I am a firm believer in exploring the rich history of the cartooning medium; not only for its own illustrious sake, but as a fount of inspiration for my students’ work. (I also admit that I love teaching it. Windsor McCay, Siegel and Shuster, The Fleischer Bros., why wouldn’t you teach it?)
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This is one of several features we had to drop from Mastering Comics for length, and will be posting here. For more like this, and better, check out the book! (For another sample of the kind of stuff that we just couldn’t shoehorn into our giant book, check out our guide to laying out bleeds.) ...
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As you know, cartooning is primarily about storytelling. However, for some students a big motivation for taking the class is to learn how to draw. But, as any artist knows, the best way to learn how to draw is simply to do it. Over and over again.
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The second day will be about them getting to know each other. I like to have the class play a game called The Exquisite Corpse. Originally conceived by Andre Breton and the Surrealists, the game encourages group creativity through random chance (in my experience, kids love all things random).
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We inaugurate a fantastic new series by Derek Mainhart, who is setting out to write up an entire year’s curriculum for a comics class at the secondary level: middle school and high school. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s going to be entertaining, well-planned, and incredibly useful.
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This Saturday, October 1, is 24-hour Comics Day, and Matt takes the opportunity to reminisce about the repercussions of his 24-hour comic experience, many moons ago.
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One of the most frustrating things about comics is the incredible slowness with which they are produced, as compared to the swiftness with which they are read. So for quite a while, Matt and I have been admiring (and envious) of those who can draw comics quickly directly in ink, skipping the laborious penciling process, and in some cases even skipping thumbnailing!
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This ambitious activity combines life drawing with cartooning by having students draw live models directly into narrative scenarios in sequeqnce on a single sheet of paper. A major goal is to see how the spontaneity and expressiveness of life drawing might be harnessed into the service of comics—comics teachers observe all the time students who don’t have the skills yet to draw from their head, or who are too caught up in a particular drawing style, yet when they draw a human figure from observation they can produce lovely, confident drawings.
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A few weeks ago, I had my students draw comics. I paid special attention to the silence in the room. What I learned is that the silence is not just an aural quality, but a posture, and, perhaps an embodiment of cartooning, and one that offers particular advantages in the classroom.
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Comics are a character-driven medium, so if a character looks and acts exactly the same as all the others—superheroes wearing spandex, alternative types exuding negativity—then something is gravely wrong. Wrong and boring. As someone else put it: “we need to do violence to the cliché, create havoc with the tried, the tired and tested”.
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Drawing Words & Writing Pictures is a comics educational project with book and web components. Visit how to use for more ideas on content you might like, or send us an email to be put on our mailing list.
--Matt and Jessica
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"A goldmine of essential information for every aspiring comics artist. Highly recommended."
-Scott McCloud
Drawing Words & Writing Pictures is a comics educational project with book and web components. Visit how to use for more ideas on content you might like, or send us an email to be put on our mailing list.
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