Drawing Together #40: Do Love

The Drawing Together community convened again on Sunday, July 31. Our session was led by Josh Feder and his three-year old sheepdog, Charlie.

Josh and Charlie are a family psychiatry team from San Diego California with a focus on autism in the US and on trauma internationally. Their cartoon-based approach to helping children impacted by armed conflict is currently scaling up across Northern Ireland with pilot projects in the Middle East and the Balkan regions. Josh spoke at the Vermont Graphic Medicine conference on Sorting out Suicide and he’s the managing editor of the upcoming book Graphic Truths which captures the experiences of doctors in training and practice. Josh and Charlie plan to guide us in managing difficult situations through the use of comics.

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Josh started our session by telling us a little about his work, and his graphic medicine origin story. He described the elements of his drawing style, and explained why each particular element is relevant to its therapeutic goals. He then proceeds to tell us about our first exercise.

Directions for exercise one:

1. Fold or draw on a piece of paper to make 8 panels
2. During the next two minutes of (energizing) music, quickly sketch up to 8 things that you would like to help change.

For our second exercise you will need a pen with a clip.

1. Fold another standard piece of paper to 1/8th size – keep it folded
2. During 4:19 min of (satisfying) music, draw what to do to make a change on one side, and then
3. Draw what changed (outcome of the effort of side one) on the flip side
4. Put the paper under the pen clip, and twirl the pen back and forth – watch the change happen!

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Thanks to Josh & Charlie for a terrific Drawing Together session!

If you would like to share your work on social media, do so with #DrawingTogetherGM. We’ love to see your work!

And if you would like to join a future Drawing Together (last Sunday of every month at 1pm ET) send us an email via this website.