Graphic Novel Intensive participants worked to produce short pieces for an anthology. Come meet the artists at the opening reception. Original art and pre-orders will be available.

Wednesday July 1, 2009, 6-9 PM
Bridge City Comics 3725 N. Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR 97227
www.bridgecitycomics.com

Graphic Novel Intensive

This six-day workshop will begin with some basic ideas of character development and move into strategies for experimental narrative, with participants also examining the foundations of creating comics and graphic novels. This is primarily a studio class and covers comics terminology, layout, page design, life drawing, autobiography, and the work of contemporary and historical comics and cartoonists.

Participants can expect to develop a comprehensive understanding of the mechanics and expressive qualities of comic art present in a wide range of contemporary media. Comics have a distinct way of delivering a story that exists between the visuals of film and the exposition of language. As a verbal, visual, and narrative filter, familiarity with sequential art will also enhance the students’ experience of, and potential collaboration with, other media including film, theater, literature, illustration, animation, and video games. Participants will complete a project which will part of an exhibit and the seminar will culminate with the publication of a group anthology.

Read more→ about Graphic Novel at PNCA Continuing Education including the First Thursday Comics Walking tour, updates about faculty and students and links to webcomics.

The basic mechanics of comics is simple: images next to each other create a sequence that tells a story. Within that basic premise, there is a very complex set of relationships. The comic or graphic novel as a medium is a hybrid. It uses techniques and strategies from film, literature, television, old master drawing, printmaking and cartooning. Like film it is expansive and can accommodate a wide range of subject matter and approach–from the highly commercial to the most avant-garde. This six day workshop will begin with some basic ideas of character development and move into strategies for experimental narrative. As an artist you get to “cast” your own story. Comics have a distinct way of delivering a story that exists between the visuals of film and the exposition of language. This intensive will focus on the strengths and boundaries of comics. All participants will publish in a group anthology at the end of the intensive.

The nineteenth century notion of the novel has left us with an overriding sense of “good” story moving sequentially from point a to b to c. Most mainstream films and books follow this formula. As experiments in storytelling from John Barth to Quentin Tarantino to contemporary video installation demonstrate, narrative structure need not be linear. In addition to narrative structure, this workshop will look at the physical manifestation of an image. How is the story transmitted differently when it is in a handmade mini comic as opposed to a very slick book? To take that even further, how is the story perceived when painted on a wall in huge scale or seen on a computer screen? How as an artist and writer could you expand the physical dimension of your story? How can the structure of a story expand through different media?
Syllabus→

PNCA-CE is extremely excited to have Ellen Forney teaching at this year’s graphic novel intensive. She has been a professional cartoonist and illustrator since 1992 and recently illustrated the The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a National Book Award winner, written by Sherman Alexie. Her book Lust is a collection of the “Lustlab Ad of the Week” cartoons she does for The Stranger, published by Fantagraphics.

Her work as been described as “... whimsical and wise as well as sexy, naughty and sometimes shocking. But always, they’re formed with a generosity of spirit that shimmers on the surface of each panel.” Seattle PI August 8, 2006

Her comics and books focus on the everyday eccentricities of the world around her and uses both drawing and font treatments to express the emotion and action of her characters. Ellen’s book “I Love Led Zeppelin” covers thirteen years of her work as comic artist, including collaborations with Margaret Cho, Dan Savage and Kristen Gore.

Ellen teaches comics at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts, paints large-scale acrylic work for solo and group shows, and is an avid swimmer and yoga practitioner. She grew up in Philadelphia and currently lives in Seattle.

You can read more about Ellen here and on her website.

For decades comic books and graphic novels have struggled to find legitimacy as both art and literature. Recognizing comics as a medium and not a genre is crucial to the expansion of the art form, and creators like Daniel Duford have ventured outside the conventions of the form to expand the possibilities of the medium. Ultimately, comics are a visual medium that uses images, often in conjunction with words, to tell stories that have traditionally been limited to a series of pages bound together in a book format. But with films based on popular comic book characters and the advent of web comics, the medium has already proven it can exist out the traditional paradigm.
Heavily influenced by the comic books he read in his youth, the pulp adventures of costumed superheroes have had a profound impact on Duford’s art. He explains on his website, “As a kid, my favorite superheroes were the “big men” The Incredible Hulk, The Swamp Thing, Colossus, Thing, etc. All of these big men were ultra-masculine powerhouses whose elemental urges dwarfed their reason. These comic book strong men provided a catalyst for the questions that concern my current pieces.”

Duford has taken the basic principals of the comic book narrative- multiple images used to tell a story- and applied that to a variety of mediums. His recent work has explored the differences between strength and power and the ever present contentiousness between physicality and spirituality, both recurring themes within the world of superheroes. At the same time, while retaining some of the narrative principals of comic books, Duford’s explorations in other mediums requires an interpretive participation by the viewer, which in turn transforms his work from commercial art to fine art.
Part of what makes Duford’s work so compelling is that he diligently works to expand the medium that inspires him, without denying the original source of the inspiration. His “essential” reading list is an eclectic mix that includes traditional superhero fare such as Batman: Year One by Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli, The Saga of the Swamp Thing by Alan Moore and John Totleben, and The New X-Men by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, as well as more alternative offerings like Carol Swain’s Foodboy, Ben Katchor’s The Jew of New York, Chester Brown’s Louis Riel, and Black Hole by Charles Burns.

A teacher at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Duford will be an instructor in PNCA’s Graphic Novel Intensive this summer. “My class will explore the different ways that stories are told visually,” he says. “The class will explore ways of taking the comic off the page and experiment with narrative structure.”

Artwork by: Jefferson Powers, Ellen Forney and Daniel Duford