Making Comics—Getting Started
Rereading Lynda Barry with a small group. Here we go!
“Words and pictures together make something happen that is more than good or bad drawing. You don’t have to have any artistic skill to do this. You just need to be brave and sincere.” — Lynda Barry, Making Comics
(Note: this is not a regular post. This 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!)
Hi! Several people have now expressed an interest in working through Lynda Barry’s Making Comics together. If you know others who want to join in, they are welcome.
Previous posts — 1 (floated the idea) and 2 (people jumping in)
It sounds like many of you have read Syllabus or Making Comics before but are interested in going through it again. That’s great! These are books you can return to for a refresh time and again. In addition to building and practicing your skill with sequential art, you will also find some techniques in these books that are useful for journaling even beyond comics.
As I have said to some of you, Syllabus is one of my favorite books. Making Comics is the newer one, and it builds upon and repeats some of the core ideas from Syllabus. I think of it as another semester of Barry’s class with a slightly tweaked syllabus.
You don’t need both books for this read-along. I may throw in some quotes and info from Syllabus, but we will be reading and working through the exercises for Making Comics.
Why Work Through Making Comics Together?
I think there is real benefit in going through a book like this with others. Depending on your background, experience with comics, interest in comics, life story, relationship with memory, and general personality, this book may challenge you in certain ways. You may be trying drawing or drawing comics for the first time. You may have a tough inner critic. You may be nervous sharing your 3-minute comics with others. You may have trouble visualizing the things you will be asked to draw. You may have trouble loosening up and letting yourself “play” on the page.
Doing this with a group of others might seem a bit scary, but I hope that by forming a small read-along community, we will create an easygoing, nurturing, and supportive environment. Within this community, we will be able to offer and find encouragement and accountability. Some of us know each other. (About half of you draw with me on Sundays and already read Illustrated Life.) I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone else.
When we see other people doing the same exercises or struggling with the same exercises or talking about the same exercises, we are more likely to jump in and do those as well.
You can leave your ego and your fear and your perfectionism at the door. This is not a competitive space. Some of you have more experience with drawing (or teaching) comics, and some of you are just interested in exploring this form of line, mark making, and storytelling. That’s totally okay and wonderful. We all start somewhere!
Some of us have a lot of experience with drawing but don’t necessarily excel at drawing the kinds of figures and animals and characters that are a big part of this book. The important thing to keep in mind is that it should be fun. It may feel playful or silly at times, and it may feel uncomfortable at times. I encourage you to just let yourself experiment. There are no grades here.
There are at least 100 ways you can gamify this process (like spending hours on something that is designed to take three minutes). But I hope you will play along as much as possible and see what happens. The more you give into the process, the more you will get out of it. I really believe that.
Depending on your background, experience with comics, interest in comics, and personality, this book will challenge you in certain ways.
Be All In
As we move through the book, we will try to do most of the exercises. (I’ll be posting a list and timeline to help keep us moving forward.) I suggest you think of the read-along as if you were taking a semester class or doing an extended workshop. So instead of sitting down and going through the whole book in a weekend, make this something that you work on over time. We’ll probably do a few exercises a week over the next month or so. (You’ll notice in the intro how much time she tells her students she expects them to spend a week!)
The pace of the read-along may end up feeling slow to you. You might want to just dive in and do that “in-a-weekend” thing. Be willing to let it simmer, to do the weekly exercises, and to keep building your practice. This is also probably not the only project you are working on. Taking into account that many of us have jobs and busy lives, I think breaking the book up so that you have things to work on each week but don’t necessarily have to do something an “exercise” every day makes sense. (There will be a point where you will start making daily diary entries, and those will typically have a drawing component.)
While we will act as if we are signed up for class, we really aren’t. We can take some liberties and work at a pace that builds habit and skill but that is also relaxed enough that you can stick with it.
Timeline
The timeline is a little bit fluid at the start because I didn’t give much lead time. I didn’t spend months planning this read-along. I’m diving in for my own calendar reasons. I didn’t really expect so many people to be interested (although I’m glad you are!). Some of you already have the book. Some of you are in the process of getting the book. I encourage you to check your library.
Week 1 will be focused on making sure you have a copy of Making Comics, gathering your baseline supplies, and reading the introductory pages.
The first part of the book is about fifty pages, and there are only a couple of drawing “exercises" in those pages. Because people will be in various stages of “getting the book” over the next few days, I think it makes sense to just go ahead and start reading this week and have our first check-in next week, maybe Thursday, May 8. I will plan to post my own “Week 1 Reflection” late Wednesday about this first section, and then we can meet in the comments and/or in chat to talk about what we read and share our work. (There are no fixed times for checking in, but I will plan to open a discussion once a week about whatever we did that week.)
Week 1 — Getting Ready
Read through the introductory section, which goes through page 52. There are two exercises: “4 Drawings in 12 Minutes” and the first “attendance card.”
In this first section, Barry outlines the supplies she requires students use. Because we are not in a classroom and not turning everything in, you should feel totally fine choosing whatever tools you want to use.
Here are some of the basics that she suggests:
4 x 6 index cards
Regular 8 1/2 x 11 printer paper
A composition book
Black Bic Flair pens
Uni-ball Vision Stick rollerball pens
(The full list is on page 28.)
(Note: I am someone who draws mostly with fountain pen. Chances are good I’ll use fountain pen for a lot of this, and that’s okay. But I do have a Uni-ball Vision pen on hand. I might also do “most” of my work in the composition book rather than on loose cards/pages. Again, we can take “some” liberties here since we aren’t subject to the class rubric. Do what works best for you.)
What to Do in Week 1
Because the first part of the book is “mostly” intro materials, I recommend you:
Read through the first section and get a feel for her style and her voice
Highlight, tab, or write a quote or idea from this section into your composition book (and plan to share that in the comments)
Draw one or two (or more) of the comics or monsters you see on her pages in your composition book (this isn’t an assignment in the book, but this might be a fun way to warm up since there is a lot of reading in week one — but these pages are also full of playful drawings)
Optional: Note on page 35 an exercise for prepping your composition book (draw your hand)
Think about how you would feel on day 1 if you were in her class
Draw your first attendance card (p 42-43)
Do the “4 Drawings in 12 Minutes” exercise (p 44)
Note: she mentions the “Daily Diary,” but she doesn’t give the format for it until later in the book. You can ignore that for now. (I will talk about it next week and share.)
Think about your name (optional); it might be hard to pull off here, but you could use your class name on your attendance cards
You will notice she talks about Ivan Brunetti’s style of drawing comic figures. Brunetti’s books are great. You don’t “need” Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice to work through Making Comics. (You might want to look at it later. It is a “workshop”-style book of its own.) If you want to see examples of his work, check your library for Aesthetics: A Memoir.
Stopping point: the page before Section 1: Are You My Monster (p 52)
(You will see that she has a system for labeling the exercises and assignments throughout the book. The “4 Drawings in 12 Minutes” is formally labeled as an exercise, and she says to spend about 15 to 20 minutes. She gives really clear time parameters. Use your phone. Use a timer. Play along. These aren’t supposed to yield “finished” pieces of art. These are three minute drawings of things that you may or may not have any idea how to draw out of your head. That’s okay. Just go with it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t spend an hour on each of them.
Have Fun!
So that’s it! This first week or two will be really fluid. So many of you are already “ready” to start that I think diving in makes sense. Next week, I’ll lay out the pages and exercises for the following week. After that, I’ll set up a timeline for the remainder of the book. (I want to see what pace feels right in this context before I put dates in place.)
The read-along will be most fun and successful if everyone participates, keeps up, and plays along.
Chat
We will use the chat feature here at Substack to share any exercises you want to share.
Given the number of people involved, is everyone okay with just using the public chat? It would be the same level of exposure as if you shared your sketches at Instagram, in Notes, or in comments (if images were allowed there). If that makes you uncomfortable, let me know. I still have the option of making it a private chat. (If I did that, it would be private to those doing this read-along and all of my paid subscribers.)
I will post in chat for the first time Sunday or early next week to kick it off. I need to first make sure my regular readers know how to turn chat notifications off.
Toggle On Email for the Read-Along
Tagging all of you in each post won’t be practical. I don’t know that I will send the post each week in email, but in case I do that, you may want to check your Illustrated Life settings and make sure that “Read-Along” is toggled on:
Here We Go
How does this sound? Any questions? Let me know.
I am looking forward to seeing your first attendance cards and getting to know you. Our first chat will give us a chance to introduce ourselves.
Final note:
I am not “teaching” this book. Instead, I am planning to work through the book because I continue to “want” to be doing more sequential art in my illustrated journal. I will be guiding us through the book, but many of you may have more experience than me with drawing comics. That’s okay!
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Am I too late to join? I've returned to my first love, art after retiring as a K-8 teacher. This group community would be so amazing to join. Please let me know. @sunfishrules. Thanks!
I’m excited!!