Make a Comics Journal with Ebony Flowers

Transform memories into single panel sister images by combining journaling and comics with Ebony Flowers. You can pick up a copy of Ebony’s book Hot Comb from our friends at Bookshop, where proceeds will help benefit The Believer and independent bookstores.

Watch a video of the livestream below, and follow these steps to create your own sister images. 

Materials Needed:

1: One favorite pen

2: Three sheets of blank paper

3: One sheet for our warm-up self-portrait activity

4: Two sheets for our Sister Images activity

5: Three minutes of your favorite drawing song

Instructions:

Fold a sheet of blank paper in half both ways (remember your hamburger and hot dog folds from school!). Draw a frame around each rectangle.

Now you have four frames.

Repeat this process with a second piece of blank paper.

And now we begin to create Sister Images, here are our steps using one piece of paper with four frames. If there is time today, we will repeat this process using our second piece of paper with four frames.

Creating Sister Images:

Step 1: Inside the upper left frame, write about something that happened yesterday. Start with “I am…” and write where you are, the date, and your age first. Write for 3 minutes.

Step 2: Inside the upper right frame, draw a scene of what you wrote for 2 minutes.

Step 3: Inside the bottom left frame, write about the first memory that comes to you. Start with “I am…” and write where you are, the date, and your age first. Write for 3 minutes.

Step 4: Inside the bottom right frame, draw a scene of what you just wrote for 2 minutes.

We’d love to see your sister images! Post them to social and tag @believermag. 

This workshop was supported in part by Zappos.