My sixteen-year-old daughter was keen to attend a manga-drawing workshop at SDCC. We arrived at the appointed room nearly an hour early, having been unable to get into the Jim Henson panel I had hoped to see. Our disappointment quickly turned to delight when we discovered that the panel before the manga one was a Teen Comics Workshop featuring several author/illustrators both Jane and I love.
As if getting to hear Gene Luen Yang, Dave Roman, Vera Brosgol, and Thien Pham speak about their work isn’t awesome enough, this happened to be an art workshop, in which these incredibly talented artists were showcasing their tools and techniques before our eyes.
Dave Roman shows the tools he used to draw Astronaut Academy
When we came in, the panelists seemed to be wrapping up a discussion of the penciling stage—I caught something about Bristol board—and moving on to inks. Gene Yang said he’s a convert to Japanese brush pens and wondered where they’d been all his life. Dave Roman told the crowd of riveted kids and teens about how his wife, Smile author/illustrator and brand-new Eisner Award winner Raina Telgemeier, convinced him to try inking with a brush instead of a pen—perhaps because he had a habit of shattering pen nibs and “sending tiny metal shards flying,” Dave said.
Read the rest of Melissa Wiley’s report on the workshop at GeekMom.
