Drawing Words & Writing Pictures is the comics education project of Jessica Abel and Matt Madden. It began with two textbooks, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures and Mastering Comics, used in comics classrooms around the world since 2008, and grew into the teaching materials collected here. Everything on this site is free to use in your classroom or studio.
Learn comics with the DWWP project
- Teacher’s Guide: notes for teaching every chapter of Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, with homework and pacing.
- Student Guide: companion notes for working through the Drawing Words chapters on your own.
- Activities: standalone exercises you can run in one session. Jam comics, the panel lottery, drawing prompts, foldy minicomics, and more.
- Syllabi & Lesson Plans: editable Drawing Words syllabi for a 15-week, 10-week, and 5-day course, syllabi and lesson plans from other teachers, including the day-by-day Teaching Comics to Teens guide.
- Process & Craft: includes quickguides to supplies, lettering, layout, bleeds, and scanning, along with with essays and interviews on how comics get made.
- What Is a “Graphic Novel?”: a two-page comic explaining what comics are and how to read them. Print it as a poster or a handout, in English, Spanish, or Catalan.
- About: the books, the two of us, and this site.
~ Matt and Jessica
