Drawing Games for Furries

This is a workshop where I will give participants paper and pen, and we will be doing fast paced, collaborative drawing games together! No “drawing skills” are required!

The first activity will be a warm up “Attendance Card”. Three minutes to draw you or your fursona doing a randomly chosen activity (e.g. being held by an alien). The drawing is done on a 4 × 6″ notecard with a pen. The pen, paper, time limit, and prompt forces us to make quick horrifying decisions!

The second activity will be a “Fursona Jam” where we’ll generate new fursonas. We will divide paper into fourths. In the top two quadrants, we’ll draw a shape for a head in pen (not, pencil), and a shape for the body. We’ll pass the paper clockwise at our tables, or make a big loop of sorts. We’ll make two more bodies. Pass. Then add eyes to the first two, pass the paper, add eyes to the second two, pass the paper, and continue this process with noses and mouthes, ears, legs, arms, details (tails, horns, hair, patterns), and finally, EYEBROWS.

We all end up with four new furry characters! They now exist because a mix of constraints, chaos, and creative activity. They have just arrived, please be kind to them.

Then, if we have time, I’ll lead us in a drawing game where we choose one of our fursonas and draw their entire life as a comic. This is done in 4 panels, out of order (1,4,2,3), with the prompts of birth, funeral, disgruntled teen, and middle aged worker. Each panel will have a time limit of 3 minutes.

These drawing games are inspired by Lynda Barry’s award winning cartooning cookbook, “Making Comics”. Matt Haberbusch aka GabuMatt has facilitated these activities with his local (Cleveland, Ohio) cartooning group, Comics in the Circle, over the past 4 years. He’s now adapting these games and exercises for furries. Anyone can draw, but constraints and games help get our hands, paws, and claws moving!