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In Lynda Barry's book "Syllabus," she requires her students to have a book by Ivan Brunetti as a resource.  It is called "Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice," and that is what arrived in my mailbox next.  It is a course in cartooning in 15 weeks.  The last time I tried drawing anything that wasn't observational and realistic, was when I was about 6 and decided I wanted to be a cartoonist.  I didn't know there was such a thing as an artist, but I saw cartoons in the paper and knew someone made those.  I had a how to book; I can still remember it, and just found a reprint on amazon.com: "Ed Emberely's Drawing Book: Make a World."  It was first published in 1972 and was oriented horizontally instead of vertically.  I loved this book.  I took it everywhere with me, and sat and drew while we watched TV as a family. I didn't even remember that until now.  So one night while we were all watching the "Avengers" again, I pulled out the desk lamp and the book.  It doesn't take long to get through it, and after a couple of evenings, I pulled out my sketchbook to start on Week 1 drawings.  The first exercise was to draw a car in different time intervals with each interval getting shorter. it is so very hard to make these drawings without any judgement....because I am terrible at them.  So you just have to be terrible and move on.  The second page intervals got even shorter. And then the second exercise was to draw a page of cartoon characters from your memory, but I couldn't even remember a page's worth.  The third exercise was to make a grid of 100 squares and make a five second stream of consciousness drawing for each square.  I didn't make the grid and I didn't get that far.  It was weird and uncomfortable and almost fun.  Of course there hasn't been any time since to practice.  I know it would do me some good.  I think I will start with one exercise a day.  And maybe practice Ed Emberley's style as well.

Written by Niki Havekost On June 3, 2016