Autobiographical Comics: Creating Personal Narratives
August 3 @ 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
$322.00A 6-Week In-Studio Workshop!
Sundays, August 3–September 7, 2-4 pm
View our current in-studio Health and Safety and Cancellation Policies >>
About this Workshop:
Create your own autobiographical comics and zines in this six-part writing and drawing workshop with illustrator and cartoonist Lenora Yerkes. You’ll learn simple hacks and fresh approaches to create engaging narratives from your life (even if you think nothing interesting happens to you!) and new techniques for drawing and composing sequential art. This workshop is for you if:
- you want to push your illustrated journaling practice;
- you want to challenge yourself to create diary comics for every day;
- you have a longer story to tell, but don’t know where to start;
- you write, but want to draw!
- you draw, but want to write!
Level: All levels welcome – no experience necessary.
Registration closes July 29, 2025. Material fees are included with your registration to cover the supplies provided in class. Students may want to bring additional materials for class (see the list below). This list will also be provided with the registration confirmation email.
Sample image by Lenora Yerkes
CLASS MATERIALS LIST:
Registration includes a $10 materials fee to cover consumable materials provided in class, including paper, collage materials, glue, and drawing supplies. In addition, you may want to bring the following items for class:
- (optional) Any personal drawing tools you prefer – markers, colored pencils, and regular graphite pencils (we’ll have some in-studio)
- (optional) Any personal collage materials and cast-off paper that could be used for collaging
- (optional) Sketchbook or notepad for taking additional notes
YOUR INSTRUCTOR:
Lenora Yerkes, a comics artist as well as a painter, draws on both low and high art traditions in creating unreal landscapes and the figures that live in them. Always narrative and often sequential, her paintings rely on metaphor and archetypes to tell disquieting, moody stories about family and the individual.
Her narrative drawings were the subject of her 2019 artist residency at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, her 2022 residency with Short Run Seattle, and recognized by a 2020 Artist Fellowship Grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Her comic “Rage Queen” was included in Drawing Power (Abrams ComicsArts Fall 2019), edited by Diane Noomin, an anthology named by the New York Times one of the best comics of 2019. She is a graduate of the California College of Arts and Crafts, where she was a Yozo Hamaguchi Scholar. She is a member of The Residents Collective, founded in 2022. You can keep up with Lenora at @lenorayerkes on Instagram.
“I loved this class and could not stop gushing about it to folks who asked me what I was up to! Lenora is a great teacher and fostered such a nice classroom camaraderie. Many thanks to you all for a great class!”
—Previous workshop participant
“This class was so well done! I learned a lot from Lenora and my classmates. Lenora is so knowledgeable, thoughtful, encouraging, and engaging. PLEASE bring her back for more comics classes!”
—Previous workshop participant