Got Ink?

My first few days have been a whirlwind, mostly because we have a chock full schedule for the next couple of weeks, from a Cartoon Network-sponsored afternoon event for kids on sports and movement (Move It!) to an opportunity to meet Rockwell model Eddie Locke, who posed as the little boy in the famous 1958 painting The Runaway (Meet Rockwell’s Models). One that I’m particularly excited about is our upcoming Teen Art Workshop on drawing comics and graphic novels.

My mind has only recently been opened up to the world of comics and graphic novels. When I studied abroad last year my Italian language teacher introduced me to the work of Dino Buzzati, who is probably most famous for his novel The Tartar Steppe but who also created a graphic novel, Poem Strip, in 1969 (English-language version published in 2009), which tells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice through a contemporary Cold War dreamscape. His haunting images and sparse words had an elegant simplicity that my minimal Italian language skills could just barely grasp. When I arrived back stateside, a comic-obsessed friend at college learned of my budding interest and ushered me down to the stacks where our graphic novel collection lies. He gingerly slid several tomes off the shelf and piled them in my outstretched arms. “Read this,” he whispered, handing me Jack Kirby’s The Incredible Hulk. “You will love this.”

So while I’m no aficionado, I do recognize that here at the Norman Rockwell Museum we are very lucky to have graphic novelists Andrew Wales and Tim Callahan here July 12th-16th to educate teenagers (13 and up) about this truly expressive art form. These teens will learn hands-on the art of visual storytelling, effective layouts, and character drawings—and they could not have better teachers than Andrew, an elementary school art teacher who encourages his students to “always make time in their lives for creativity,” and Tim, who writes profusely for Comic Book Resources. We look forward to welcoming them to the Museum and hope that you will take a peek at our website and think about signing you or the teenager in your life up for Got Ink? Drawing Comics and Graphic Novels!