I had to make that one cucumber and cranberry flavored Kombucha last!
Cartooning Lessons Workshops for large groups of students
I spent a full day last week at the Mohawk Avenue School in Sparta, NJ, working with the entire student body making comics and introducing the children to principles of drawing and cartooning. I’ve presented this workshop many times, but usually to smaller groups maxing out at about thirty participants. I had over two-hundred students take part in these sessions on Wednesday, which was amazing. It’s incredible to know that it’s possible to effectively run these workshops with such large groups of children.
I explain the basics of making comic to the kids, and run through a series of exercises designed to help them shed their self-consciousness when it comes to drawing, and to instead start to think about cartooning as creating narrative using symbols. We focus on clarity and readability. I want every child to feel like comics is a medium they can use to tell their own stories.
I recently gave my visiting author website a bit of a face-lift, including adding pricing options for large group workshops. It is absolutely possible to setup an event for full-grade levels. I also published a fairly lengthy FAQ section, which I’ll continually be adding to as time goes by.
Also last week I went to the Fort Lee Public Library as part of their Makers March programming and worked with a fairly large group of tweens there as well.
Almost Monthly ‘Zine Club
Finally, I just received back from the printer’s my copies of The Years of Magical Thinking, a handsome little edition of what I think was one of my best short cartoon essays. This ran in The New York Times a few weeks back, but if you missed picking up a print copy of that, you can join my Almost Monthly ‘Zine Club and receive this comic, along with new ones almost every month, right in your mailbox, easy-peasy! Please consider becoming a member, it’s a fun little project that I know you will enjoy.
Thanks as always for reading along!
Mike
So exciting!!
Are you still drinking that kombucha?
But seriously... I am impressed with your success at doing such a large workshop! That really broadens your offerings which is very cool. I think I've maxed out around 50 but try to keep it under 30.