One-Page Comics

Teaching the one-page comics lesson in March 2022 with second grade, I realized students needed more instruction, so on the second day of the project we co-generated a story with a beginning, middle, and ending.

Starting in high school, a family friend/ art teacher began inviting me to her school’s Festival of the Arts. My go-to lesson is making comics, and in March 2022, I did a four-day lesson with second graders where we planned, penciled, inked, and colored one-page original stories. 

In second grade, students created a rough draft of their comic, using templates and work sheets for low-stakes sketching and brainstorming. 

Most recently, I did one-page comics with high schoolers during my student teaching. It was roughly the same lesson, only compressed to one day and with a bit less modeling on my part. 

High schoolers went straight to final; they penciled, inked, and colored their comics in under 50 minutes. Some of the comics looked rushed, but I thought that the accelerated timetable might help with engagement, not even risking the chance of students getting bored.

The one-page comic went over well with the high schoolers, but I was left wishing we spent more time on the project. I’ll admit, I didn’t have terribly high expectations given the 45 minutes of work time, and that I assumed the lesson was most students’ first experiences with comics, but after seeing what students produced in one day I think they would have done really well with a more decompressed, rigorous version of the project. 

Students were able to choose the subject matter of their comics, which resulted in a lot of interesting stories. 

Al, Logical!

Fresh from the printers, August 19, 2022. 

My father— John Golden, professor of math education at GVSU— and I had been threatening to create a graphic novel together for years, and last summer, we finally did it. My dad and I co-wrote it, and I penciled, inked, colored, and lettered it. “It” being Al, Logical! It’s about a young woman who explores a seemingly haunted house, problem-solving and ghost-busting along the way. 

The rough draft of the cover, featuring the story’s main characters: Al, The Mathematican, Al’s math teacher,  Al’s mother, and The House. 

The whole project was emblematic of my belief in math-art integration, and interdisciplinary art education in general. I inherited that belief from my dad, and it was strengthened in my art education courses at GVSU. 

A page from my favorite chapter, in which Al and The Mathematician collaborate on how to escape a four dimensional maze. 

It was also an opportunity to do a large-scale cartooning project. I love drawing comics and small-scale projects usually fill my free time. (That is, when I’ve got creative energy to spare.) Someday, I might do a post about my superhero fan comic strips, maybe in the context of iterative design— the art and the writing definitely improved over time. 

I almost drew an entire comic without including a single superhero, but I snuck one into the graphic novel’s only splash page— the haunted house at its most chaotic, in the climax of the story. 

There was a limited print run— funded by GVSU’s Laker Venture Grant— but if you’re interested in reading it, reach out for a PDF copy!

Self-Portraits

My gallant attempt at a self-portrait in 2019. It was thrown away during spring cleaning either this year or the year before, but now it’ll be forever immortalized on this blog. 

This was the second unit I taught in my teacher apprenticeship semester. It was a pretty simple 2-3 day assignment; second graders were asked to draw themselves and include in the drawing something that was important to them. 

The earliest version of the project focused more on technique and less on personal relevancy, and while I’d still like to try it out some day, I’m very happy with what these second graders created. 

There were two inspirations for these portraits: Alejandra Chavez’s elementary self-portrait project and a reading from an art history class I took my senior year. Both focused on how self-portraits could be a means of self-expression; one in the context of primary school and the other in the context of the upper class in the Colonial America. I really wanted to give students a tool to share something about themselves they wanted people to know, and the unit was an excellent opportunity to get to know them.

Popular subject matter included toys, video games, pets, and family members.  

The first day of the unit isn’t something I would repeat, but it produced some pretty interesting drawings. I did large group guided practice on drawing facial features, taking the whole class through how I would draw eyes, noses, and mouths. When observing me teach that lesson, my professor (correctly) observed that, rather than teaching them how to draw their own faces, I was teaching them how to draw the same cartoon face— and that the variation I saw was more likely due to fine motor control than creativity. 

As intended, most students tried to follow my example. My professor called this “teaching schemas,” rather than teaching ways of seeing. 

Color Forms

 

My teacher-made example-- actually the third iteration of the project. Scrapped ideas included paper construction and oil pastels.  

This was the first lesson I taught in my Teacher Apprenticeship semester at GVSU, and it was a real roller coaster. The class: 5th grade art. The premise: Using color and form to describe school. Day one was practice with meaning-making and drawing forms; day two was arranging wooden blocks and drawing them from life, making sure to indicate value; day three was painting over the blocks, mixing together shades to create a dark value. With some classes, the lesson took four days— which, meeting only once a week, took a bit longer than it might seem— where an extra day was taken to reteach measuring, or to clarify my expectations. 

A student's arrangement of wooden blocks. After a very rowdy initial attempt at introducing these new materials, I began each class by asking: What do you think the rules are for using these tools? 

I learned a lot with this lesson: To self-narrate, scaffold new procedures, and make my guiding questions more thoughtful and creative. An alternative premise, if I were to teach this lesson in the future, the premise might instead be: Use color and form to describe how you wish school could be. Similar to a visual, abstracted social contract. I’m not sure if I would teach this again to 5th graders; the ideas and skills might be easier for middle school students. But, that being said, I’m incredibly proud of the work the students did during this unit. I had high expectations, and they certainly met them. 

Examples of student work, 5th Grade (Tuesday's class)

Examples of student work, 5th Grade (Wednesday's class)