Drawing Activities with Lynda Barry

In April, I had the pleasure of attending the National Art Education Association conference in Minneapolis. I was really excited because Lynda Barry was going to be one of the keynote speakers. I have been a fan of her work for many years. Lynda is a comic/graphic novel artist, author and teacher and is known for her quirky, autobiographical work. Her raw and expressive comics encourage readers to explore their own creativity through writing and drawing. She has taught creative classes at the University of Wisconsin and encourages the process of play. After an inspiring keynote session, I attended the hands-on drawing workshop led by Lynda in a smaller group.

We had a series of timed drawing activities to loosen up and have fun. The purpose of timed drawings is to hopefully bypass your inner critic and bring spontaneity and playfulness to your drawing.

First we were to draw ourselves as an astronaut in space on an index card in 2 minutes.

Next was 2 minutes, full body, you as an animal.

Then 2 1/2 minutes, you but also a fruit or vegetable.

Finally was 2 1/2 minutes, you in full body as royalty.

Then we had a gallery walk as we walked around and viewed everyone’s work with lots of laughter and delight.

Next was a bacon and egg breakfast setup, with coffee cup, silverware, plate and napkin. The catch was you only had 1 minute, plus you had to have your eyes closed! Drawing with your eyes closed using such a time constraint allows the participant to connect with the joy and freedom of making art, encouraging experimentation, reducing the pressure to create something “good” and developing imagination and memory.

Continuing with the eyes-closed challenge, we then drew a giraffe with spots in 1 minute and a Statue of Liberty in 1 minute!

Another eyes-closed challenge was to draw a full body of a mermaid in 1 minute.

I think the most challenging one was to try to draw a whole skeleton from memory with your eyes closed in 1 minute!

Next was a really cool exercise where we folded our paper into four sections and drew a squiggle in one section. Then we passed our papers to someone around the room and they drew a squiggle in another section. We continued passing and drawing until all 4 sections were filled with squiggles. Then, we passed papers again and we had to turn one of the squiggles into a monster (within a 2 minute time limit). Then we passed papers and turned another squiggle into another monster. We continued passing and drawing monsters until the page was filled with 4 monsters. Then, we passed the paper again so we got a completely different page of monsters. Unfortunately, I lost this paper during the conference somehow so I don’t have that to show, but it was super cool! Here is an example of this activity from her book.

The next step was to take one of the monster drawings that someone else had made and recreate that monster drawing exactly, to copy it on a new page. Then, we had to imagine what the parents of that monster would look like and draw the parents. Finally, we could draw the siblings of that monster. And that’s as far as we got because we ran out of time.

Throughout the whole workshop, we had gallery walks where we walked around to see everyone else’s drawings and it was amazing to see the different styles that can arise even with eyes closed.

These activities are also in her book Making Comics (Amazon Affiliate link used at no extra cost to you), which is chock full of activities and drawings to inspire you and your students’ creativity. These are some of the pages from the book so you can see the kinds of things that are inside.

She also wrote the book Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor which is also really fun! What It Is is another book of hers that I recommend.

Were you able to see Lynda Barry’s keynote presentation at NAEA? What did you think? Have you ever used drawing activities like this in your classroom? Share in the comments below!