We were almost done with the setup before my sister came in to tell me that we were in the wrong half of the room.
The meeting space at the St Charles, MO, library had a divider down the middle, pulled back like a curtain. My sister had reserved the space for my niece’s Girl Scout troop, but we were told that sometimes people would use the front half of the room, where my girlfriend and I had set up. No worries–we moved the banner and rearranged a few tables, all to the sound of my favorite Japanese Lofi Jazz.
Since I started doing comic book workshops, I wanted to do something for my niece and nephews. My niece is 9 as I write this blog, and a huge fan of graphic novels like Dogman and The Baby-Sitters Club. She, an incorrigible flatterer, says that I’m the best drawer ever–I want to disagree but on principle, but I really don’t have the heart. I figure it’s better to let her find out on her own, just how much incredible drawing there is out, done by people who aren’t yours truly. She’s taken to drawing me “wacky” with spiky hair, occasionally with green skin like some kind of space alien.
Her Girl Scout troop consisted of about 6 girls. We started off drawing eyes, and quickly progressed to pose drawing. The girls loved pose drawing–kids always do, because it allows them to play the role alternately of artist, creating something original on the whiteboard, or performer, striking a crazy pose for the benefit of their friends. And everyone gets to participate in the magic of brainstorming.
The workshop was 2 hours, but seemed to fly by as we did one wacky drawing after another. By the end I had my niece and one of her friends share the whiteboard, and they diligently drew a line down the middle to demarcate whose side was whose.
After that, my girlfriend and I went back to my sister’s, where we played basketball with my nephews, ate pizza, and danced to the music of Taylor Swift. My niece and nephews are obsessed–I kept busting out outlandish dance moves, at one point pretending to ballroom dance with a stuffed panda. The more I do these workshops, the more my WACKY personality emerges, out of the residue of post-adolescent anxiety over what people might think of me, whether they’ll take me seriously enough. But seeing my niece and her friends inspired to unleash their own personalities on the page has me thinking that seriousness is for the birds. Better to be ecstatic, and see what comes of it.
