4 consecutive Mondays starting June 28 * ONLINE at 5pm Eastern * REGISTER to receive link
Comics Practice w/ Georgia Webber
Cultivating a comics practice can be reflective, helpful, and necessary to achieve your larger projects. Since creative output is so personal, it takes a lot of trial and error to find your rhythm. This course offers space to explore and play with things that have worked for other that we might borrow and modify for ourselves, using a question as the common ground from which to sprout our individual practices.
Week one – Where to begin? (1 hour)
Materials: Whatever you like to draw with.
Making comics is a personal process, and there are as many ways to do it as there are people. So how do you know where to start? You just try stuff and discover what you like. We’ll try a few different methods for beginning a comics process, and discover what we like, don’t like, and want to modify to suit our needs.
Week two – How often? (1 hour)
Materials: Whatever you like to draw with.
Comics can be simple and quick, or a time-intensive labour of love. Maybe you feel like you should have a dedicated time to draw every week, or maybe you burst with spontaneous inspiration and then do nothing for weeks on end. There’s no wrong way to keep a comics practice, but it helps to intentionally explore our tendencies and set ourselves up to enjoy the process as much as possible, as often as it works for us.
Week three – To what end? (1 hour)
Materials: Whatever you like to draw with.
Whatever you want your comics to be, there’s a pathway from where you are now to that end. How you get there is another expression of your creativity! In this hour, we’ll start mapping our terrain, keeping our sights on enjoying the journey.
Week four – Who cares? (1 hour)
Materials: Whatever you like to draw with.
When you think of making comics, does it all seem somewhat abstract? Who do you imagine reading your work? Who do you make it for? No matter what your goals are for seeing your work enter the world, your experience will be directed by where you put your energy, where you make yourself available to be found. We’ll dive into some options for how to share your comics, and why you might choose each one.
If you have any questions or concerns about accessibility in these classes, please contact Georgia at info@georgiawebber.com.
====
Drawing the Inside Out is a collection of online comics courses for adults and teens who want to create comics from their life experience. The first course is an introduction called Making Comics for Yourself, a primer on making comics for self-expression.
Note: The umbrella term “comics” is used throughout this description, and is the term for the entire medium of comics, so will be used as a singular noun. “Comic arts” is another term for the practice and product of creating comics, whatever the genre, style, or motive, and “comics artist” is my preferred term for my identity within this realm.
Testimonials from past participants
“We so enjoyed participating in Georgia Webber’s Drawing the Inside Out workshop. She was a fantastic facilitator and it felt easy to connect. Particularly during these trying times, this was one of our highlights of the week. Having participated allowed for both my partner and I to talk about what it stirred, how we felt, even after the class was over. This tapped into the core of some issues and shed light on our own perceptions and wellbeing. This is something I would highly recommend and we do believe this is an essential tool to help maintain good mental health.”
“Georgia Webber’s Drawing the Inside Out workshop was a wonderful opportunity for me to be introduced to comics as a way of understanding and expressing my own feelings.”
“Georgia brought a warm attitude, respect for each participant’s comfort level, mastery of her discipline and a great taste in music to bring out our creative energies!
“Georgia was genuinely interested in getting to know us as participants, gave us exciting drawing prompts, encouragement and kind and helpful feedback. This program was artistically and socially beneficial to me. I am continuing to draw comics as an outlet to process my experiences and believe I’ll continue to do so for a long time. I enjoy reflecting on what I learned from Georgia and my fellow participants, and the laughter and empathy that we shared.”
Biography
Georgia Webber is a comics artist, writer, and editor. She adores teaching and leads by exemplifying curiosity in the classroom. Her philosophy is that teaching is a relationship first, allowing the learning process to be fun and organic and suited to each learner’s specific access needs. Georgia is best known for her graphic memoir, Dumb: Living without a Voice (Fantagraphics 2018), the chronicle of her severe vocal injury and sustained vocal condition, which makes using her voice painful (though she manages it well these days). This experience led her to explore more deeply the intersections of creativity and health, through working as a Cranial Sacral Therapist, a meditation facilitator, and as an improvising musician, blending elements of healthcare, body awareness, and creative expression within constraints. Her exploration of health and creativity continue in a weekly online practice session called Drawing Health, which is free and open to all. Georgia’s comics have been published in major magazines and studied extensively by the Graphic Medicine community. Her most recent publication was a collaboration with dancer, athlete, and artist Vivian Chong to create Vivian's graphic memoir about losing her sight: Dancing After TEN (Fantagraphics 2020). Learn more about Georgia’s teaching and comics work at www.drawingtheinsideout.ca.
© Georgia Webber 2020
www.georgiawebber.com