Wex Lab: Constrained Comics

This workshop is now full, please join the wait list below if you're interested in attending

This workshop for emerging teen artists of comics and graphic novels offers a full day of drawing and writing exercises based on Oubapo—a comics movement that uses formalized constraints or “rules” established by your group. Be sure to bring your sketchbooks!

We’ll visit Ohio State’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum and have a brief visit with internationally acclaimed comics artist Matt Madden (an Oubapo educator) from Brooklyn. We’ll use his book Drawing Words and Writing Pictures in the class as we see how following rules (such as “every other frame must incorporate a head of lettuce” or “connect each frame to a letter in the alphabet, in order from A to Z”) challenges us and helps us exercise our creativity.

By the way, the term OuBaPo comes from the phrase Ouvrior de Bande dessinée Potentielle, which might be loosely translated as “workshop of potential comics.” It is an adaptation for comics of a vanguard French literary tradition similarly based on constraints and known as Oulipo, from Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, meaning roughly “workshop of literary potential.”

Leading this workshop are comics artists Julian Dassai and Bryan Moss, along with Wexner Center educator Jean Pitman. Our rules will set up a fun day full of surprises, sharing with others, and LOTS of drawing. Plus, we’ll have free pizza for lunch.

This session will be led by comics/graphic novel artist educators Julian Dasai and Bryan Moss with Wexner Center educator Jean Pitman.

Wex Lab workshops are kept small and fill quickly, so please register promptly. Questions about the class? Please email Jean Pitman at jpitman@wexarts.org or call her at (614) 292-4614.