Elaine Cunningham
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09:34 pm
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Vocabulary: it's not just for writing
When my kids were small, we spent two years in California, and one of the best things about those years was Mission Renaissance, a small art school my kids attended. This was not one of those fluffy, flighty, express-yourself arts and crafts programs. They taught the basics of drawing. There was structure, a defined program. Kids started with "step drawings" of increasing complexity, then they studied and copied famous art. They learned about color theory, perspective, the play of light and shadow.
This approach made perfect sense to me. After all, no one hands a violin to a kid and tells him, "Go ahead and play, sweetie. The important thing is for you to feel good about yourself. Any sound you make will be creative and wonderful." Nuh-uh. Kids learn proper hand position, bowing technique, fingering, intonation. They learn to read music. They listen to music played well. They imitate. They acquire technique in a sequential, disciplined fashion. This system works for music, so why not art?
It certainly made an impression on my two kids. When my younger son was not quite five, I noticed him sitting in the back seat of the car, holding his forearm up and studying it intently. "See how the sun shines on the top, and how my arm gets darker in the middle? When you paint it like that, it makes your arm look round," he explained. The teachers at Mission Renaissance weren't just teaching him to draw; they were teaching him to see.
This is something I have not learned to do; at least, not as pertains to graphic novels. I didn't get the first draft of the short story adaptation finished yesterday, as planned. It's still not finished, but I'm determined to send it off tomorrow morning, which means it could be a very long night. Translating a short story into art suggestions and terse dialog, breaking it down into panels--this is taking a lot longer than I expected, mostly because I'm not in the habit of seeing stories in those terms. I just haven't read enough graphic novels to form a sufficiently extensive visual vocabulary. Without it, I'm having to think things through slowly and laboriously, like a writer trying to tell a story in a language she doesn't speak fluently, creeping along with the help of a dictionary and thesaurus. I am profoundly grateful for an experienced co-writer and a very knowledgeable editor, and with these gentlemen's involvement I'm confident the end product will be a good transcription of the story. But the process, however slow, is an interesting learning experience, as well as a reminder of how much the various forms of creative expressions have in common. Art, music, writing--the sequence is the same: first vocabulary--words or sounds or images or ideas, as well as meaning and subtext and context--and then technique, and then--maybe--creativity.
Tags: graphic novels
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e_cunningham's journal