I feel that what I have in my bag is not incredibly representative of who I am as a person because I don’t carry very much and what I carry is relatively common. I included my notebook, calculator, pepper spray, charger, and eraser, which I’d say are very common items. I also keep my art project for my French class in my backpack because I haven’t had a chance to take it out yet. French is something that is important to me and something that consumes a lot of my time, so me carrying around the art is telling of that. I also carry athletic tape and scissors in my bag. I am a track and field athlete and my friends always need me to help tape them in places they are sore. This says a lot about how much my friends mean to me and my athlete identity. I chose to have the background be the main subject of the piece which I think sets the mood. It wasn’t super challenging to do this assignment, although it did make me realize I might want to carry more in my backpack.
I chose to depict a student who says they’re going to study for just a bit more, but ends up studying into the late hours of the night and ultimately falls asleep while reading. This was the topic of my comic because more and more, I’ve seen myself and my peers fall into this pattern of studying and crashing while studying and its been something that’s been on my mind recently. When crafting my narrative, I knew there were going to be three panels, so I wanted to depict something that is a clear 3-step process. As for the composition process, I wanted to make each panel as identical as possible, so I started by drawing the same background in each panel and then drawing the student. It was challenging to think of a scene that was small enough in scope to have only 3 panels, but also substantial enough that it tells a story. This was unlike anything I’ve done this semester- I’ve never drawn my own comic and had to think of my own comic idea. It was a new and refreshing experience because I could use multiple modes of media to depict a story and I enjoyed that.
In my writing, I discussed how despite both writers of “Stitches” and “Spinning” diving into their complex emotions through unique angling, each author reacted differently to them which gave a deeper insight into who the authors are and how that has shaped the writing of their book. In “Spinning” David can be seen going through a turmoil of emotions but eventually accepting those emotions, which is shown through the growth seen in his narrative. In “Spinning” Tillie also goes through major emotions, but her actions of numbing her emotions show her lack of full emotional healing, which crafts the narrative as still unfinished or not fully healed.
Tracing and annotating two pages from the books was a new experience for me since I am not used to annotating panels or even just visual items so intently. The actual tracing process was rather simple since it didn’t require many artistic skills, but the annotating, after getting the hang of it, helped me understand the page I chose thoroughly because I was looking at my details. These details, whether big or small, offered a unique perspective as to what the author was trying to convey with that specific choice. Overall, by both tracing and annotating these pages, I was able to see that the visual aspect of the page served of equal importance to understanding what the authors were trying to communicate.
Since I had to write my ABT thesis at the end, instead of in the beginning like I’m used to, I had to make some slight adjustments to my overall writing process. Instead of already knowing what my bigger picture is, I let my ideas and claims slowly develop and grow off of each other. This helped me develop a solid thesis since all three paragraphs naturally showed the deeper meaning.
I feel that this assignment helped me get closer to this secret language since it made me switch up my methods of writing and developing ideas. This switch in my overall writing process allowed me to understand the two author’s message at a deeper level since I wasn’t only looking at their verbal choices but their visual and artistic choices as well. Prior to finishing these books, I knew that the author of “Stitches” was writing his book as an older adult and Tillie was writing hers as a younger adult, but after analyzing these pages, it can be seen that their different stages in life affected how they wrote their narratives. David finishes off his book with a sense of reflection and having finally healed, which aligns with the fact that he now is a full adult living his own life. Tillie finishes off her narrative with putting herself first for the first time, which shows that she is growing but not necessarily fully emotionally healed which aligns with the fact that she is writing this narrative at a young age when these memories are still fresh.
Analysis: https://classysweets2dd119bde5-msqzr.wordpress.com/2025/10/18/healing-in-panels/
Prompt:https://engrd101f25.davidmorgen.org/assignments/tracing-pages/
Thesis: Both comics express emotions through assigning value to inanimate objects and nonlinear sequencing of the panels, but they have different underlying conflicts; therefore, Walden focuses on her own perspective, while Small attempts to explain the actions of others as well as his own.
The essay argues that the different central conflicts of the two comics caused the different emphasis of perspective.
It was a bit difficult tracing the pages because both comics employs a lot of shadows and bright/dark contrasts. I did not capture a lot of that kind of details in my trace. Also the scanning did not work too well either. Therefore in my essay I used images from the original illustrations instead of my trace. Before the annotation, I read Making Comics again and I was able to keep the elements in mind while I annotated. For instance, I was taking notes of the angle of the shot.
Usually I write my thesis before I start the essay but this time I wrote the first two paragraphs first and then formed a thesis. I think this caused my essay’s emphasis to be a bit side-tracked. I should have spent more ink in the last paragraph and focus less on the first two. On the other hand, if I had developed a thesis at the beginning, it might not be as insightful as the one I have now.
I feel this assignment has made me more aware of the choice that the cartoonists are making. I think the biggest insight I gained is realizing that for the protagonist of these autobiographical comics, understanding and expression might be a part of their defense mechanism of childhood trauma. We have to consider how their experience influence their way of storytelling.
The most noticeable aspect in the two pages I chose to trace and analyze were the shading. This led to my thesis of how the comparison between the David Small’s and Tillie Walden’s shading reveals how an author’s shading style reflects a different way of handling emotion. The process of tracing and analyzing these two pages was much more time consuming than I expected. I did not realize how many details were in one page and how difficult it would be to replicate it. It allowed me to see the small aspects that change the meaning portrayed in each frame and overall message. It helped me with my comic narrative project, as I am now incorporating the small hidden techniques that David and Tillie used in order to portray my overall message in a more creative way.
To the average reader, comics are thought of as bright, action-packed, colorful illustrations of superheroes or even mythical creatures. However, David Small’s Stitches and Tillie Walden’s Spinning flip this directive by using comics to depict their traumatic childhoods and how they found their identity inside of it. Stitches and Spinning both use shading to depict emotion without words, but Stitches has a rougher and more unconventional style, while Spinning is more refined and organized. Therefore, the comparison between the two reveals how an author’s shading style reflects a different way of handling emotion.
Without using words or description, both David and Tillie reveal the emotion they are feeling through the use of shading. In both narratives, the authors use shading across facial expressions to depict emotion. In each close-up, David and Tillie have parts of their faces unshaded and shaded. This partial shading causes the face to be split up, allowing the reader to focus on multiple parts of the face rather than one part. In the two traced pages, the characters’ main facial expressions are inside of the shading, highlighting the main emotion the two are experiencing and making the emotions more immediate. With the partial shading in close-ups, the two writers transform tiny, quiet moments into intense, imagined portrayals of the characters’ inner lives.
David and Tillie have different shading styles in their narratives. David’s is rougher, while Tillie has a more refined shading style. David’s shading can be seen purposefully seeping through frames into the gutters or margins. This may reveal David’s lack of control over his emotions in comparison to Tillie. Tillie’s refined style shows how she realizes the emotions are wrong, but controllable. When the shading from Tillie’s face vanishes versus David’s shading consuming him, it reveals how Tillie can mask her emotions while David struggles with it and finds a way to distract himself with his stuffed animal and imagination.
The comparison between the two authors’ shading reflects how the authors experience and process memories differently from one another. The fact that the authors both use shading to portray emotion but use different styles mirrors the uncontrollable aspect David feels and Tillie’s retrospective processing of her emotions. The shading overwhelms David just as his emotions did, while the shading on Tillie disappears due to her suppressing her emotions and controlling her current situation. Comics allow the author to reveal these emotions through creative and subtle ways such as shading, while textual narratives have to take a more direct route. Hillary Chute expands on this idea in Graphic Women by writing, “graphic narrative moves beyond prescriptive models of alterity or sexual difference. And in every case, graphic narrative presents a traumatic side of history, but all these authors refuse to show it through the lens of unspeakability or invisibility” (Chute 25). By referencing a “lens of unspeakability,” Chute refers to not specifically describing the emotions felt and instead depicting it with images. This is seen with the use of shading in both Tillie and David’s works.
The use of shading and different styles in both works portrays the contrast of emotions and how comics are used to display this. The way the authors portray these emotions may be factored by the timing that they worked on the narratives. Tillie’s experiences in Spinning were much more recent, while David’s experiences were much further away. David was able to reflect more on his experiences than Tillie, possibly factoring how he depicted his shading style to show the consumption of emotions, while Tillie’s shading reflects her attempt to process and regulate her feelings in the moment. Both authors were allowed the creativity to show these emotions in unique ways because of the creative freedom of comics.
