- Contemporary Comics

Catalog description

This course will examine the relationship of words and pictures through the study and making of autobiographical and nonfiction comics. As other Studio Art courses examine the disciplines of photography, ceramics, sculpture, or painting through experiential learning, so too will students realize the potential of this discipline to reveal their creative selves through its unique visual language. Placing practice in context, comics history will be explored with the emphasis on contemporary cartoonists and graphic novelists as artists focused on relevant first-person narrative storytelling and comics journalism. Traditional techniques of layout, design, and storyboarding will be included along with drawing and writing exercises. Course projects will extend technical exercises to address content concerns through in-class workshops, presentations on cartoonists, critiques, field trips, and a range of short and long outside projects that will gradually build to more ambitious creative comic undertakings by the semester's end. No previous studio or visual arts or drawing experience is required.