Creating Political Action Comics
We're living in politically fractious times when everyone seems to be struggling to get their opinions heard. Martin Kozlowski is teaching a course at the School of Visual Arts this fall that will get students to transform their points of view into compelling comics.
Battle Lines Drawn: Creating Political Action Comics will be offered by SVA's Continuing Education department. It will run on Wednesday evenings, 6:30 to 9:30, from September 18th through December 4th –– here's the listing.
A description from the SVA online catalogue:
This course will guide students through the process of shaping their powerful political opinions into a sequential narrative structure. It will include concise illustrated lectures on the history and process of political cartooning and graphic novels, with an emphasis on the governmental and societal pressures brought to bear on free expression in the United States and abroad. Students will practice transforming ideas into visual metaphors by sketching in class and at home. This work will be discussed and shaped during group sessions and through individual instruction. By mid-semester students will decide on the subject matter for a multipage project. The second half of the course will focus on producing a finished sequential story in comic form that expresses each student's unique points of view.
Below are the first two pages from a strip created specifically for the class. It deals with the orgins of the art form and some of the pressures that still impact it. The political world is on fire and the First Amendment is under attack –– it's the perfect time to respond with unfettered views presented in the smartest possible way.
08/17/19
