This past Saturday I went to the CAYAS workshop Getting Creative With Youth: Book Arts, Graphic Novels and Fast Fiction.
Book Arts:
Over the course of 2 ½ hours we made 8 books. I have examples and instructions for 2 Accordian books, 2 Origami books, 2 Sewn books, 2 1 page books and a Hexaflexagon. The presenter Anne Bingham walked us through the production of these 8 books, tips on making them cheaply and also had examples of them that she had made and decorated herself. They were exquisite. And easy!
Fast Fiction:
Presented by Meredith Hale, the focus of her presentation was writing programs with teens. She had great ideas for breaking down the writing process and lots of examples of short fiction. I found the hardest task, and only one I didn’t complete, was the 6 word memoir. We wrote haiku’s (which it turns out are not just a 5-7-5 syllable poem), 4 word movie reviews and nanofiction- a short story in 55 words exactly.
Graphic Novels:
David Lasky is a comic book and graphic novel illustrator and his presentation was “Comic Books for People Who Can’t Draw”. He did a quick art lesson- how most drawings are just a simple shapes and lines. He created a round character and said if you can’t draw something complex, just give something simple accruements- like an eye patch and a beard. Thus he created a character called Flap Jack the Pirate. Pictures of the 8 page comic he drew during the session are on the Flikr stream (link below). He also focused on using symbols like a swirly line over a head to show anger, instead of being able to draw an angry face. We all made a comic about fleas because we can all draw fleas.
If anyone would like copies of any of the writing or book making materials please let me know and I will pass them on. And this is a link to a Flikr stream with pictures of Anne’s complete books. They look complicated, but they are really all examples of the 8 books she taught us to make.
http://flickr.com/gp/alwaysovercast/695Zxi/
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