A book about creativity, comix, writing with pictures, and staying engaged with your medium.

A book is about comix- as a method of self-expression, creative exploration, and a way to devote yourself to finding and articulating what you want to say.

It’s about the drawing and writing of characters and stories as a form of exploration and practice, allowing us to deepen the character and story of our lives. With any artform, as we dedicate ourselves to it, our lives and interactions become enriched, and our bodies and our spirits beome more engaged. So it is true with comix too.

This book is also about the visual nature of any storytelling, and offers useful ideas and practices for non-cartooning storytellers. Visualizing their stories in these ways will make their job easier, their work freer, and their story truer to their own hearts.
READ THE BLOG ENTRIES:

 

To download a PDF of the book in progress, join the FACEBOOK GROUP.

- BLOG
- IMAGES AND IDEAS - How to start
- CHARACTERS- Using characters as tools
- STORIES AND DRAMA - Story craft; What we can do with those tools
- POETRY - Poetic craft; doing more with less
- MINING THE LINEFIELD - The interaction of the previous principles; looking at where lines and our own mark-making fits in
- SAYING EVERYTHING FOREVER - More practices and methods for always finding material that matters

And related: a project in progress with relevant notes and sketches: Barney Banks Extra Life

Tom Hart is a popular cartoonist and teacher who was called “One of my favorite cartoonists of the decade” by Understanding Comics creator Scott McCloud. He has created numerous graphic novels, was awarded the Xeric grant for cartoonists and has been nominated for the industries highest awards: the Eisner, the Harvey and the Ignatz He has taught in New York City at the School of Visual Arts, Parsons, and the 92nd Street Y, and has taught workshops from Hawaii to Maine.

Utilizing what he taught in classrooms for 10 years and drawn on in his own award-nominated comix creations, he details how to start from scratch with no ideas, how to develop ideas, how to find and finish stories, how to stay fearless and nimble, how to constantly be creating something meaningful to you, regardless of your medium.

With more than 50 vivid exercises designed to get you creating.

“Tom Hart is one of the few cartoonists whose work I actively seek. There is a depth of feeling in his Hutch Owen stories that places them among the best comic work that I’ve read”
- Joe Sacco, creator of Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde

“Tom Hart is a Walt Whitman in high-top sneakers” - The Comics Journal

 

Spring 2010. I'm teaching two great classes to help you say everything you want to say.

  • INDEPENDENT STUDY SEMINAR. I am co-teaching this with Matt Madden, a class helping self-motivated students develop and finalize their longer projects.

Fall classes at 92nd St Y: