Draw with Your Kid, Draw with Your Grownup

I recently taught a class at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco called "How to Draw with Your Kid, How to Draw with Your Grownup." It was full, great fun and we're going to do it again for sure. What a great thing that CAM hosted it!
The point of the class was to get grownups and kids drawing together, because drawing together is healthy just like reading together. Often, though, it's the grownups who will say, "I can't draw," and then the whole idea just goes plunk. How sad - and what a message! Here's my grownup, refusing to do something because he or she might not be good at it. Hm.
So the antidote to this problem is: Silliness. Lots of it.
We played a game I call "pass the blob," although it can also be called a Drawing Jam or a Cartooning Jam. In this game, each person draws some sort of shape and then passes it to someone else to add something - eyes, noses, armpit hair, whatever. Then the drawing gets passed back, or around the table. This can continue until things are looking very strange, like the cow above. There are many variations on this game - starting with two shapes (are they friends?), involving lots of people or just two or three, etc.
When I play this game with just kids it's only a matter of time before there are boogers and armpit hair all over the place. And lots of laughing. Which is fine, and part of the point. You know the game is going well when people are being silly and not very quiet.
When the grownups are involved things are also very silly, although I noticed less armpit hair.
Try this with your kid or with your grownup. It's great when you're stuck at the airport, or done reading a book, or looking for something to do together on a rainy day. The weirder your Jam comes out, the better. Maybe you can give it a name or send it out on your holiday card this year - if it doesn't have too many boogers or armpit hairs.

Masks: Instant Coolness.

I'm teaching a class at a theater right now, and we're doing all sorts of things relating to costumes and puppets and such. One thing we did was make masks. The great thing about a mask is that it instantly changes who you are, no matter what clothes you are wearing or what you look like.
In fact, the transforming power of masks kind of freaks a lot of people out. I mean, who wants to see somebody with a big ol' latex mask with the face of some politician on it? Yuck.
And, fear of clowns might also be related. People you can't recognize even though they are right in front of you. Freaky.
Anyway if you're looking for a super-quick way to be cool on Halloween, all you really need is a mask. We made these with sticks to hold them, but you could certainly also attach them to your head. I also love how you can extend the top to look like flames or a hat or hair or something.

Just a Couple Lines and You've Got a Shark Attack.

It never ceases to amaze me how few lines it takes to tell a story. This one was drawn by a 4-year-old. That flying thing was up there first. He looked at it, then added one line for water and one fabulous attacking shark.
That's all there is, but you can sure see that thing coming up out of the water and snapping at that poor flying thing. Yike!
Cartooning/drawing is a really efficient way of communicating a whole lot of information and detail. You can't convey a whole daily story line or point of view using oil paints. And if you picked one cartoon strip from your favorite paper or magazine and tried to write it out in words, you might be going on for a very long time. I know, "a picture is worth a thousand words." But really, cartoons serve an important purpose in our collective lives because they are a unique way of telling stories and sharing feelings and opinions. Just look at how much satire can get contained in one political cartoon, all understood at a glance.
Simplicity is beautiful.

Zone Out. Please.

Here's a news flash: Your brain is doing unsupervised things. Things that you're not aware of. Silly, strange, creative things.

But there's a problem. It's called noise. Noise from phones, and earphones, and televisions, and Blackberries, and other people chattering on the same stuff. Noise from games, and advertising, and people demanding your attention for their own reasons.

Please, turn this stuff off for part of each day. Maybe when you're waking up and going to sleep. Maybe at lunch. But do it.

No, you can't zone "to" something. Like, zoning to your Ipod. Or zoning in front of email. Doesn't work that way. You've gotta turn it all off.

Hear your surroundings. See them too. We've got this idea these days that a person just sitting is somehow worthless, or should be poked and prodded. I have done this with my kids. In fact, I notice that often kids stop and just stare. I used to get really frustrated with it - but then I realized, their brains are just processing right now. Let it happen. Don't be so pushy!

Give yourself some head space. This is where many of the best ideas will come from. Brenda Ueland talks about this in "If You Want to Write."

It is unhealthy to never allow space to just zone. Don't fill every minute with noise. Because somewhere in between all that stuff are wonderful ideas and stories and experiments and curiosity that you don't want to drown out.

So zone out regularly. Please!

Growing Up Creative 5: Hang out with Talented People

Everybody can think of somebody they know who is good at something. People who are good at something are good for you. It could be piano, or drawing, or writing, or playing basketball. But talents feed off of each other. And what you're really interested in can often also be something you are good at. So encourage your friends to show their various talents. Do you have a friend who has drawn a comic? Someone who has decorated their room in a really unique cool way? Talents come out in all sorts of ways - from the way someone dresses to the way they write poetry. If you appreciate the talents of others, they will do the same for you.

Growing Up Creative 4: Be Professional 100% of the Time.

Everybody's heard descriptions of artists as flaky, flighty people who are not very reliable. They dress funny, they show up late, they stay up all night doing creative things and then sleep all day. They don't have to be reliable because they are "creative."

Huh?

(Okay maybe the dressing funny part is true sometimes.)

Here's a news flash. Many of the best artists and creative people you will ever see are also the most organized, professional people in the world.

Think about what it takes to get a movie made. All those people, sets, props, equipment, lights, cameras, scripts, food, trailers, shooting locations, on and on. Do you think a flaky person can get all that pointed in one direction and end up with a movie? Not likely.

Yet are people who make movies creative? Um, I think most people would say Steven Spielberg and Spike Lee and Martin Scorcese and Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford are just a tad creative.

My drawing table has to be organized. I need to be able to find my materials when I need them. I need to be able to scan my files, and put my cartoons in a database so when someone says, "I want to pay you money to use that cartoon you did about such-and-such," I can find it right away.

So here's the thing. No matter what you want to do in life, be professional. Show up when you are supposed to. Do what you say you are going to do. Be there at call time. Get your drawings in by the deadline. Be someone people can count on. Because it's a lot more fun doing awesome creative things with people who want to work with you, than it is getting passed over because you messed up last time and people don't want to work with you again.

Oh, and if you aren't screwing around with finding stuff and being late, you have more time to be, you guessed it, creative.

Foam Packing Also Rocks.

Okay, I know that we are supposed to be reducing how much packaging and foam stuff we use to ship products around, but let's face it - the day something arrives in the mail in a big box is also the day we get some great stuff to build things with. For example: Foam packing. We just got a bunch of light fixtures and they came with nice big boxes, pieces of foam, and little foam pellet things - all of which can be used to make something.

In this case, my kids made "computers." (Note: I had zero input on this.) I'm not sure how much they consulted with each other, but they ended up with basically the same layout. That pad of paper on top, I'm told, is a "printer." Although my daughter made herself a keyboard with letters on it, and my son chose to "punch" the keys into the front of the computer. He's younger, so maybe that was better for him. Also interesting is the choice to add a "theme" to each computer, one with fairies and one with dinosaurs. They should so sell computers like this! Forget changing the outside color - I want mine with robots sticking off of it.

So, at some point we will recycle all of this, and then wait for the next time we get a big shipping box with interesting packing stuff in it. I guess this would go under the "re-use" part of the three R's.