If you read last week’s post, you know that my goal for THIS week was to have created a website, connected it to my domain, and made a game plan for content. Haha. Well I can’t say I didn’t learn anything…
We’re Matt and Jessica’s interns, 21-year-old tenderfoots, and we’re embarking on a summer-long study of social media for cartoonists… not just how to use it, but how to use it effectively to launch or boost a career. Each week we’ll share our progress, our theories, and our discoveries in navigating the vast sea of this World Wide Web.
Hilary Allison came in one day beaming because she’d cracked the Nib-Holding Industrial Complex’s iron grip on her student budget, and I encouraged her to throw a post together about it for you, dear readers. This is what she came up with.
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!
Somehow, all the times I’ve been in Europe for the sake of comics, and all the times I’ve tried to talk my students into traveling and getting involved in the international comics scene, it never occurred to me to talk to students about studying abroad.
On day two of the conference, four comics teachers (including me) presented their programs and approaches. I’m a relatively veteran comics teacher. I’ve been teaching regularly since 2001 (and started in 1998), full year courses, workshops, seminars, you name it. So what was most striking to me about these presentations was how distinct each approach was. There’s a part of me that believed, until then, that there was a narrow band of ways to approach teaching comics well (and obviously a lot of ways to do it badly). Clearly, I was quite wrong.
Recently, I was a guest at a comics teaching conference in Finland. As far as I know, it was the very first of its kind; attendees and presenters all taught not reading comics, but making comics. I’ve never had the chance before to compare teaching methods and philosophies with such a diverse (and large) group of peers. It was eye-opening (and I wish there had been some such conference before I finished DWWP!). It was so full of valuable information, in fact, that I’m going to divide this report into several parts, and run the next parts over the next week.
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.
I feel very strongly that I have a responsibility, in fact, to young artists trying to break into the business. So, when I am putting together an anthology, I now make a point of including someone whose work hasn’t been published before (or, at least, not in any kind of significant way). It’s a karma thing.
