The Hard Work of Making It Look Easy

 

Student Jen Robinson's self-referential high-contrast study for Thinking In Ink

"You make it look so easy," students often exclaim as I demonstrate some tweak to their work, a flipped curve or added stroke, that changes the whole look. I point out that there are jugglers who make what they do look easy, too.

Behind the tweaks lie governing principles one can learn. When a comic is illegible, confused, or dull, it usually turns out that the artist was lost in the weeds, distracted by some aspects of the problem to the exclusion of others.

Anybody can learn to make comics. You can probably teach most of it to yourself, as many do. But it's helpful to have a guide, someone to point your attention to problems you overlooked or weren't aware of.

Have a look at these examples of successful student work from my recent SVA online courses, Cartooning Basics, Thinking In Ink, and Figure Drawing for Cartoonists.

A hatching study of a plush goose doll by Jill Adams. Jill has many more ink studies on her Instagram.

Gestures, curve rhythms, and emanata enliven this Betty Boop study by Sharon Lee De La Cruz

Much of the classwork is drawn from life, such as Sharon's ink line and halftone sketch above. Check out her new graphic memoir.

The courses culminate in sequential stories, such as this beauty by Steven Wong.

Lou Venech completed his very first comic in Cartooning Basics, the story of his unruly kitten. Here's the cover, center spread, and back page. The course surveys the entire process, from concept and writing through the printed booklet.

To be continued? Let's make sure of it. The summer enrollment period will end soon. Spread the word please and come cartoon with us!

Beyond Basics

Cartooning Basics student work by Maisy Byerly

 

My online Cartooning Basics and Comics Inventions courses are enrolling right now at SVA.

Though I teach the comic making process from the beginning and often work with absolute beginners, my courses are nonetheless college level. Many students come to the experience with significant talent. I'm able to help them marshall their skills and focus them on key problems such as joke writing, action staging, page and panel composition, and much more. Below are examples of outstanding students who brought their A game to recent courses and completed amazing projects.

Maisy Byerly zoomed in to Cartooning Basics from Bloomfield Indiana. Her first completed minicomic, Violet Goes Into Business, is clearly the work of a seasoned pro:

Here's her expressiveness exercise from earlier in the course:

Tom Hughes' strong cinematic sensibility helps put his adventures of Julius "Nervous" Rex over the top. Tom incorporated his compressed story exercise from early in the Basics course into his final book project.

Laura Brown completed the Cartooning Basics and then Figure Drawing for Cartoonists course while also pursuing the Graphic Narrative MFA. Sez Laura, "If I hadn’t taken your cartooning classes this year, I wouldn’t have been able to create my final project for the visual narrative semester (my digital short story). I’m not exaggerating. These past two semesters have been an incredibly rewarding experience for me: stimulating, challenging, illuminating and gratifying. Your insight, openness and generosity with feedback gave me so many ways to approach drawing, to make drawings better and to have fun in the process. Thank you!"

One of the course exercises is to imagine the characters in their environment.

Laura was already an accomplished writer. Here she weds her ear for dialog to visual storytelling techniques in a zoom sequence exercise: 

Here's a scene from Laura's first comic...

and here's a page from her master's thesis, The Avon Lady, a story told as an interactive website.  

This one leaves me beyond amazed, truly next-level. 

All three of these artists bear watching. 

When you look at a comic, you say to yourself, "that looks pretty fun" (IT IS), and you think, "I'll bet I could do that"... (YOU CAN) ..."and be pretty good at it." (YOU TOTALLY, TOTALLY WILL).

BUT

There are a lot more challenges and pitfalls than one can anticipate. I'll be happy to guide you. Comics Inventions begins January 31, 2023, and Cartooning Basics begins Feb. 3. The online format is working out really well and makes these classes available all over the world. As schools reopen, that may change. Sign up ASAP and tell your friends, please.

Winter/Spring Online Cartooning Courses

 

SVA's catalog is up and running for classes beginning late in January.

Join me for Thinking In Ink, Tuesdays, Figure Drawing for Cartoonists, Wednesdays, and Cartooning Basics, Thursdays. All classes are in the evenings, 6:30-9:30 EST, and can be taken via Zoom from anywhere in the world.

These are fun and challenging. There's much to learn.

Check out this student's description of her course project in Cartooning Basics.

Study Cartooning Online this Fall

Brian Miguel has some fun with our present lifestyle.

Stuck at home with our dreams and ambitions and so so much to vent, this seems a good time to work on funny pictures. 

My fall online cartooning courses are enrolling right now: Cartooning Basics and Figure Drawing for Cartoonists. These will be held in the evenings, 6:30 pm EST, and can be taken by adults anywhere on the planet. Registration ends soon, so sign up right away!

Our first round of online-only cartooning courses went surprisingly well over the summer. The students enjoyed the close sense of community our Zoom sessions fostered and the intensive attention given to their work. We usually end class with one of my Daredoodle challenges as we listen to music. It's fun.

Jeff Mielke makes crazy faces out of blobs (Daredoodle #1)

I'm finding that the preparation of the "asynchronous" components-- recorded lectures, topic pages, pdf resources, and more-- is helping me become a better teacher. I have to really nail down the order of the steps artists follow and the reasoning behind them.

And OMG, there's the quality of the work being done! If I tried to show every amazing project my students came up with, this post would go on and on. Here are some representative examples.

Nancy Dougherty stuns with this homage to psychedelic posters.

Sheila Robinson claimed not to have drawn much before taking the figure class. She proved a quick study and charmed us all with her lively animal sketches.

Lexie Montgomery carved a multicolor stencil of the view from her window.

Gabriela Behnen launches into a fun comic about a squirrel therapist conducting sessions in a park.

Again, fall courses are enrolling now: Cartooning Basics and Figure Drawing for Cartoonists. 

Student Spotlight: Thinking In Ink

For his final Thinking In Ink project, Laurence Maslon caricatured me in homage to his favorite comic from childhood, Not Brand Ecch. I was doubly honored by this because that was also MY favorite comic as a child. It was the cartooning there by the great Marie Severin that inspired me to become a cartoonist.

Check out this impressive haul of student work I collected in the inaugural semester of Thinking In Ink this past spring. We had fun practicing with brush feathering, hatching with nibs, working with outlines, working without lines, and experimenting with ink wash, spot color layers, non-traditional tools, and stencils, among other things. 

We made comics, illustrations, studies from photographs, observational drawings, and more:

Laurence Maslon's brush and ink sketch of his dog, Ruby.

Anne Keating's crosshatch study of a zombie plush doll

Julie Cleveland's sensitive-line drawing of a jawbone and plaster cast.

Maslon's tone-map design for a film-noir poster, ...

...and an ink wash study for another.

Lynn Bernstein added spot color to her high contrast study of William Powell,...

...and this hatched illustration of Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan. 

Anne Keating rubricated her Tarot card design.

Julie Cleveland finished a poster with wash and a dash of color.

Laurence Maslon cut a stencil merging shadows for an image of The Shadow himself.

Anne Keating carved stencils of seashells and airbrushed them in Photoshop,... 

...and she invented a method of drawing with a wine cork.

More examples can be seen in the catalog entry for the course at SVA.

It's satisfying and fun playing around with materials, trying out techniques, exploring creative strategies, thinking in ink. Who says an inking class has to be good? "I says," sez Mot.

My online classes are starting soon: Figure Drawing for Cartoonists, Thinking In Ink, and Cartooning Basics.

Broaden your skills this summer, from home.

Quarantoons

Anne Keating's final project for my Thinking In Ink course was this marvelously distressed vintage comic cover.

When our spring semester was abruptly cut short by the quarantine and many of us pressed forward via Zoom, our imaginations naturally turned toward the situation. I was cheered to see some amazing work appear amid the stress.

I suggested to my kid's class at Parsons that we title our group comic Quarantoons. They liked that.

Wraparound cover for the class comic at The New School's Pre-college Cartooning grades 3-5 spring course. We usually end with a printed book. This time we settled for a pdf.

Documenting experiences, sketching immediate surroundings, fantasizing, crafting poetic metaphors, cheering the heroes, there are so many ways to express so much that we need to express.  Cartooning is a big help in tough times. 

Elementary art teacher, Lynn Bernstein, began a Covid diary comic.

The view from Lynn's kitchen, I presume.

Julie Cleveland wills herself to a better place in this cinematic comic page for Think In Ink

Acting professor and caricaturist, Laurence Maslon memorialized the new way of conducting classes.

Highlights from Julius Giardina's minicomic project for Cartooning Basics.

This summer, we're trying afternoon online versions of my SVA courses, Figure Drawing for Cartoonists, Thinking In Ink, and Cartooning Basics. The upside is that these can be taken from anywhere in the world and any time, really, if you can't make the meetings. We start in June and run for 10 weeks. 

I'm happy to answer your questions: mot@tmotley.com 

I'll leave you with another great page by Anne Keating. See her website for more, including the comic she produced in Cartooning Basics last fall. Anne provides a nice view there of the minicomic process.