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.
As a teacher, having confianza with my students has always been of the utmost importance. In fact, it’s always been my main priority: I just figured the content-learning would come if I could get my students to trust me. Teaching, I think, is about managing human relationships.
Our editor on Drawing Words & Writing Pictures is the multi-talented Mark Siegel. He’s the creator of Sailor Twain, and often posts interesting observations on art and craft. A few months back he posted a couple of times on the art of Chinese calligraphy, and as Matt and I were recently thinking about sumi ink Read More
Mari Ahokoivu featured on our blog a month or so ago with her wonderful direct drawing activity. Now she’s back as a (we hope) regular contributor with a look into to her history as a teacher and her teaching philosophy. When she asked, “Can I draw the post?” I knew we had a winner! Look for parts 2 and 3 in the next week or so.
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.
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”.
Nick Bertozzi is an amazingly talented and prolific cartoonist, a teacher, and a good friend. I was thrilled when I saw this post about the process he used to make his new book Lewis & Clark over at the First Second blog, and asked if we could repost it here. If you’re in NYC, come celebrate the book release with Nick at Bergen Street Comics on Friday, Feb 25. Matt and I will be there, too!
I proposed a comics workshop to my university. I intend to teach students how to make comics and self-publish them, going from script to art to folding, stapling and selling their own comics. The only problem is, I’ve never done this before.
