How to Create Comics - A Four-Part MOMA Series

From telling personal stories to summarizing historical events to illustrating creating writing over the years I've shared a bunch of ideas for using comics in classrooms. And I've shared a bunch of tools for creating comics (resources linked at the bottom of this post). While I enjoy the process of creating comics, I am not an expert cartoonist. To learn for an expert cartoonist take a look the Museum of Modern Art's new four-part How to Make Comics series. 

MOMA's How to Make Comics series addresses four topics. Those topics are:

• What are comics?
• What are the elements of comics?
• How to make comics? Where to begin. 
• Ideas, Activities, and Resources for Making Comics

I found the section on elements of comics to be the most interesting of the four parts. In that section there is an excellent explanation and example of how the words and pictures in a comic should compliment each other. 

The last part of the series that features ideas, activites, and resources for making comics includes a new-to-me resource on the South Portland, Maine's school library website. That page is loaded with information for teachers interested in using comics in their classrooms. It was there that I found the Big Think video How Comic Books Can Make Kids Smarter.  

Tools for Making Comics in Your Classroom

• Make Beliefs Comix
• Canva
• ToonyTool
• Storyboard That
• Pixton

H/T to Open Culture for the MOMA series link. 

View 3500+ Art Exhibitions Online

Thanks to Open Culture I have just learned about the Museum of Modern Art's new website that showcases artwork from the more than 3500 exhibitions that have been held at MoMA since its founding in 1929.

MoMA's Exhibition History site lets you browse through the highlights of every exhibition that has ever been on display at MoMA. You can search for exhibitions according to artist's name, type of exhibition, and or decade of display. It is also possible to perform a keyword search and see all exhibitions related to that keyword. Once you land on an exhibition you can read the press releases that accompanied the exhibition, a list of artists and the works in the exhibition, and view images of the exhibition.

Not every exhibit is available in its entirety online. Some of the film exhibitions that I viewed only had text descriptions. I assume that this is due to licensing rights associated with the films.

Applications for Education
MoMA's Exhibition History site could be a good resource for art teachers who are looking for examples to share with students. With older students you might let them browse some of the collections to find a favorite artist then jump into research about that person.

Due to the varied and occasionally controversial nature of MoMA exhibitions, I would not recommend letting younger students search the site without direct supervision.

MoMA Presents Five Tips for Teaching With Works of Art

Earlier today I spent some time revisiting resources for teaching art history and art appreciation lessons. One of those resources is the Museum of Modern Art's learning page. A featured resource on MoMA Learning is this video containing five tips for teaching with works of art. The video not only lists the tips, it contains examples of using these tips to teach art history and art appreciation lessons to students. The video is embedded below.


One of the other excellent resources on MoMA Learning is this glossary of art terms. In many cases the definitions in the glossary contain links to multiple examples of each term.