Turn your ideas into pictures with Sequential Artists Workshop

How would you like to:

  • Make comics and graphic novels that stand out from the page?
  • Create advertisements, brochures, and flyers that portray the truest picture of what you and your company are all about?
  • Teach business and training methods or teach how to use any processes or tools in a way that is lively and effective for all ages and learning styles?
  • Make graphic elements of your own creation a key element of your blogs?
  • Make effective statements through cartoons that have strong business or educational impact?
  • Create cards for multiple uses that will promote and sell?

If this sounds appealing, you’ll be happy to hear that you can walk into one place in downtown Gainesville and do all of this and more. Can’t get there? You can login online and do the same. Go visit Sequential Artists Workshop near Depot Park and step into an informal, intense, and welcoming space to be introduced to the ways comics have grown up and become a prime way to communicate in a visually busy world.

How did this begin? Tom Hart was looking to relocate from New York City and had visited Gainesville. His connections to the artistic community brought him to this area where he has now created this unusual and multifaceted space.

Beginning at the age of twenty, Tom began turning his love of comic strips like Peanuts into an art he could use for his own creations. His first venture into the published markets was a collaboration with Jon Lewis for a series called Pitch Unger through Kodansha in Japan. Teaching in New York City grew his desire to teach others the tools to make their own ideas come to life. That mission, Tom feels, is his largest accomplishment.

Six years ago, with a couple of local teachers of graphic arts, he began with a year long program which has now grown to attract students from all over the country. The program includes the history of comics, painting and drawing on many levels, and storytelling and media organization. To view the entire program, visit www.sequentialartistsworkshop.org.

Short courses in the evenings and workshops are also taught on topics such as silk screening, history, painting, illustrating, media techniques, and more. The website keeps up with the changing landscape of their offerings. You can keep checking back and come up with something new frequently.

Along with Tom Hart, teachers such as Justine Andersen and John Ronan (not to mention an informal, ever growing cast of other individuals) help out on a variety of topics.

And if you have free time while you are there, check out their library. It has to be one of the most extensive on the topic of comics in this area, or in Florida for that matter.

So, log on or come on down and learn to express yourself in ways that truly stand out. Bring your dreams and projects to life and more.


By Kate Johnson

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