Okay, imagine this: you’re snuggled up in bed, cozy in your jammies, and about to pick out a story to read. Maybe it brings up some memories right? Or not, whatever floats your boat. Anyways, if you haven’t gotten the gist this is about stories or wisdom tales specifically. Wisdom tales are actually a lot like parables because they are generally short stories that have some sort of moral or religious lesson. My language arts class made comics about a specific wisdom tale of our choosing. I picked a story called Empty Cup Mind which is a tale from Japan.

The story goes like this: Once upon a time there was an arrogant young student who had traveled far and wide to study. He came to a wise master to see if he could add to his knowledge. The master said okay and invited him in for tea. As the master was pouring the tea he let the cup overflow and the student was furious! “What kind of wise master spills tea!? Can’t you see that the cup is full?!” The master told the student that his mind was so full, just like that cup, and that he should come back with an empty cup mind if he wanted to learn. The moral of this story is to always keep an open mind. I chose this story because this year I decided that I wanted to be more open minded and I thought that this story really connected to that. Also, this is just a really fun story to tell.  

Drawing comics certainly isn’t exactly my cup of tea, pun intended, by luckily for me Mrs. Donnelly had backup. Brittain Peck, a professional artist, came to our school and taught us the basics of drawing. He talked about how to use simple shapes to depict characters and how to use colors to convey emotions. In his example, he depicted Little Red Riding hood as a little red triangle and the big bad wolf was made up of a few different gray shapes. I really took to the basic meaning of simple shapes and so all of the bodies and faces are all just circles and ovals.

The apps that I used to make my comic were called Sketchbook and Comic Life 3. Here are a few tips for using Sketchbook: use layers to your advantage, use the fill tool when you can, and explore the different brush types and textures. Here is a tip for using Comic Life 3: always make sure to make it your own because the pre-made templates can get you very sucked in and so that causes you to not add your own personal flair. What is something that you have done to be creative recently?