30 9 / 2011
What is a National LearnIt? And what does it have to do with comics?
Here at CommuniTeach we aren’t just interested in getting a group of people in a room together to learn interesting things from their neighbors for free. Oh no. Our aims are much higher than that.
To appropriate a visual from the inside of Fearless CommuniFounder Ben’s head:
Imagine a warm, cozy coffee house where people are gathered to learn and share skills. Zoom out. Imagine many cozy coffee shops all over the country bursting with inquiring minds. Zoom out again. Imagine the entire world overflowing with knowledge and community and good cheer.
This is our goal. We hope to build a culture of learning that connects communities from all over by uniting them with a common learning experience.
We took our first steps towards this moon walk last Wednesday, at our first ever National LearnIt where two cities, Chicago and Pittsburgh, simultaneously learned how to draw comics from a slew of talented CommuniTeachers.
In Pittsburgh, over a dozen learners settled into the temporary farmland of the Digital Salad installation at Assemble, a unique art gallery venue, and turned their attention to teachers Ryan Yee, Lizzee Solomon, Shawn Atkins, and Jason Lanza, who began the evening with individual overviews of their own work and influences. (Check out their stuff, it is amazing!)
Jason then led the group through a workshop on how to draw the human figure. With individual help from the other teachers, even the most novice learners were able to produce respectable male and female human figures ready for comic action. (Next step: learning to draw clothes too!)
Meanwhile, back in Chicago, the talented Nina Pagano offered a complementary lesson in creating comics. Surrounded by colorful paintings, photographs and sculptures in the Park Schreck Gallery, the Chicago learners built a short storyline by each offering an action or a line of dialogue. The resulting story involved a lack of milk, a mutant mechanical cow, and a mysterious orange man. (You can’t make this stuff up, folks…)
Each person drew their own version of how the story should look and everyone’s comics turned out quite different- some humorous, some scary, some both. Nina used this variance to demonstrate the different styles of storyboarding that can be used in drawing a comic about the same essential story.
Basically, if the two LearnIts had a baby, we would have the best-drawn, best-planned CommuniComic in all of history.
Thanks to everyone who came out for helping us host our very successful First Ever National LearnIt! Can you feel the community growing already?
Finally, here are some other great events related to this LearnIt:
- 24 Hour Comics Day, a 24-hour, worldwide, comic drawing-palooza, in a comic store near you Sat. Oct. 1st
- Park Schreck Gallery’s opening reception for their new exhibit Blur, Saturday, Oct. 1st
- Assemble’s pop-up farmers market, Friday Sept. 30th
Don’t forget to check CommuniTeach.com for all the great upcoming LearnIts in your city!
