Drawing Words Writing Pictures » activity

The haiku's brevity and relative simplicity of rules make it a good candidate for a comics-making exercise.

http://dw-wp.com/2013/06/haiku-comics/

Derek Mainhart lays down the comics history for his students, and gets them to draw their own, updated Yellow Kids!

http://dw-wp.com/2013/04/teaching-teens-day-3-week-5-yellow-fever/

Now that your students are approaching the final version of their Gag Cartoon, it’s time for some more drawing lessons. Nothing terribly complex, but these simple concepts can make all the diff...

http://dw-wp.com/2013/01/teaching-comics-to-teens-week-2-day-4-basic-character-design/

Early in Mastering Comics, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden discuss ‘the Horror of the Blank Page’ (Chapter 2). Every artist who has ever put pen to paper has felt it, and likely some of your stu...

http://dw-wp.com/2012/07/teaching-teens-week-2-day-2-the-horror/

In DWWP, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden begin with this basic unit of comic art—the single panel cartoon. This approach only makes sense, and I utilize it as well.

http://dw-wp.com/2012/06/teaching-teens-week-2-day-1-gag-me-with-a-toon/

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 lov...

http://dw-wp.com/2012/05/teaching-comics-to-teens-day-4-cartooning-through-the-ages/

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 s...

http://dw-wp.com/2012/05/the-anatomy-of-doors/

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 ...

http://dw-wp.com/2012/05/teaching-comics-to-teens-3-basic-cartooning/

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 ...

http://dw-wp.com/2012/04/teaching-comics-to-teens-2-exquisite-corpse/

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 w...

http://dw-wp.com/2012/04/teaching-comics-to-teens-day-1-using-comics-to-tell-your-story/