Pg 46 from Lynda Barry’s graphic novel, “What it is.”

In the first section of the graphic novel “What it is.” by Lynda Barry containing 50 pages of drawing of tons of different things from people to animals and such along with writing. During the 50 pages Lynda shows images and talks about imagination and her past as a child but doing it in a creative kind of way and a bit unorganized on each page. Each page has a bit of a grim looking with dark colors being used along with the different styles of writing but have the same inky style of drawings using repetition on each page as well.

The process Lynda shows in graphic novel would be the one stated in the book “Graphic Design the New Basics” by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips, which is Formstorming. Formstorming is when trying to come up with new ways to draw and present the viewer from a basic design to bring back creativity people had troubles with. When people have, trouble thinking on what to draw that’s original they formstorm using basic shapes they know and draw it different ways to come up with new ideas and bring their imagination back. Lynda shows that in her graphic novel in her writing and pictures and Formstorming has several techniques but Lynda uses dailies. Dailies are when artists must draw a design every day for a least two weeks to help develop time management, disciplined, create a portfolio focusing on a topic aspect.

What Lynda uses in her graphic novel that shows that she uses Formstorming would be like page 46 for example where she has a bunch of things going on. The page questions “What are toys in big words and repeats the word toys in different context and different styles of text that has different meaning to the word. She has also repeated the drawings of the octopus, the bird, and the cat on the page and on other page having them be in different styles and forms whether it’s an inky drawing or a cut out of a picture and placed in the page of the book. She did those so they have different meaning for the viewer and did that as dailies.