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 a great time with David Lasky playing around with Shots like a Filmmaker. We all made great stories filled with mystery and a little bit of drama-  super fun. Come join us! Come try, it yourself. 

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!

Creativity and health practices come together every Saturday, 10 AM Eastern, forever.

In case you've missed this amazing opportunity, we've partnered with Georgia Webber at Drawing the Inside Out.

Drawing Health is an ongoing series of live practice sessions that connect health and creativity for a sustainable and satisfying art practice.

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’ve started a podcast! We're doing a soft launch of our Friday Night Comics Video Podcasts on Spotify. This is a new way to catch up, rewatch, or listen to archived Friday Night Comics Workshops.

This Weeklong Comics Retreat is designed to break you out of your regular routine and drop you into a room alongside other cartoonists and comics lovers. We will be prioritizing time in the studio drawing and workshopping projects in small groups.

Find us at SPX this weekend in Maryland! Table E14. We’re also sponsoring four workshops at SPX: 9/17 Making Diary Comics with Ellen O’Grady; Drawing Cuteness with Shauna J. Grant; Bodies, Birth and Death, a Comics Workshop With Tom Hart; and Make A Comics Love Letter to TV With Anna Sellheim.

In this fall teen comics class, students will be developing their comics making skills, flexing their storytelling muscles and trying their hand at new image making techniques.

By the end of the 10 weeks, each student will walk away with multiple comics pages and a reproducible comics zine. They will also have an opportunity to exhibit their work in a Friday night artwork exhibition Friday November 25.

In this 6-week program you will be guided through the basic principles of figurative and landscape drawing with a view to developing an eye for composition and strengthening your artmaking confidence. Come prepared to draw from life and imagination. These are adult, in-person workshops.

Haiku Comics with David Lasky! (Free and open to everyone)

Friday, December 10th @ 8PM EDT

Invite your friends! This is a free event that's open to the public.

This workshop is for adults but rated PG, and kids and teens are welcome with their parents. Registrants must have a Zoom account and can only access from one device.

FINDING YOUR DREAM HOUSE with JEN SANDWICH December 3rd @ 7PM EST! ⠀

Our next Friday Night Comics Workshop is with Nicole J. Georges! Develop a daily practice of combining comics and self-care by charting your emotions and drawing yourself into joyful and soothing situations.

Friday Night Comics Workshop: The Bad Art Hour with Daryl Seitchik! This workshop will focus on how embracing mistakes in drawing and storytelling can free us up and lead to happy accidents we wouldn't have come to any other way. There will be some drawing warm ups, a short google slides talk, and then an exercise in improvised comics + time to share. It's the class *I* need right now, so I'm hoping other people will benefit too!