Summer Classes are Enrolling Now!

 

This summer, study Short Form Comics, Thinking in Ink, Figure Drawing for Cartoonists Online and Live in Manhattan, Cartooning Basics Online and Live.   And there’ll be another free Daredoodling event on May 12.

Pandemic or no, online courses are a rare opportunity for artists all over the world to learn from SVA instructors. The School of Visual Arts has been ground-zero for cartooning instruction since its founding in the 1940s. I’ve taught hundreds of New Yorkers and visitors over the years, but now I can help you, too, wherever you are.

That said, it will be nice to be back in the classroom for Figure Drawing and Cartooning Basics. The live experience offers more one-on-one instruction opportunities and in the Figure class, we have live models every second week.

Let’s make comics!

Student Spotlight: Michaela Pohl

 

Michaela Pohl is a history professor from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, working on a graphic memoir. She amazed her classmates all summer in the Figure Drawing for Cartoonists course with her expressive, forceful, graphically bold drawing style.

Her graphic memoir, Accusation: A German Childhood, deals with rigid adoptive parents in 1970s Germany and their closeted Holocaust denial. In the summer course, Miki completed a chapter called The Hitler Box. Check out pages 1, 2, and 6:

The life of  a college professor is a busy one. Let's hope we can read her comic in print someday soon. 

Regarding the online figure course, Miki says, "The figure drawing class helped me design characters that are more memorable and easier to draw repeatedly, and to continue work from other classes and make my pages more visually impactful. Having classes that were online was extremely important to me during a challenging year and a half."

Fall classes start next week! Thinking In Ink on Tuesdays, Figure Drawing for Cartoonists on Wednesdays, Cartooning Basics on Thursdays, all online 6:30-9:30 pm EST. Join us!

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!

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.

Thinking In Ink!

Come see me this Monday at the SVA Illustration & Cartooning information session and learn about my newest course, Thinking In Ink.

This course builds on techniques and topics from my previous inking comics course. It'll be edifying for beginners and returning students alike.

We'll look at bunches of bravura and master cartooning examples to get a sense of the effects that are possible and what the effects are useful for.

I'll offer a menu of unusual challenges including coloring book pages and stencil cutting.

We'll explore unusual tools and methods, building on traditional approaches to go beyond them. 

Thinking In Ink meets on Tuesdays, 6:30-9:30 pm at the School of Visual Arts, beginning January 28. Also enrolling are my Wednesday course, Figure Drawing for Cartoonists, and on Thursdays, Cartooning Basics. Come talk to me this Monday, or shoot me an email with your questions.