Drawing your Route: A Comic Workshop!

I was kindly invited by my friend Charlie to run this workshop at MONOVA: Museum of North Vancouver on Family Day. The museum put on a great day of programming, including live music, caricature artists, and an exhibit where newcomers to North Vancouver illustrated their journeys in comic form! My comic workshop was one piece of this programming.

The audience for the comic workshop was different from my usual target audience. Instead of kids of a specific age range who registered in advance for the program, this event was drop-in style. Families attending the workshop consisted of parents and their young children, ranging from little kids who are still learning to use a pencil, to older kids who were able to confidently draw on their own.

Contents

1. Routes to Roots exhibition
2. How to draw: Transportation & Buildings
3. Drawing your route as a comic

Routes to Roots exhibition

The museum of North Vancouver has a New Voices volunteer program for new immigrants and international students. Volunteers meet weekly, and work together to create a community exhibit for the museum.

This year the volunteers created a map of the city of North Vancouver, with little pins, and made autobiographical comics to show their journeys at those various locations. It was cool to see everyone's different styles and I loved seeing something so localized that highlighted voices in the community! Most of the volunteers were there on the day to talk with guests about their work.

My workshop was designed to tie in to this theme of routes and journeys, so guests could create their own versions of what they'd just seen.

How to draw: Transportation & Buildings

I did some step-by-step drawing cartoony demos of various transportation methods. I had a little whiteboard to draw on, and families followed along step by step.

Then we did houses and apartments so that participants could place these in the backgrounds of their comics.

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Drawing your route as a comic

After the drawing demo portion, guests started to draw their own comics, illustrating a route or journey in their own lives. Before they started, I gave a quick overview which camera angles are best for showing setting and actions in comics.

Guests chose one of two prompts for their comics:

• ‍Option 1: A route you take often
• Option 2: A route you & your family have taken before

The rest of the workshop was free time to draw, and guests were welcome to drop-in or leave whenever they wanted.

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If you're a librarian or programmer and interested in having me teach this workshop at your community space, please contact me or refer to my classes & workshops page.

Please do not duplicate or re-distribute my artwork. Self-employed teaching artists or school teachers are welcome to use my ideas to design your own slides and lessons. If you'd like to use these activities for commercial use or for an audience of more than 200 students, please contact me for usage terms and fees.

All artwork belongs to the respective authors and artists credited.

Fonts used in images: Goldie Boxing by Balpirick Studio, Raleway, Soapy Hands by Sara Linsley