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In autumn 2017, I taught a four week comics course at the Oasis Skateboard Factory, an alternative highschool within the Toronto District Schoolboard. OSF has a project-focused curriculum, so our comic project was multifaceted, to approach multiple curriculum aspects.
Over the course of the four weeks, we read Emily Carroll‘s Through the Woods, and Mike Mignola‘s Hellboy: The Chained Coffin. Through class discussion and on-paper exercises we analyzed stories from each book and discussed the different ways they approached the horror genre. Using collaborative drawing exercises we discussed cartooning, and we spent a full session going over visual literacy in terms of composition, colour choice, value and related concerns. We then used the story tools we’d developed in analysis to help each student write a short two page horror comic story, which they drew and prepared for risograph printing.
Once the files were all ready, a smaller group of students joined me and one of the program heads, Lauren Hortie, at OCADU to print the comic with their risograph machine and the help of the print technicians. The students then collated and bound the books, and they were launched at The Beguiling in November 2017. You can see some photos from the book launch on the OSF blog here.
Huge thanks to Lauren and Craig of OSF, to The Beguiling and Page and Panel for helping me find books that would work with the program and the horror theme and then hosting the launch party afterwards, and to OCADU for helping us do such a big print project on a tight turnaround, while also providing a great learning experience for the students that came along for that stage.
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Keep on the Shining Isle is a system-agnostic dungeon featuring a haunted ruin, a mystery cult and some very tempting apples. Pick this up to send your home campaign on a memorable sidequest, or try out your favourite new system with this 1-2 session scenario. Written and published by Shel Kahn as the first of many Pocket Dungeons.
Quantities limited, but occasionally available as a zine, 6 x 3.5″, 24 pages, black and white, packaged in a pencil case along with a fabric map and Shining Isle patch from the Portable City store.
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Full Colour Yellow King RPG Book Illustration
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posted to: arttagged: architecture, game art, glow, pencil crayon, rpg, strange, tabletop roleplaying game, water, watercolour, yellow, yellow king rpgThis illustration was drawn for Robin Laws’ Yellow King RPG‘s Paris book, showcasing the city of Ys rising from its uncanny slumber beneath the waves off the coast of France. It was created in watercolour and coloured pencil, and took inspiration from the art of the era, including the symbolist and late romantic painters, as well as sculpture and poster design.
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Gouache painting.
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Here’s a few lineups of prop and architectural element designs created very early on in the process for Rocket 5 Studios, for their release The Phantom P. I.!
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The Crystal Kobold is a mischievous friend, with an eye for the shiniest of treasures.
Watercolour and coloured pencil on watercolour paper, 2017.
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I’ve had the privilege of teaching art in a variety of environments – from still life oil painting at the college level, to combining art with science and history in a museum setting, to guiding highschool students through creating a comics anthology. Through these very different settings, I’ve found a list of constants that, when I keep them in mind, help me deliver the most enjoyable and effective art education for my students.
One of my core beliefs is that art is, at the heart of it all, something a student must teach themself, and that a classroom, workshop, or camp that wants to teach art is actually responsible for creating an environment and offering projects that facilitate that self-driven learning.
With that on the table, here is the pantheon of truths that, if I can hold on to all of them, help me create that learning environment:
(photo of me in my natural environment taken by Craig Morrison at the Oasis Skateboard Factory)
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