September 24, 2020 79
people stop drawing because that’s
when they develop standards of what
things should look like, when they be-
come disgusted by their limitations. As
Barry has said, this is when, for the first
time, “If you’re trying to draw a chair,
you can see that it doesn’t look like a
chair.” And this terrible realization is
a killer for most people. It’s why they
stop drawing.
But how to silence the judgmental
part of one’s mind? First off, she tells
her students to use a nonthreatening,
cartoony style that has no relation what-
ever to reality. This is her way of tuning
out that part of the mind that thinks it
knows how things should appear. She
recommends using a style developed by
her friend the cartoonist Ivan Brunetti:
For the head you draw a circle and for
the body a rounded- off trapezoid. You
make lively spaghetti- like legs and
arms and you form snowball hands.
(Everyone fears drawing real hands. so
why bother with them?) You use dots
and ovals for eyes and lines for mouths.
That way, you won’t even be trying for
reality. Dots and ovals, after all, are
clearly not eyes, lines are not mouths,
and snowballs are not hands.
Barry advises you to use this short-
hand to draw quick full- body self-
portraits on index cards with Flair pens
(the supply list is simple but nonnego-
tiable). Three- minute songs serve as
timers. Then come variations:
Draw yourself as- an astronaut in space
- turning into an animal
- turning into a fruit or vegeta-
ble (no bananas) - turning into a monster.
If you line up your four drawings, “we
see something we could call a drawing
style,” or “line- voice.”
Sadly, most people don’t ever get to
see (or hear) their “line- voice” because
they are cruel to their drawings: they
find their spontaneous productions
“intolerable,” Barry writes. “It’s more
than just feeling ashamed... It’s fear.
There is an urge to destroy the draw-
ing—to snatch it and ball it up, and toss
it.” For such people, Barry has a plea:
“Have mercy on the unspeakable mon-
ster who has no other way to tell you
it’s you.”
Barry treats such primitive drawings
as if they were rescue animals—misun-
derstood, maltreated, poor creatures
in need of protection from their orig-
inal owners. To save them from harm,
she takes “the drawing away from its
maker as soon as it comes into being.”
She has her students pass their draw-
ings to their neighbors or to her. And
then what? “Sometimes I copy them.
Sometimes I draw on them, color them,
cut them out.” As she notes, many of
the illustrations in Making Comics are
“rescued images.” Some students will
be puzzled by why Professor Barry
likes these “messed- up” drawings. Her
response: “There is a real ness in them
that is hard to come by.”
The point of her class is to build on
that “messed- up” stage, to recognize
the line- voice and develop it. For this,
Barry has various techniques: Draw
with your eyes closed. Draw in tandem
with a partner. Draw with two hands
rather than one. And always “keep your
pen moving.” Another exercise (based
on Brunetti’s teaching) requires draw-
ing the same thing faster and faster—
say, a cat, Batman, or Betty Boop: in
sixty seconds, thirty seconds, twenty
seconds, ten seconds, five seconds.
One of Barry’s best tricks is mak-
ing “scribble monsters.” You scribble
something random, then make a mon-
ster from it. “An unintended character
seems to arrive whole from a scribble.
It has a mood and a way of moving and
a disposition toward the world around
it.”
Of course scribble monsters and
inner demons are not comics charac-
ters. They don’t move or talk or have
histories. And tolerating your mon-strous drawings is not the same as mak-
ing comics. On a page titled “Make
Something Happen,” Barry teaches
her students to study their own drawn
characters and guess how they might
act: “Look at how your character is
standing. What are they up to? Where
are they? What’s going on?” Here you
look at your scribbles as beings with
desires and tastes and plans. This stage
of drawing is all about empathy. (It re-
minds me of a certain Ernie Pook lis-
tening to his foot talking.)
In another exercise, students assign
random bits of language (a line from a
poem or song, an item from a to- do list)
to their monsters. Writing and drawing
in this way isn’t always smooth, but
Barry has a cure for getting past men-tal blocks: “If you get stuck, just write
‘tick, tick, tick’ until the story starts
up again.” The point is to lose con-
trol: “When you are lost, there draw
monsters.”This is all fantastic and fantasti-
cally encouraging, but about halfway
through Making Comics I started
yawning uncontrollably. I wasn’t tired
or bored. I simply could not stop yawn-
ing. Maybe I was anxious. After all, I
had already fallen behind the class (by
buying zero percent of the supplies and
doing zero percent of the exercises).
Clearly, I was resisting the things Barry
was asking me and the rest of her re-
mote classroom to do. Also, I don’t like
Flair pens or index cards.
Nonetheless, I found some printer
paper (also required for class) and
bravely dove into some of the exercis-
es—“Scribble Monster Jam,” “Mon-
ster, Draw Near,” and “Draw Yourself
as Batman.” After doing these (with a
ballpoint pen, not a Flair), I was posi-
tive there was more to my yawning fit
than my truancy. Looking at Barry’s
students’ drawings of Batman and
then at my own drawings, I saw that
just about everyone (including me) can
draw some kind of a Batman that pos-
sesses a certain vibe, a “line- voice.” But
when I laid eyes on Barry’s own fantas-
tic Batman, which she had drawn as a
self- portrait—sucking on a cigarette,
slouching a bit, with a slight paunch—I
saw just how much of Barry’s method
may depend on her being Barry. And
I discovered a new anxiety: I’m not
Lynda Barry.
She has a frenzied energy that is im-
possible to match. She spins crazy pic-
tures and words. She tells us that she
makes deck upon deck of index cards
with ideas—people she knows, funny
memories, odd places. She never gets
tired of filling space with lines and col-
ors and words. It’s infectious. There’s
something about her very prompts—
“draw yourself as Batman a. scream-
ing, b. depressed, c. vomiting, d. passed
out”—that is just so very much her.
Even her stuck moments are inelucta-
bly her. As she writes in her book Sylla-
bus: Notes of an Accidental Professor,
“When I start feeling too concerned
that all the words I write be very smart
and about something worthwhile, I find
my urge to write replaced with an urge
to draw monkeys.” Her monkeys have
kerchiefs, glasses, and cigarettes. They
are hilarious and look just like her.
I love the spirit of this book and its
raucous energy; it almost makes me
feel as if I could draw like Barry. But
my demons are not demonic like hers,
and my Batmans are not batty like
hers. They look tentative, worried. I
don’t know how to draw anyone passed
out, much less how to draw Batman
passed out. I really think I need to read
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
to even begin to see what Batman looks
like in full regalia.
I’m not sure whether Making Comics
will make you, or me, a better cartoon-
ist, or a cartoonist at all. But that’s not
the point. The point is just to make you
a more you- cartoonist. And that’s ideal
for the anxious moment we are in now.
As Robert Henri said in The Art Spirit
(1923), “Don’t worry about your origi-
nality. You could not get rid of it even
if you wanted to. It will stick to you and
show you up for better or worse in spite
of all you or anyone else can do.” QLynda Barry’s self-portrait as Batman,
from Making ComicsLynda Barry/Drawn and Quarterlyhttp://www.nyrb.comNATALIA GINZBURG’S
VALENTINO AND SAGITTARIUSValentino and Sagittarius are two of
Natalia Ginzburg’s most celebrated
works: tales of love, hope, and delusion
that are full of her characteristic mor-
dant humor, keen psychological insight,
and unflinching moral realism.
Valentino is the spoiled child of doting
parents who have no doubt that their
handsome young son will prove to be
a man of consequence, though nothing
that Valentino does suggests he will
be. Everything becomes that much
more confused when Valentino finds
an older, wealthy, and ugly wife, who
undertakes to support not just him
but the whole family.
Sagittarius, too, is a story of misplaced
confidence recounted by a wary daugh-
ter, whose mother, a grass widow with
time on her hands, moves to the sub-
urbs, eager to find friends. Bossy and
perpetually dissatisfied, she strikes
up a friendship with the mysterious
Scilla, and soon the two women plan
to open an art gallery. Things do not
turn out well.VALENTINO AND
SAGITTARIUS
Natalia Ginzburg
Introduction by Cynthia Zarin
Translated from the Italian by
Avril Bardoni
Paperback • $15.95
Also available as an e-book
On sale Sept. 15th
Valentino and Sagittarius is the Sept. se-
lection of the NYRB Classics Book Club.
If you join by Sept. 16th, Valentino and
Sagittarius will be your first selection.
Call 1-800-354-0050 or visit http://www.nyrb.
com/bookclub for details.
ALSO BY NATALIA GINZBURGFamily Lexicon
Afterword by Peg Boyers
Translated by
Jenny McPheeThursday, Sept. 24th, 7:30pm EDT
Community Bookstore Virtual Event
JHUMPA LAHIRI and CYNTHIA ZARIN
will discuss Natalia Ginzburg's novellas.
Register for this Zoom event at
communitybookstore.net.