I saw a workshop that was part of the 2025 Singapore Writer’s Festival and signed up pretty automatically – Future You: A Diary Comic Zine Workshop. No need for drawing/writing experience, beginner friendly. I thought that it would be a nice Saturday morning activity, just to spend some time learning and creating.
This workshop was run by a local writer/comic artist – Juliette Yu-Ming Lizeray. She generously showed some of her work too, which the participants had a fun time going through.
I forgot about how zines are meant to be scrappy… unfinished. You’re meant to see the pen kind of going through the paper – or pencil marks where maybe you erased them… And you know what, it is fine as it is. *Gasp* nobody dies!! Also, I really appreciate how the constraints of having a smaller canvas allows for quick-and-dirty expression. It’s just to get things out, do something with your hands.
We learnt how to fold zines… It is actually something that I bookmarked a long time ago from one of Austin Kleon’s blog posts, but I never got round to doing it… So it was nice to be “forced”, haha.
We learnt how to fold two kinds of zines – I find the 8/10page (bigger one on the left) much easier to draw on, but I might fool about with the 16page version. Might be cute for something simple, animated… or maybe a list of something. Easy to draw.
I found it so impressive to see what artists can do with such a cute little medium. Seeing different zines really made me want to hone my skills of drawing and also working on my colour theory…
But ultimately, I think my aim for the workshop was just to have fun, to fool about. And to actually make something. I was on the road to a dnf because I was trying to draw out some complicated tableau. But I had to remind myself of my goal – It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was done.
this exercise also really made me feel like there was some message that my subconscious was sending to me about how I felt about my current job… ha ha ha.
One thing that stood out for me from that workshop is that we were expressly instructed not to plan out our panels. I felt particularly called out because I was actually in the midst of listing out each panel when I received that instruction. It was tough at first, but freeing when I gave myself permission to do whatever with each page. Maybe the story flow could have been better… but I did not find myself being ashamed of my work after I finished. Whether I would display this for consumption by the world is another question, but this is something that was just for me, and I am okay with that.
I had a realisation, which was that my perfectionism has me in a trap, a little. So I found it helpful to put myself into this situation, where I could shake it up a little and exercise embracing things as they are.
Since this workshop, I actually made another little zine when I went to attend another work conference. Once again, it’s not a zine for public consumption but having something to do with my hands (while not overthinking it) really helped me to listen better and process what I’d learnt (as compared to typing it out on the computer).
I also found myself telling the boyfriend yesterday that I wanted to do TWO things: 1. Write a book; and 2: MAKE MORE ZINES!
Huzzah!
N
the quarter light 