Making Comics—Week 5
Reflections on Week Five of working through Lynda Barry's Making Comics
"Somehow these drawings carry emotion. My friend Dan Chaon told me he thinks images do this. They carry emotion the way the Earth carries its own weather patterns, always in motion, never fixed." (Lynda Barry, Making Comics)
(Note: This post is part of a 2025 read-along of Making Comics for those interested in drawing comics, loosening up their drawing, building creative habit, and working through this book by Lynda Barry. Illustrated Life has a mix of illustrated journaling, bookish things, and weekly “Sunday posts.” You are probably here for those. If you stumbled here, I would start there. Thanks!)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ It was great to see so many of your Face Jam and Photo Booth exercises in the chat! They are fantastic, and I really applaud everyone for working through these exercises, even when they feel awkward or silly or uncomfortable. You are building important skill and comfort and confidence with each panel!
Reflections on Week Five
This is going to be a relatively short write-up for Week 5. I may disappoint some of you because I have broken a few rules this week.
I have been sick with Covid. That matters in terms of the read-along only in that I was not able to keep up with all of the exercises, or with staying analog.
Before I started feeling sick, I did part of the Betty Boop exercise. What a bizarre (maybe disturbing) cartoon. I watched it a few times and tried to draw a few characters from it. I was particularly enamored with the little sailor guy who appears in the ink and, in terms of drawing, the bear-like monster with its willowy arms.
It was right after that that things went a bit downhill for me.
I legitimately could not fathom having what it would take to use pen and paper to do anything. I didn’t want to completely skip the exercises this week, so I decided to do the Character Jam and the "life" diary panel digitally.
I know that’s against the Barry rules. I know that the entire premise of Making Comics is very drop-your-phones-at-the-door-anti-technology, but I felt like I could hold the iPad and do quick sketches that way. I felt like I would get the benefit of doing the sketches rather than doing nothing. So that is what I did.
I had folded a piece of paper into the 16 panels already, so I just imported an image of that page and used the same boxes. The very, very, very small space of the 16 panel page is just so small (and it felt even smaller while sick).
I did my Character Jam sketches that way over a few days. (It was way beyond me to have done all 16 in a row this week.) Then I did the "Your Life Timeline" page using the Daily Diary format, the X page, and a half-page panel, just as I would have done on paper.
Even though I have read through Syllabus several times before and know I have seen the X page, I was thinking the X page was used as a Daily Diary variation, a different way to segment the page. I must have never fully paid attention.
In one of the videos I watched in preparing for this week of the read-along, it really clicked for me that the X is not a different way to quadrant the page, but is, instead, a way to say, "This is a scrap piece of paper. It has an X through it." (I don’t know, conceptually, if that changed anything for me or not, but it’s an interesting idea.)
For the exercise, I picked a moment that probably would never have come up outside of this exercise and decided to go with it. I only have a hair of a memory of this moment anyway. The drawing is pretty sparse, and it raises questions for me in terms of the things that I did and didn’t draw, but the idea of that memory is captured (for me) in this quick sketch. (Using words would help a lot.)
In terms of the exercise itself, I felt like this was a gateway to realizing that there are a number of memories that are clustered or localized in the same area. That was interesting just on a personal content level.
I think in words though, so the translation is still a challenge, but, overall, I felt good about giving it a go this week.
Feeling a bit more clearheaded today, I can see the effects of the week in my Character Jam people. I redid one. But I'll let the rest stand. There are a few here I am interested in playing with as part of next week’s exercises.
I'll admit that the more I worked with these characters, the more I started to feel myself loosening up and trying to solve some of the questions I have about shapes and bodies (things that are really instinctive for some, but I can't picture). I still had some backwards feet this week, some reversed hands, arms growing out of necks, and other oddities. I can laugh though. I can laugh.
Some of you saw that I shared this quote in Notes this week, too. I was really struck by this practice and the sanctity of the feeling:
"When someone reads their story, we draw a tight spiral slowly while we listen. We respond by drawing an image from what we heard, including the full body of at least one of the characters. These 'response drawings' are done in three minutes on index cards. They are silent drawings, and we give them to the reader after we all take a look at them. This is how we 'talk' about the story to the reader and our other classmates and also to ourselves." (Lynda Barry, Making Comics)
To Watch
There are other videos that demonstrate this, but here’s one that walks you through using an X page. In this video, she points out that the X is a reminder that it is a “thinking” page:
For those of you who loved the glass wall from a previous video, here’s one for this week that uses the X page. The X page videos all start with a spiral.
I watched the opening to this again today, and I really thought about the spiral she was drawing and was amazed. I’m a hand propper (terrible habit, I know), so as soon as a spiral requires me to lift my hand, it’s exponentially harder to keep a controlled and close line. That she drew such a close spiral in the air is impressive!
Week 6 Schedule
This is going to look like “not much,” but I’ve looked at this several times, and I think this is a lot for most of us. Given the pace I’m seeing in the group (and I know that four or five people are in sync and a few others may still be hoping to catch up), I think to do more than this will be too much for everyone.
For next week:
Assignment: “Son of Character Jam” (119) — This requires a 16-panel page and four of the characters from last week’s Character Jam. (I initially suggested you might want to pick up a character or two from work shared by others since, in person, this would have been round-robin. But you can totally work from your own characters. There are so few of us in the chat that you may find it more straightforward to use your own drawings. I’ll leave it up to each of you to work out how you want to approach that.) Note that the captions are left BLANK in this exercise. Just do the drawing portion. (30-45 minutes)
Assignment: “Make Something Happen” (121) This involves four 4-panel pages (horizontal panels). On each page, you will use one “Character Jam” character, but this time you will first fully flesh out the scene in panel one and then continue showing what happens “next” in the next three panels. She says 6 minutes for each of the three new panels (after the one with the full scene). Four multi-panel spreads, four characters, and sixteen much-larger panels in all—this one is going to feel different, and I think it’s going to feel like “a lot” for some of us. (~90 minutes)
Extended Exercise: “Basic 4 Panels” (124) Use the format from “Make Something Happen” to draw a simple, progressive (“what happened next?”) four-panel comic—12 minutes. No text. She’s suggesting you need to do this four-panel approach a number of times to get a feel for the timing and movement of it as a structure. You will be drawing four pages like this already in the assignment above, but use this extension as an added push if you have additional time. The character or subject matter here is free-form, real or imagined. It isn’t limited to anyone you’ve drawn or to the daily diary. (15 minutes a day)
The exercises and assignments coming up after these are similar, including variations on the daily diary panels. There is a clear leap from just “drawing a character” to more involved scenes. Buckle up!
How did the week go for you?
Are you enjoying the book!
What are you enjoying most so far about what you are exploring with Making Comics?
Any surprises about your own line, memory, resistance, inner voice?
Please take a minute and comment here — either about your own experience with the week or just noting you read, saw, or skimmed this post.
Then head to the chat to share your work! Sharing is optional, and you don’t have to show everything you did in the week, but when you share something, you will feel more involved in the group. There’s built-in motivation when you participate at that level.
General info for anyone finding this read-along for the first time:
Read-Along Format
All posts can be found here.
This is casual read-along, but some structure will keep us all moving forward together.
Each week we will have a set of pages to read and exercises from those pages to do. At the end of the week, I will post some form of reflection here on the week because that is how I will best work through this book. We can then discuss the week in the comments and share exercises/work in the chat (because the comments don’t allow attachments). I’m running the weeks as Wednesday-Thursday, hoping to post my reflections late Wednesday and have our discussion/chat start on Thursday. So every Thursday starts a new week of reading/exercises.
This read-along is part of Illustrated Life. Thank you for reading. Writers need readers, and I am grateful for every reader!
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Quoted sections with page numbers are by Lynda Barry from Making Comics unless otherwise noted.
Unless otherwise noted, all images in this post are ©️ A. Cowen. All rights reserved.
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I’m grateful for you being here Amy—I’m hoping you’re resting, healing all the way ✨✨✨✨
I applaud you for still keeping up with this even though you were sick!