A few weeks ago an illustrator named Brittain Peck visited our school and showed us some of his drawings and tips for drawing. A while after that our Language Arts teacher assigned us a project to make a comic book. We had been reading a book called Wisdom Tales from Around the World. We were keeping notes in a Google Slide and every day we would read a few of the stories and put the name of the story, where it came from, and the moral and summary.
After a few weeks, we had a test where we wrote two essays about the wisdom tales along with a summary of one. Wisdom tales are like fables. They have morals and often explain something, such as a feature of the land. The wisdom tale I chose was The Red and Blue Coat. It comes from the Congo in Central Africa and is about two friends and a prankster.
This is the story: Once upon a time there were two friends. They lived across from each other in little houses. One day they were both in their gardens when a man in a beautiful coat went by. This was no ordinary coat, it was red on one side and blue on the other. When they both saw it, they both saw different colors. Later one brings up the coat and mentions it being red, the other disagrees. They start fighting and the same man appears. This time he lectures them about perspective.
When visual artist Brittain Peck visited our school, he shared some tips about drawing. One of them was using shapes to convey emotion. For example, you can make a square, now color it blue, and now make it a sphere. Now that conveys sadness (I hope). You can also make entire objects or people out of shapes. Triangles can convey strong emotions while circular and dull shapes are weaker emotions.
If you’re ever using the Sketchbook app, you can press the button with those shapes on it and it will allow you to make lines, squares, and circles. Also, if you’re using the fill tool and it covers the entire screen, just use it on the bottom layer. If it’s on the upper layer everything below it will be covered by the fill. You can also dull colors by using light grays or certain tools.
There are a lot more stories in the book that we just either didn’t read or nobody made a comic on. If you ever have nothing to read I would recommend checking them out.
So remember, if you’re ever stuck, try changing your perspective.