Exercise: Using basic narrative structure

Brief

‘A beginning, a middle and an end’ is perhaps the first story structure most people encounter. Whilst this is a very basic story arc, it works as well for beginning to think about developing stories in pictures as it did for learning how to do them in words. It is the gateway to beginning to play with time and sequence within your work. Even if you choose not to create sequential illustration and stick with single images (eg. for editorial or more painterly purposes), asking simple questions such as, ‘what happened before?’ or ‘what happened after?’ is a useful approach to shift, or throw the perspective, you choose to draw your images from. Once you’ve established how to get more from your work using the simple ‘beginning, middle and end technique you can also begin to consider more complex plot structures ,which simply just generally consider more stages.

There are three tasks for your final exercise. You will need as a minimum a pencil and rubber alongside your sketchbook for these. If you have tracing paper, access to a lightbox or carbon paper, these are all tools that might help speed the process up. However you can gain just as much (if not more) from the task by redrafting from sight. Look to find a method which works best for you and suits your resources.

Take a single image from any point in your sketchbook so far and duplicate the image three times, on a new page using pencil. Next, alter two of the images by rubbing out and redrawing elements to create a beginning, middle and end-sequence. This could be as simple as choosing a scene where an apple falls from a tree, or a person walks across the page. The important thing to consider is how you alter the image to reflect these different phases of the sequence. Take the same, or another drawing from your sketchbook and repeat the same task. This time when creating your beginning, middle and end, change the passage of time across three images to a different unit of time. If you drew something in ‘real time’ you might want to try imagining the same scene changing over hours, days, seasons, centuries or from prehistoric age to now. What elements of the scene might need to change depending on the time passage you are trying to narrate and what signifiers of time passage need to be included in the scene? For example you could think about changes in the weather, how the subjects in your drawing move, decay or grow over periods of time.

Finally, imagine a different possibility for the shape and form of one of your earlier drawings by morphing it into a changed shape, using a series of drawings to get there. Could an object take on a human form? A flower or plant unfurl and complete a life cycle? A blob change shape depending on how it interacts with other objects or the frame of your image? Use your imagination to be as realistic or fantastical about your changing form as you like

Initial thoughts

Something I have had experience with recently is storytelling in art, my last elective I explored Graphic Novels and I was able to create a 5 page comic with character designs, mind-maps and mood boards. But I've always had Pinterest to take all my inspiration from, so it was refreshing taking inspiration from my sketchbook where I took it everywhere I went.

The first idea

I was flicking through my sketchbook and was a little stumped, I didn't want to make anything too serious or elaborate that I've done previously.

That's when I saw this little doodle of my cousin's dog, Albie!

Cousin's house, doodle of their dog

I laughed when I saw it since it looked like a potato, and that's when it hit me...

Magic Trick

I used baking paper to initially draw out Albie the pug and made it less of a form for the second and then a blob for that last one to give it that potato look.

The second idea

I wanted to do something that involved time, showing something as time goes on and I found two sketches that I wanted to use. One was from the coffee shop, and the other was for a practice of drawing.

Sketching face challenge

Coffee shop sketching

Growing

I ended up using some coloured pencils to make the drawings pop more, and at first they were all going to be one colour (one red, one yellow and one blue), but I felt an instinct to colour the oldest in all the colours; how our experiences change us but stick with us and how our younger selves stick with us.

The third idea

Animal drawing class

There was one more illustration I had to do, and it had to contain a beginning and middle and an end; so I wanted to explore the concept of a walking cycle, instead of humans, I wanted to do this cute bear I drew when I was doing a class on drawing animals.

"Walking Cycle"

Reflection

What I enjoyed with this exercise is being able to looking back at my old work and seeing something as small a pug doodle and thinking of a potato. Or seeing lots of people and thinking deeply wanting to show a progression of age and the inner meanings of growing old. Or a simple bear and wanting to (attempt) a walking cycle.

It's a short exercise since I've explored this topic before, but I feel like I was able to take a step back and chose simpler narratives, rather than exploring something so elaborate with character designing and written mind maps. Just exploring my sketchbooks has given me so many more ideas, which is so inspiring. I feel like these are already so much more better than anything I've made in my last unit, and I think that's down to actually observing what I'm drawing and thinking creatively.

Next time I would like to fully flesh out comic ideas with the inspiration from my sketchbook.