What is a wisdom tale? A wisdom tale is a lot of things. It’s a story, a book, a lesson, a guide. Wisdom tales are all very different but they all have a moral. Over the last three months, we read about 20 stories. Each story we would read and then write a summary and moral for each. I personally thought it was hard to write a short summary so I got better at keeping things short as time went on. During the first couple stories, we got to act them out in front of the class it was very fun to portray different characters.

Then we started a project we had to choose a wisdom tale to make a comic out of. At first I was so excited and then I could not decide which story to make a comic. First thing I was like the only thing I can draw really well is trees.  I was convinced to make an awesome comic. I was looking through all the stories and then I remembered The Useless Tree from China. I instantly knew that was what I would do. One reason was that I am good at drawing trees. Another reason is I liked the story line and it really stayed with me.  First, I started drawing and all my ideas poured out onto the page. The more I drew the more detailed my drawings would get by the end I had a comic I was proud of.

The moral of The Useless Tree is to show that everything has a purpose, sometimes it just takes time to discover it. I really tried to show that moral as clearly as possible in my drawings. I loved that the moral connects to present day life and global warming. I thought a comic about cutting down trees might help address that problem.

You might be thinking drawing is hard and it is but I learned lots of tips and tricks to make my drawings great. I have two major ways. The first one I learned from an artist named Brittan Peck. He taught me and my grade how to draw simple but stylish he told us just by using simple shapes you can have a story. We also learned that facial expression can tell a whole story by itself. Things like an open mouth or raised eyebrows looked cool. If you make the objects bigger than will look closer and if they are small they will look farther away. We learned a lot more tips but those were most helpful to my story in general. I definitely learned a lot from this artist.

My other major way to make my drawing better is Sketchbook. Sketchbook allows you to use different tools. First of all, there is almost always a paintbrush, pen or pencil you could need. That lets you have different looks on your photo. I used the water color brush to make the sky look cloudy and used the technical pen to outline. There are also tools on the app like layers and lasso. Layers allow you to save a background or a drawing if you draw the backdrop then add another layer whatever you draw on the old layer you can save and you can remove your first layer perfectly. This is my favorite drawing app and I hope you will try this app too.

I definitely learned a lot in this project and I can’t wait to do more projects like this soon. Some of you should try to make a comic with the app Sketchbook. Also, remember to look at simple drawing books. If you have any questions put them in comments.