Comic Descriptions

Find a comic book you really like, and select a page or two. Write what happens on the page (or pages) in plain text. Ask a fellow comic illustrator to do the same with a comic he or she likes. Now trade your written descriptions. Draw your friend’s description. This exercise, while it may seem fruitless, is perfect for improving your storytelling abilities. You’re interpreting someone else’s words. And what’s better, you can compare your work at the end to another version of that same written description. Not only will it serve as drawing practice, it forces you to analyze someone else’s drawing as well, so you can see how another artist solved the same drawing problems and handled the same material.