Sign up now for spring continuing ed classes at SVA

French author Ludovic Debeurme (Lucille) visited my Tuesday class last year.

Happy New Year, everyone! I'm going to be getting back into the swing of blogging soon, but for now a quickie just to remind you that Continuing Education classes start January 23 at the School of Visual Arts and I will be teaching my two usual classes:

Comics Storytelling on Tuesday nights from 6-9PM for 12 weeks (starts January 24)
Independent Projects Seminar: Comics (co-taught with Nick Bertozzi) meeting on three Saturdays (2/4,2/25, 4/21) from 11-5PM

Information on both classes, including how to sign up, here.

Nick Bertozzi talks story during last semester's seminar

This is the last semester I'll be teaching either of these classes for a while. I'll explain the reason why in blog posts to come...

GB Tran (Vietnamerica) visited the seminar last semester.

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Panels, Pages & Balloons: The Graphic Novel Book Club

from Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Just a quick post in case you New Yorkers haven't heard that Jessica and I are leading a comics book club at the Central Library in Brooklyn and it starts tomorrow, Saturday October 15, with Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. Details here.
If you see this too late to take advantage, don't worry: first of all, we will do some kind of follow-up post about Fun Home on the Drawing Words & Writing Pictures website; second of all there are three more meetings including Dan Clowes's Ice Haven, Ludovic Debeurme's Lucille, and David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp. Details here.
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Fall semester at SVA continuing education

Me and Tom Hart teaching last fall at SVA (photo ©Elinor Carucci)

Fall semester begins in a few weeks for the Continuing Education division of SVA and I'll be offering my two usual classes.


Comics Storytelling, starting September 20 on Tuesday nights, is a 12-week class where we explore the language and tradition of comics narrative. I assign a few short assignments, then you work on a longer comic of your own. This tends to be a low-key but very productive class. Each semester is unique since so much depends on the chemistry of all the students together, but its always engaging and most of my students keep in touch, some of them taking other classes or going on to apply to art school.
Register here.

I'm very sorry to say good-bye to my friend and colleague Tom Hart, who has headed down to Gainesville FL to open his own comics school. But I'm also very excited about his replacement as my co-teacher for Independent Projects: Comics. Nick Bertozzi is taking on that duty and I know this semester is going to be full of great conversation with a whole new dynamic.
The seminar, which starts Saturday, September 24, is a great opportunity to get occasional feedback on a project you are working at on your own: graphic novel, short story, webcomic, whatever. We meet three times throughout the semester for full-day Saturday critique sessions which always generate thoughtful feedback and enlightening discussions from the whole group. We've had multiple repeat students in this class as it is well suited to artists who are basically working on their own but want to come in from the cold occasionally.
Register here.

There will be an open house/info session TOMORROW, Tuesday, September 6, where you can learn more about these and other classes. I'll be there as will a bunch of other teachers. In recent semesters, this info session has become something of a happening, with MC Keith Mayerson setting the mood, Stanley Martucci reminiscing about being an SVA student in the 60s, and Jerry Moriarty free-associating about art, comics, and life in general.

Details:
Illustration and Cartooning Information Session
Tuesday, September 6
6:30 pm-8:30 pm
209 East 23 Street, room 311, 3rd floor
Moderator: Keith Mayerson, cartoonist, illustrator, fine artist

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Colombiano

From September 14 to 17 I'll be in Colombia for their second annual comics festival, Entreviñetas.

I'm flying down to the city of Armenia on Wednesday, September 14 and diving straight into a series of lectures and round tables as the one American (by which of course I mean estadounidense) and probably the only non-native Spanish speaker at the show.

Be sure to spend some time exploring the links on the guest artists page, it'll give you a snapshot of a rich world that we barely have a sense of here, stateside. I'll do my best to put my reporter's hat on and send reports about the comics scene in Latin America. (If you don't follow me on Twitter, that's the place to get my moment-to-moment observations: http://twitter.com/mmaddencomics)

FOLLOW UP: Entreviñetas now has a blog.

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SVA Cartooning grads to watch out for, 2011

This spring a new crop of cartooning students graduated from the School of Visual Arts with BFAs from the Department of Illustration & Cartooning. In this post I'm going to link to a few of these talented rookies for your approval and edification. Editors, art directors, agents, and Hollywood moguls take note!!


Note that this is not a definitive best-of, just a few links to artists that I particularly like and who for the most part were students of mine at some point (also a few interns, which makes them extra-awesome).

Maggie Siegel-Berele's art is featured at the top of this post

Philip Bubbeo

Megan Brennan

Rel Finkelstein
**former intern bonus shout-out!!**

Megan and Rel also collaborate and have a studio together under the name of Best Pest.

Mike Luckas

Henry Fernau

Da Young Jung
**former intern bonus shout-out!!**

Not on the internet (or at least too hard to find), boo!

Robert Richburg

Jean Calderone

all art © copyright the respective artists
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Sean Bieri's "Exercise in Rage"

A small but significant news item: the first new "guest" variation on my Exercises in Style story in a good long while (5 years or so?). Unfortunately I can't make heads or tails of it, but the artist, my good friend Sean Bieri, assures me that it's a trenchant, spot-on satire of some currernt internet trend that I need to look up on Know Your Meme.

Update: over on Twitter, @segrim provided a link (indeed, from Know Your Meme) putting the comic in the context of "rage comics".

Just in case you didn't already know, Sean is actually a very gifted draftsman who is also one of the funniest and least appreciated cartoonists out there. Even Scott McCloud says so. Read more...

The Woods Transmissions: Report 01

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