Introduction to Illustrating Comics

A little while back I taught an Introduction to Illustrating Comics workshop over at Salisbury University.  This was the first class I'd ever instructed and as one could guess it was quite interesting.

The experience overall was extremely cool.  Having the chance to talk about a topic like comics, which I'm rather passionate about, and to explain the process of actually illustrating a comics' page was nothing short of great.

Since graduating high school I've kept in decent contact with one of the great positive influences in my artistic life - that being my high school art teacher, Michael Morris.

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1st ever comics page drawn by my high school art teacher, Michael Morris

Mr. Morris was one of the 3 teachers who taught the VPA (Visual & Performing Arts) program I was apart of in high school, which eventually lead to me going to college at MICA.  Like I said, a VERY positive influence.

I told Mr. Morris about the Intro. to Comics class and it turns out he mentioned it to his current VPA students, so a number of them made an appearance.  It was tremendously gratifying being able to give back in some way to a future generation of artists who are coming up & beginning from one of the very places I consider to be a milestone in my life.

It also turns out that Mr. Morris himself showed up for the class AND considering I was the "authority" this time around I decided he was required to participate.  So I "made" him do the assignment.  Good stuff, right?

In VPA we focused mostly on the Fine Arts so having the opportunity to bring comics to not only VPA students but my former teacher was, as you could expect, quite the treat.

I gotta say too for his first ever comics page it's pretty impressive (show off lol).

- Doug

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