Learn Drawing for Comics & Graphic Novels

Detail of Illustrations by the Author

This is a segment from an end-of-semester presentation held by the New York City organization, I'Raise Girls & Boys. Due to the pandemic, this year's presentation was held remotely. The mission of this organization is to promote social well-being and skills development to children and youth in urban NYC communities. Permission was obtained from the parents of the students to publish this video.

Tuition-Free* After-school Youth Workshop in New Paltz

Two Groups: younger group is for ages 8 to 13; older group is for ages 14 to 19

Workshop sessions are cost-free. As a community building project all participants will be expected to help clean and maintain the workspace and tools after each session. We’ll be learning by working on collaborative drawing projects. As long as covid social-distancing advisories are in place we’ll be doing Zoom meetings. After that, all shop work will be in-person.

Aside from practical work on sequential and narrative drawing methods this workshop provides valuable experiences related to the sometimes complex internal processes of producing visual works.

Many of us can probably remember early drawing experiences where the actual traces of our marks on our papers didn’t always correspond to the visual ideas that we had in mind. We’d see something unexpected in our lines. A part of us would get upset by this discrepancy. A certain wave of discouragement would wash over us. We’d avoid opening ourselves up to these unexpected results. All we would see is a “mistake”, and for many of us it would close a certain emotional door.

In this class we try to cultivate an attitude of openness, and even curiosity, toward the imperfections of our work. We allow these imperfections to bring up new questions about the many different processes of visual communication.

To sign up, write a letter about yourself, and why you’re interested in being a part of a collaborative drawing community.

Email your letter, along with three photos of your favorite hand-drawn work, to: alex@thesevenfoldstudio.com

Looking forward to hearing from you!