What’s going on at SAW in November, December and January in person at the SAW Studio!

Welcoming our 2024-2025 SAW Teaching Fellows!

SAW’s in person October was STACKED! Read about it here.

Hi all!

We’re digging around in the vast SAW Free Friday Night Comics archives on YouTube (three years now, over 150 workshops) and are noticing some trends. Lots of music, lots of places, lots of monsters and animals, lots of graphic medicine.

And then we found three for you this week, about ANXIETY and stress.

We met dozens of our community members at Short Run 2024! Take a look!

Hi all!

We’re digging around in the vast SAW Friday Night Comics archives (three years now, over 150 workshops) and are noticing some trends. Lots of music, lots of places, lots of monsters and animals, and lots of graphic medicine.

We’re talking with the good folks at GraphicMedicine.org about some joint projects and events, and in preparation, found a dozen wonderful workshops.

Here are just three for now. Stay tuned for more.

We had such a splendid and informative time having Sacha Mardou speak with us about her healing journey and career in comics. She gave us a generously in-depth look at her process in making her newly-released graphic memoir Past Tense. We also got a sneak peak at what she's working on next!

About our guest speaker:

"Sacha Mardou was born in Macclesfield in 1975 and grew up in Manchester, England. She began making comics after getting her BA in English Literature from the University of Wales, Lampeter. Her critically acclaimed graphic novel series, Sky in Stereo was named an outstanding comic of 2015 by the Village Voice and shortlisted for the 2016 Slate Studio Prize.

Since 2019 she has been making comics about therapy and healing. Her graphic memoir Past Tense: Facing family Secrets and Finding myself in Therapy published by Avery/Penguin USA is out now. Since 2005 she has lived in St Louis, Missouri with her cartoonist husband Ted May, their daughter and two disruptive cats."

Here’s what you’ve missed on seesawcomics.org this month!

Tom Hart will be at Short Run in Seattle Nov 2! Come say hello!

What a pleasure it was to have Yasmeen Abedifard speak with us at the Sequential Artists Workshop! We talked in depth about the making and many iterations of her recently published When to Pick a Pomegranate (2024 Silver Sprocket), as well as her journey through arts, comics, publishing, and teaching. Give it a listen! About our guest speaker: "Yasmeen Abedifard (b. 1996) is an Iranian-American artist born in the San Francisco Bay Area and is currently based in Oakland, CA, USA. She holds an MFA from Cornell University, where she received the Charles Baskerville Painting Award. Her work is centered around storytelling mediums, including comics, illustrations, and animation. She is currently teaching in the Comics program at The California College of the Arts (CCA) and the UC Berkeley Art Studio."

SAW went to CXC and it was beautiful!

SAW went to SPX this year and had a BLAST!

CONGRATS to everyone for seeing SAWgust through to the end!!! 

Even if you didn't quite reach your goal, you still accomplished so much! You all should be very proud :) It's been a pleasure to see everyone's progress throughout the month, and I hope you all continue making in a way that feels challenging but kind to yourselves!

In this four week course students will create comics about nature. We will cover science comics, memoir and fictional works with themes about nature. We would focus on how to use comic techniques like mark making, textures, symbolism and anthropomorphizing plants (for example) in our nature comics! By the end of the course students will have a collection of finished comics that they can share or continue as longer form works. 

Participants will get hands-on experience with a text generator and text-to-image generator to foster an understanding of the possibilities and limitations of Gen AI, as well as to provide context for a conversation about the enduring power of human storytelling.