Three Panel Project

Marshall's class has been all kinds of awesome. We've really been examining the art of storytelling from all different angles. After the puppy project, we worked on a combined oral-visual project. Each student was required to stand up in front of the class and tell a story (a true one) and make an image that would illustrate the story. I told my class the story of the Great Manhattan Couch Adventure of '08... and true to my very first Nonsense post, this is one of those not-so-great pieces that I promised.


When I first finished the illustration, I was fairly pleased with the image and characters. The crit for this was really rough, and looking at it after two and a half months of school... in short... oy! Of the not-so-great sort... So moving on...

After the oral-visual storytelling project, Marshall challenged us to tell a simple story in three panels with no text, no words, and no explanations.

I wracked my brains for an idea, trying to think of stories from my life, stories friends have told me, historical events, anything really... I sat with the assignment for a few days before even putting pencil to paper to do sketches. Finally after a bit of a bad-feeling-blue sort of day, I finally came up with this:

I know, rather sad...

I wasn't entirely satisfied with the idea, nor with the art itself. At this point (week 6 or 7) I was trying out different ways of working and rendering final pieces and attempting to mix ink lines and paint. Again, not totally satisfied with the art, so I kept working. (Making more work for myself, as you will see over and over again, has become a bit of a recurring theme...)

After I finished that first set of three panels, I sat down at my drawing table to think and found a small unfinished doodle that I had been meaning to finish. Rather than give myself a headache, I sat down to play with the doodle and do some work solely for myself. When I had finished painting over my doodle, I realized that I had a character who was begging for a story.

So I gave her one: