketch could then perhaps serve as the starting point for a whole new drawing, or a more finished piece, if anyone wanted to continue working at home.
That was the week that was.
We also voted on next week's project; see the following post for details.
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