“It does,” I say. “And if I audit a class, there’s no grade, right?”
“Auditing is for ‘enrichment’ only.” She uses the air quotes again. “If you want to be graded, you have to apply for a tuition waiver—”
“No grade,” I say. “Enrichment sounds good.”
For the next five minutes, while she clicks around various digital forms and spreadsheets, I begin prying open a door I shut years ago.
36
I don’t have any art supplieshere, but I create some quick sketches on a yellow legal pad the night before the first class. I need to practice. Shake off the dust. Maybe I’ll impress myself by being just as skilled as I was at eighteen.
But not having completed a drawing in years, I’m about as skilled as I was ateight.I have trouble coming up with subjects—my hands tend to autopilot to the same characters, that same stupid helmet, the same poses I got so good at replicating.
I toss the legal pad aside and hope that my ability to draw capes will prove handy in a class about comics.
The next evening, when I walk into the classroom, I find crayons, markers, and butcher paper on the tables. It’s a perfect setup for Kira. I take a step back, wondering if I’ve wandered into some kind of childcare program.
“You’re in the right place,” says a woman with long gray braids, a nose ring, and marker-stained hands. She looks a little older than my mom. “Sit down and grab a marker. It looks like it’s set up for a kindergarten because we are going to draw like five-year-olds, which is the best way to draw. When you try to draw like an adult, the result is some of the most boring art you’ve ever seen.”
When nearly every seat is taken, she launches into more of a manifesto than an introduction.
“Everyone in this room issupposedto be here. You are all welcome in this art class, even if you don’t believe you can draw or even feel comfortable drawing. Maybeespeciallyin that case.”
She introduces herself as Peggy, saying, “Donotcall me Dr. Silva, because that’s my ex-husband’s last name and I don’t want to hear it.” She turns to a whiteboard and begins writing out the alphabet.
“If you ever learned how to write alphanumeric characters, you can draw.” She points at the board. “These letters? They’re drawings! You belong here, even if no one ever told you, ‘Hey, you’re really good at that, you should be an artist.’ Being good has nothing to do with art.”
I feel pierced through the heart by this statement, even though she’s speaking to nearly forty people.
“You are going to feel so comfortable drawing,” she says, “that you won’t need drugs. Starting tonight, drawing isn’t going to be this intimidating thing that makes you feel incompetent.” She claps her hands together, making a few students jump. “Starting right now, drawing is your comfort zone. Drawing is where you go to play with ideas and explore them. Drawing is where you go to get all that spaghetti out of your head and onto the page. Drawing is where you have a conversation with yourself and anyone else you want to talk to.”
I think of the ever-growing list of people I feel desperate to communicate with in any medium.
“Now, maybe you took a comics class because you want to draw a more realistic Spider-Man. It’s hard to shape the hands, right? With the web shooters? And the fingers?” She demonstrates the iconic hand pose. “Well guess what?” She slaps her hand down onto the table. “Drawing realistic hands is not the point of comics. Drawing ultra-detailed faces is not the point of comics.” I feel a nervous pang in my stomach from being called out, left and right. “And if youarethe person who came here to learn that—and there are always a couple of you—do not plot your escape.Stay in your seat. Because you probably need this class more than anyone.”
She tells us to pick up a marker and start scribbling as she keeps talking.
“Young kids understand characters. There are characters all around us, all the time. Some of them are fictional and some of them are real. And from a very early age, we compare them to the other characters we know.”
I find myself doodling on the butcher paper with a big blue marker. It feels mindless until I look down and see that the figure I’ve drawn bears a strong resemblance to one of Kira’s original characters. I’m not sure it’s because she and Nick are deeply ingrained in my mind or because I truly amthatderivative.
Fortunately, Peggy throws out some prompts. We draw snakes with our eyes closed. We draw self-portraits as raccoons and vegetables and Spider-Man.
We do about a dozen different kinds of self-portraits. And for the first time in years, I draw versions of myself that aren’t my practiced variations on Lydia Deetz. They’re not the kind of drawings I would proudly present to my dad or my art teachers, but they’re communicating…something. At least they’re not “derivative.”
As the two hours dwindle to a close, Peggy tells us that we will each need a composition notebook. Filling it in with comics about our lives will be part of our semester-long project.
Someone raises their hand to ask about the type of notebook. Should it be a Moleskine of a specific size?
“Fuck Moleskine.” Peggy shakes her head. “As long as it’s mostly blank and has at least thirty-two pages, you can use any kind of vessel you want. It’s not about the paper. It’s about making your notebook a location where you go to discover things and express all thatstuff.” She gestures as if something’s spilling out of her chest. “Your notebook isn’t precious. It’s where you’re free to change your mind as much as you want.”
As luck would have it, I still have a brand-new package of erasers, which is the perfect tool when you need to make a change.
37
I fill a lot of notebooksover the semester. Some have a clear theme and intention, while others contain random thoughts and ideas. Characters who are based on people I love or can’t stand. Sometimes I draw the people I can’t stand as potatoes or radishes. Mostly root vegetables.
In class we do these timed exercises with bizarre prompts, and because I don’t have time to think and strategize, I draw in this wild style that looks completely different than the obsessively labored drawing of my youth.
