THIS IS A COURSE FOR MAKERS.

Everyone has a meaningful story to tell.  Whether you went to art school, or you haven’t picked up a pencil since kindergarten, there’s no difference.  We all have access to a creative visual voice.   It is the goal of this course to help each student find and develop their unique “visual voice” and to help them express their personal narratives in comic format as quickly as possible.  

Comics are language.  Every language can be learned.  Comics have a distinct grammar set made up of language parts composed of BOTH words and images. (Realistic drawing is NOT one of the requirements of this language.) 

You’ll find this course is front-loaded with language acquisition tools and idea generation tools.  The majority of your effort in this course will be spent on conceptualizing and producing creative work, with the goal of gaining fluency.  

We will read many comics and prose texts together with the goal of inspiring and supporting our writing practice.  However, the analysis of these readings is not the main focus of the course, nor where the bulk of your time will be spent.     

MAKE IT BY HAND

The majority of coursework will be done by hand. (At least to conceptualize!) It is my firm belief that marks made on paper have a direct line to the brain and to the heart.  You will be able to use all the devices – tablets, iPads, laptops, phones… but we will start our creative work BY HAND, and your in-class assignments will be created and completed by hand.