Our next Pro-Call is with Tessa Hulls! Come join us in our most affordable, online ongoing-community SAW FLOW + PUBLISH MEMBERSHIP GROUP (comes with a two-week free trial) to join in on MONTHLY PRO-CALLS!

We bring in comic professionals from all walks of life to guest speak (virtually) at SAW. These guest speakers give SAW students/members some insight from their personal experiences throughout their comics career and welcome questions at the end of each session. Come join us!

I like to think that we can TRAIN the inner critc, first to become a NOTICER, and then, a SUGGESTER.

The Critic likes to ask, WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

But the critic has no idea who you are. The critic only knows who you're not. 

We had such a productive week from our last in-person Visiting Artist Workshop led by award-winning cartoonist, Tommi Parrish @tommi_pg (and their dog, Cool Dog)! Here are only a few photos taken from the week demonstrating how Tommi created an atmosphere of looseness and play while having students work on a combination of book making, playing with different DIY printing techniques, painting with gouache, and more! Tommi finished the week off by giving an artist talk over at local, indie bookstore, Third House Books.

At the end of Tommi Parrish's (@tommi_pg) Week-Long Visiting Artist Workshop in the SAW Studio space, please join us for a FREE (in-person) Artist Talk with Tommi on October 20th at 7:30PM. This event will take place at local, indie bookstore @thirdhousebooks! We hope to see you there!

Starting October 7th, our regular Draw Jam on the first Saturday of the month will instead be a two day event for 24 hour comics day!

Mid-October, we are thrilled to have award-winning cartoonist, Tommi Parrish (@tommi_pg) lead a week-long Visiting Artist Workshop in the SAW Studio; our usual monthly Drink and Draw on October 19th at Boxcar hosted by SAW alums, Amy @sunshineblossoms and Elli @s0ftpillow; and a free artist talk with Tommi Parish at Third House Books @thirdhousebooks starting at 7:30PM on October 20th…

This fall we're bringing you some new and returning online classes from now through until December including Bootleggers Guide to Story Jess Ruliffson, Build Your Own Labyrinth with Matt Madden, Story Structure Basics and How to Use Them with Beth Trembley, and more!

Catch the replay of our most recent Friday Night Comics Workshop: Having Fun with Self-Mythology with Ellen O’Grady! We hope you've been having a good time enjoying this creative community full of art-making! 

Catch the replay of our most recent Friday Night Comics Workshop with Sarah Maloney @maloneydoodles! We explored CREATING PLACE in our comics where we were asked to draw some shoes and then to consider where those pair of shoes would take us. We hope you've been having a good time enjoying this creative community full of art-making!

We had a great time with Tom Motley from SVA who brought us through DAREDOODLES, some inventive ways to make characters and comics!

Come join us in our most affordable, online ongoing-community SAW FLOW + PUBLISH MEMBERSHIP GROUP (comes with a two-week free trial) to join in on MONTHLY PRO-CALLS! 

SAW Pro-Call with Georgia Webber on Career and Health.

Georgia Webber is a comics artist, editor, and facilitator living in Newfoundland. She is entirely occupied by the intersection of health and art, making music, comics, and facilitating courses from this point of fascination.  

The Pain of Who We Aren't

"Take a look at yourself in the mirror.

Do you look like you? Do you look like you want to? Hopefully you do, but most of us don't. Most of us feel STUCK with the person in the mirror. But I also know that if you feel you want to be someone else, or somewhere else, THAT PAIN is exactly what you should be writing and drawing about...

In fact, I will go to the mat about this: any story worth a damn is about someone who is somewhere they don't want to be.

I'm going to say that again: Every good story is about someone who is not who they want to be, but who pushes on anyway…

We had a great time with Josh Bayer @joshmbayer (Instagram account) drawing characters with objects, learning and using shading techniques that amplify our comics, and bringing the holiday season into it, we talked about making a stories of objects we exchange, Josh mentioned that a good way to start a comic plot is to make a list i.e. objects we exchange, things we struggle to buy, things we want to buy, disappointing gifts, disappointing reactions, etc.

A couple weeks ago, we tried our hands at DRAWING LIKE A FILMMAKER with David Lasky, but can you believe it's been over a year since we made HAIKU COMICS (with David Lasky)?

We learned about how newspaper comic stripes with silent panels can be similar to how haikus are formatted,

we learned how comic stripes could also work with haikus incorporated in them, 

and we learned how we can focus on the little moments in comics using this exercise.

We had a great time with Yasmeen Abedifard @yasmeen.abedi expressing the self through characters. We learned how cartoon characters have a unique way of evoking empathy and about mirroring emotions in the characters we create. We made some great 1 page comics with the complex characters we created in the workshop!

If you missed it, here's the replay!

We had an amazing time with Kristen Radtke, who had us drawing diagrams about secrets.

We had a great time at Friday Night Comics, hosted by Tom Hart, making Meta-comics!

Upcoming online courses coming this Spring! Your Story Matters with Leela Corman, Comics with Josh Bayer, Drawing for Comics with Jess Ruliffson, and more! See full post to check out which courses fit your cartooning goals!

We recently hosted Matt Madden for SAW’s WE BELIEVE IN COMICS Friday Night Workshop. We had a great time with Matt Madden, where we played a game of making nine panel comics from three words in a very specific, poetic order. We had a lot of fun and really flowed with this exercise!