For the past few months, my Language Arts class has been reading the wisdom tale genre as well as making comics. A wisdom tale is a type of story which teaches lessons or morals versus primarily entertaining the reader. The comic we made was intended to briefly summarize a wisdom tale we had read.
For my comic, I chose The Smuggler because the ending of the tale was hilarious. The smuggler is about a guy who walks up to an entrance of a market with his donkey and asks to go in. The guard thinks he is suspicious and doesn’t let the man pass unless he can search his donkey. After searching and searching, the guard finds nothing and lets the man pass. This happens again and again until the guard retires. A few days and weeks pass after the guard retires. When the retired guard goes to the market, he sees the odd man who he suspected was smuggling something into the market. The guard goes to the smuggler’s stand and asks him what he was bringing into the market for so long. The man smiles and exclaims, “Donkeys!” Is it not ironic that the guard searched what the man was smuggling in? The moral of this story is to look at the big picture and be observant of the small details.
Before our class started this comic blog post, we had local artist Brittain Peck come in to give us tips on making our comic. Some of the tips this artist gave us were simple drawings can still have a big impact. Drawings can also have a deeper meaning. The artist provided images of his own work to demonstrate these concepts. One example was an illustration of a child walking towards his belongings falling off a wooden plank. The drawing was simple yet effective, while also resembling a serious topic on the downfall of childcare. I used his simplicity and artistic guidance to make my own comic.
The tools I used for my comic were Sketchbook for the drawings and Comic Life 3 to create the panels. My favorite tools in the Sketchbook were the bucket tool, which will color in any area, the lasso, which you could use to move things around in your comic, and the eraser because I messed up a LOT. I really enjoyed learning about wisdom tales from the lessons they teach to how simple drawings can have a big effect on people. Another thing I’ve learned is different ways to make art with software tools. Wouldn’t you like to make your own wisdom tale comic too?