The Brief

Use post-it notes or anything you can lightly tack to your earlier sketchbook work and add dialogue to a selection of these to suggest what these ‘characters’ might be thinking.  Are they considering something in the near space?  Think distantly about the future/past or later on in the day.

Musing on their worries or appreciations?  What might be something unexpected they would say?  Redraft any ideas you like so that these are whole drawings complete with dialogue later on in your sketchbook.

My response to the brief

Paging through my sketchbooks, I chose a sketch of a man lying on an inflatable water sports tube. He is resting after using a hand pump to inflate the tube. He is not a sporty person and is outside his comfort zone. He is going to participate in this water sport because his friends want him to join them. 

I came up with a few Post-its that he might be thinking about while lying there on the tube, such as:  “That was enough work for my lungs”, “Inflating this tube was enough exercise for me”, “I don’t like sports”, “I just want to play Call-of-Duty”, “I don’t need a tan and fresh air”, “How can I get out of this one?”.

The most direct and clearest communication of the above phrases would be, “Inflating this tube is enough exercise for me.” It tells you that this person is not sporty and possibly even lazy.  It also depicts the narrative that he inflated this tube probably because someone asked him, and he did not feel like it.

The second sketch I have chosen from my sketchbook is a digital sketch.  I was experimenting with depicting emotions in this sketch while drawing people.

The character on the left (Figure) is joyful and happy, and the character on the right is shy, or contemplating.

For the red character, I have used phrases such as “Summer is almost here!” “My dog is back home from the Hospital,” “We have no load-shedding today” (Meaning: no electrical outages), “It is weekend!” and “I am not sick anymore.”

The green character is thinking about phrases like, “When will I be the bride?”, “Maybe I could meet someone tonight.”, “Green is not my colour.”, “I look like grimy, green and gross algae in this colour.”

The draft in Figure 4 tells us more about this picture by using the phrase “It is weekend!”  We know that it is probably Friday in this picture.  This person had a tough week and is happy because now she can relax.  She could also have something exciting planned for the weekend.

The lady on the right in Figure 4 is dressed in a beautiful dress, which tells us she is at an event or formal function. Her hair is upstyled, and her pose is similar to how a bridesmaid would conduct herself at a wedding. “When will I be the bride” is the phrase that gives us the most information in this instance.

The next sketch in Figure 5 was done at the organic market. It shows a lady taking her lunch break.  Phrases such as, “Coffee is not going to do it; I need something stronger.”, “I wish I could sit here all day.”, “People don’t take me seriously because I look too young”, and “How can a person be so dramatic about furniture?” are thoughts that could be playing in her mind.  This tells the viewer that she is a working lady with typical corporate problems.

In Figure 7, on the right is a lady tying her shoes.  Her bicycle is in the background, so the sketch already gives you the information that she is going to ride her bike.  Here are some of the phrases I came up with: “Riding a bike makes me hungry.”, “I wish it could rain cheeseburgers!”, “What if I had a horse or a dragon instead of a bike.”, “It would be nice to decorate my bike like a Christmas tree.” All these phrases deepen the narrative, which could result in a frame before and after this frame to sketch the picture she has in her thoughts.

On the left of Figure 7, a woman with sunglasses is drinking water from her water bottle. Her thoughts are: “Luke’s maths are becoming too difficult for me to help him.” “Drink, drink, drink enough water.” “I should remember not to drink coffee after 4 p.m. again.” “That late coffee yesterday kept me up all night.” “Five minutes before I have to leave to fetch the kids from school.” These thoughts tell us that she is a mother waiting to fetch her kids. She needs to drink more water and cut down on coffee after 4 p.m. Her kids are getting older, and she can’t help them with maths anymore.

I continued with the Post-it notes in another spread in my sketchbook (Figure 10). I then finished a sketch in my sketchbook using the phrase, “This baby feels like a marshmallow.”  I experimented with cut-outs and materials to make the baby look like a marshmallow to reflect what the woman was thinking.

The left, centre sketch of Figure 11 with the blue background was most successful in achieving a baby with a marshmallow babygrow. I used pastels to achieve the soft texture of the marshmallow. The sketch right, centre, also with a blue background, is the same sketch but with digital finishes to brighten up the whites and clean up some noise that occurred with scanning.  I still prefer the sketch on the left as it has a better tactile quality compared with the blue sketch on the right.

The bottom sketch in Figure 11 with the bright pink is a purely digital version done from scratch, which I also like. It has a fresh feel. Even though the baby doesn’t look like a marshmallow, it still might work because the colour alone is enough to make the connection.

Overall, it was an extremely insightful exercise, which I will use time and again in the future to create sequencing, zines, comics, or purely to get more creative.