“Absurdly or amusingly eccentric or irrational.”

–Miriam-Webster dictionary’s definition of WACKY

When we ask kids to draw, whether at workshops or drawing booths, one word we come back to again and again is the word WACKY.  This is not because we left our Thesauruses at home!  It is an attempt, through reiteration, to evoke a specific mood.  Invoking the word WACKY is one way we create a space to explore creativity and build self-confidence and patience in artists of all ages. 

But what is WACKY?  Like any bookworm, I began with the dictionary.  But ole Miriam-Webster did me dirty on this one.  Rather than something clarifying or helpful, M-W gives me 4 more words you can mix and match without coming to a real answer.  “Absurdly eccentric.”  “Amusingly irrational.”  I find myself wondering: could something wacky be “irrationally absurd?”  What about “Eccentrically amusing?”

If your eyes are swirling around your head, you’re certainly expressing your confusion in a WACKY way!  Another trick, when trying to figure out what a word is, is to think about what it’s NOT!  So picture, in your mind’s eye, what is something that ISN’T wacky?

Maybe you thought of waiting in the dentist’s office.  Maybe you imagined a time you were bored, a car ride with nothing to entertain you.  Maybe you even imagined that feeling of slowly falling asleep, your brain and body calming themselves down after a long, hard day of wackiness.  

What these all have in common is that they are, more or less, every day, normal things.  They are, in general, perceptions without the animation of imagination.  Or maybe it’s better to say, your imagination is trying to recreate things as you think they are rather than how you think they aren’t!

So let’s add IMAGINATION!  The dentist’s office window changes, becoming the porthole of a spaceship.  The car becomes a carriage pulled by unicorns made of ice cream.  You fall asleep, but this time your snoring is the sound of a bassoon, and little Zs come out of your nose.

You’ve just turned UN-wacky things into WACKY ones!  All it takes is a little extra dash of imagination.  Don’t think of things the way you usually see them–ask, them, nicely, to be something else.

Now show us!  Draw that newly WACKY vision on the page!  That’s how we warm up for our comic book workshops, freeing up the hands to draw while the imagination revs its engine.  Create a moment with us, a moment where things that aren’t become just a little more are.  And every time you draw, you bring that moment into the real world, where you can stick in on the fridge.  You can let it inspire the NEXT wacky moment.  And the next…