A few weeks ago, I had the greatest time volunteering at my daughter’s second grade classroom. I brought in some Unearthed Comic books and talked to them about what it is I do (omitting how I curse when I stare at blank pieces of paper). I walked through my books, showing them about how to formulate a comic.
Then, I had all of the kids practice the sketching process of:
- sketch lightly in pencil
- ink over the light pencil
- erase the light pencil, leaving the ink behind
This is always my favorite thing to teach because it proves that mistakes are allowed (and shows that everyone makes them).
The next thing we did is draw faces. I found some silly facial expression chart on the internet, but only realized once it was up on the screen that some of the comments below the faces were not school-appropriate. So I was able to practice some quick-thinking and inking, and the teacher and I blacked-out those asterisks and such.
After that, we started assigning human personalities to inanimate objects. We started with a window. Some of the comments blew my mind, such as “Dear window, why are you in such pane?” (Puns and second graders go well together, BTW). Here are some of their works:
We ended the session with me talking about how I use comics to get out my emotions. Sometimes they aren’t funny at all and I have to work through them. But, that is also the process of life with difficult things.
All in all, it was a fun time and I hope they’ll invite me back.