A full-scale cartooning and drawing class meets several days a week at Hillsboro High School and it’s anything but basic.
In Masters of Cartooning and Illustration, students don’t just draw. They study professional artists in depth, analyze their techniques, and then apply those same skills to their own work. Teacher Michael Wattle leads the course and says the class challenges students to think like real illustrators.
“It’s really in-depth, but fun at the same time,” Wattle explains. “You can even figure out if the original artist is right- or left-handed by studying their strokes. The purpose of artwork is to share it with the world and let people see what you created. We even have students go through a full comic book segment. It’s pretty interesting.”
The class pushes students to stretch beyond their current abilities and experiment with new forms of expression. And who can take it? Anyone — even freshmen.
Freshman Cash Bertsch draws inspiration from the cartoon Ed, Edd n Eddy. “I’m having fun,” he says. “Outside of class, I look through my mom’s old sketchbooks. I didn’t know she was such a great artist. I kind of want to match her.”
Ninth grader Lucy Shelley studies the work of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. “I want to improve my art style,” she says. “Maybe get better at storytelling, take a creative writing class, and use the art notes I’ve been collecting for comic books I want to create.”
Students create original comic books with a clear beginning, middle, and end. They choose their own art style and craft their own dialogue. “The dialogue matters,” Wattle says. “Different viewpoints, different voices. They’re all unique. I tell students you don’t have to be an artist to take this class. You can use stick figures, just make them quality stick figures.”
At the end of each project, students complete an honest self-evaluation, documenting the preliminary steps they took, writing a bio on their chosen artist, and demonstrating how they applied professional techniques to their own creative work.