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Comic Art Ed! Scholarship focusing on bringing comics into the visual arts classroom. A resource for educators, students, cartoonists and the curious.
Comic Books in Arts Education!
Welcome to Comic Art Ed! Here you will find documentation and resources about bringing comics into the visual arts classroom. My name is Cathy G. Johnson, and I'm a cartoonist, printmaker and educator. This website documents my comic art educational work and serves as a resource for other educators, students and cartoonists. Go to the About page to learn more about me and Comic Art Ed!
I have had the pleasure of teaching a wonderful group of grad students this year in Boston University’s new Visual Narrative MFA program! The upcoming book talks are free and open to the public, so I hope you consider coming down and supporting the hard work all these incredible students achieved!
Upcoming Workshops:
April 15, 17 + 19: Cumberland Public Library, RI
May 11: Haverhill Public Library, MA
May 4, May 11, May 18 and June 1: Providence Public Library, RI
Making Comics is for Everyone!
What comic books offer students is unique and exciting. Comic books are not only a combination of art and literature, but become a whole much greater than the sum of its parts. Cartooning offers exciting opportunities for innovative thinking — a child's imagination can build worlds on the page. Comics are amazing, and belong in the classroom! Book a visit today!
In this all-ages workshop, students will have the opportunity to brainstorm their own superhero identity, design a symbol, then create a simple cardboard + paper costume.
I love libraries! I’ve been very lucky to get invited to a few recently to do author visits and comic drawing workshops. Here are a few photos and graphics from those events! We had a really wonderful time and I can’t wait to come back.
I was recently invited by the Grafton Public Library in Massachusetts to teach a Teen Zine Workshop. It was so much fun! Description of Workshop: Learn about the history of zines and then create your own! From political activism, fan comics, to punk rock and Star Trek, you can make a zine about almost anything!
Here is a fun comic art activity that gets students thinking and sharing about their past, present and future! I created this project for my art enrichment after school students. I wanted students to think about their goals and their future, particularly with a hopeful attitude, since the pandemic has been harsh and difficult on developing kids.
“Where do ideas come from?” Ideation is something that can stump many art students. We never want to tell students what they should make! On the flip side, doodling is spontaneous, free, and unrestrained drawing. Every student, no matter their artistic skill or background, can doodle. How can the power of doodling be harnessed to help students create, develop, and feel confident in their original ideas?
Feelings Faces, an Elementary Social-Emotional Arts Activity. The idea of this activity was to use the facial expression of cartooning to help build students' empathy, and to create tangible images for their intangible feelings.
6-Panel Stories, a Collaborative Comic Art Activity. At a local middle school, I had the pleasure of teaching a 5-week after school comics club. In this activity, students each have the opportunity to contribute to a 6-panel comic story.
Figure drawing is a well-known art exercise for students of all ages, and can be approached in many different ways. The excitement and joy of cartooning is not the precision of drawing, but the communication through marks and forms. Therefore, my approach to figure drawing with my students is not about capturing the perfect form, but instead capturing the emotion that the figure is conveying.
The Comic Warriors were 12 mighty young people, ages 5 - 13. Here you will find their class anthology, collecting all 12 stories, drawn + printed in August 7 - 11, 2017.
Every Spring Break I get to teach a one-day workshop with students ages 6-13. This community center time is a great opportunity for students to explore creativity outside of school hours....
Featured Posts
I have had the pleasure of teaching a wonderful group of grad students this year in Boston University’s new Visual Narrative MFA program! The upcoming book talks are free and open to the public, so I hope you consider coming down and supporting the hard work all these incredible students achieved!
Seosamh aka Joe is a butch trans painter, a hypertext enthusiast, and author of dark, surreal, and intimate worlds of denim, leather, and gloss. Among other projects, he and his partner Anka are proud co-authors of the ongoing sci-fi comic, SUPERPOSE. This interview is the third of our exciting new series supporting remus’ PhD dissertation work. Thank you for joining us!
Sunmi is a cartoonist whose body of work explores emotional distances and gender deviant fantasies, within a framework of queer + Korean histories and mythologies. This interview is the second of our exciting new series supporting remus’ PhD dissertation work. Thank you for joining us!
How do you make money and save money as an artist? In this beginner’s post about finances I encourage you to be empowered. You are an artist and you can do it.
This page is specifically geared to cartoonists who are interested in how to traditionally publish. I’m going to attempt to answer as many questions as I can, including pitches, cover letters, agents and editors.
Emma Jayne is an Ignatz and Prism Award-winning cartoonist. This interview is the first of our exciting new series supporting remus’ PhD dissertation work. Thank you for joining us!
Contact me to set up a workshop + visit:
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Drawing a Dialogue is a podcast discussing comics in historical + educational contexts by Cathy G. Johnson + remus jackson. Learn more here!
The Breakaways
The Breakaways is my middle-grade graphic novel!
Age Range: Middle-grade, 8 - 11 years
Themes: Friendship, relationships, overcoming odds, slice-of-life
Summary: Quiet, sensitive Faith starts middle school already worrying about how she will fit in. To her surprise, Amanda, a popular eighth grader, convinces her to join the school soccer team, the Bloodhounds. Having never played soccer in her life, Faith ends up on the C team, a ragtag group that’s way better at drama than at teamwork. Although they are awful at soccer, Faith and her teammates soon form a bond both on and off the soccer field that challenges their notions of loyalty, identity, friendship, and unity.
The Breakaways is a portrait of friendship in its many forms, and a raw and beautifully honest look into the lives of a diverse and defiantly independent group of kids learning to make room for themselves in the world.
Comic Art Ed! on Social Media!
Adults: Please tag us @comicarted on social media if you’d like to share your students’ comic art from your classrooms!