Comic Art Workshop is a volunteer-run organisation dedicated to supporting comic artists working on ambitious projects.
Every other year we invite twelve comics makers to join us for a two-week residency in a remote location, during which creators discuss and workshop their long-form comics projects with a group of their peers.
CAW 2024 is taking place with the support of:
About residencies
Comic artists working on ambitious longform projects (maybe you!)
‘Ambitious projects’ can take any form and cover any topic – autobio, fiction, science fiction, comics journalism, etc… – but the projects that are ideally suited to our workshop are the ones that require creators to push themselves and will benefit from peer feedback.
A mix of old and new attendees
Comics (especially long-form comics) are difficult to make and often take many years to complete. While we invite new creators to apply, we also welcome ‘CAW Alumni’ to participate across multiple years. This helps provide sustained support for projects while also connecting participants from different years.
Master artist(s) ready to share their skills and knowledge
In 2024 we have invited Lee Lai and Sophie Yanow to be our Master Artists. Lee and Sophie are both award winning cartoonists and bring with them massive amounts of technical skill, good vibes and knowledge of publishing in Australia and abroad.
Organisers & helpers
This year CAW’s current directors Fionn McCabe and Meg O’Shea will be participating in workshops, along with admissions wizard Can Yalcinkaya. Also attending in support roles will be CAW’s founders Pat Grant and Elizabeth Macfarlane.
The CAW residency is held in a remote location, usually somewhere in Australia, every two years. Getting away from cities and routines allows participants to focus completely on their projects.
Past CAW locations have included Yarrangobilly (Kosciuszko National Park NSW), Maria Island/Wukaluwikiwayna (TAS), Dangar Island (NSW) and Krack! Studio (Yogyakarta, Indonesia).
In 2024, we are very excited to be hosted by Bundanon, as a part of their residency program. Bundanon is located on Dharawal and Dhurga Country, NSW. It is a creative centre comprising of an art museum, studios, accommodation and various public facilities, all situated within stunning natural landscape that will provide space for reflection and decompression after workshops.
Dedicated workshops
Each participant gets a two-hour workshop dedicated to discussing their project with the other residents. Comics are a unique literary form, and insights from other comic practitioners – practitioners who understand the process as well as the relationship between text and image sequences – can be invaluable.
Everything else
Extended time spent together outside of workshops creates space for participants to build on discussions begun in workshops in a less formal setting, get to know each better beyond their work, and enjoy the location. In the past, this has included impromptu skill sharing sessions, swapping technical tips and life-hacks, and enjoying post-it note comic jams.
About CAW
Making a longform comic can be a particularly challenging experience. Since its inception in 2015, CAW has aimed to make this process a little less nightmarish for artists by supporting them through:
Project development
Comic artists often find themselves categorised as visual artists, creative writers or illustrators by institutions and publishers who don’t have much experience with the form, making it difficult for many cartoonists to receive informed feedback on their work. One of the primary functions of our workshops is to address this issue. Participants are guided through a structured discussion of their projects, receiving critical feedback from other comic creators and educators with a deep understanding of the artform.
Forming creative networks
CAW is a unique program in Australia, providing a rare opportunity for comic artists to live and work together. While this helps create professional and technical knowledge-based relationships, deeper social bonds between artists are also nurtured by the mutual trust that sharing both in-progress work and living space requires. In a creative practice that can be arduous and isolating, it is often the social support and a sense of community that comes from such relationships that helps a comic artist sustain their career.
Growing Australian graphic storytelling
Graphic storytelling is still an emergent artform in Australia. Here, the medium and its creators do not yet attract the same level of institutional, social and industry recognition and support as many comics communities overseas, leading to more ambitious projects frequently being stalled, abandoned or unnecessarily fraught in their making. By supporting such projects and the artists who make them, CAW looks forward to contributing to a richer Australian comics landscape, in which more creators and the diverse stories they have to tell can thrive.
Books workshopped at CAW include:
Eventually Everything Connects by Sarah Firth (Allen & Unwin), which has been recommended by several publications including Broadsheet and The West Australian since being published in October 2023.
Our Members Be Unlimited: A Comic About Workers and Their Unions by Sam Wallman (Scribe Australia and USA, 2022), won an ABDA award for Best Fully Illustrated Book and was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Lit Awards in 2023.
Underground by Mirranda Burton (Allen & Unwin, 2021) has attracted numerous accolades including winning the Readings Young Adult Book Award in 2022.
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui (Abrams, 2017), was a US national bestseller, an Eisner Award and National Book Critics Circle finalist, and has been translated into numerous languages.
Home Time and Home Time II by Campbell Whyte (Top Shelf, 2017 and 2020), won numerous awards including a silver Ledger and a DINKy.
The Grot by Pat Grant and coloured by Fionn McCabe (Top Shelf, 2020), has garnered a cult following and the French translation, La Fange, was longlisted in the prestigious Angouleme Official Selection.
Under Earth by Chris Gooch (Top Shelf, 2020), won the Aurealis Award for Best Graphic Novel and a Silver Ledger.
Reported Missing by Eleri Mai Harris (The Nib, 2017), was shortlisted for the CCS-Slate Cartoon Studio Prize and won gold at The Ledger Award in Australia.
Upcoming works include:
Oh Brother by Georgina Chadderton – a graphic memoir about growing up with a brother with severe autism, scheduled for release by Penguin Random House in 2024
Get Your Story Straight by Briar Rolfe – a queer romcom set against the 2017 Marriage Equality plebiscite, scheduled for release by Hachette Australia in 2024
The Islands Where We Left Our Ancestors by Joshua Santospirito – an autobiographical work about seeking out his roots while travelling with his family, scheduled for release by Scribe Publications in 2024
Read to Me – Live comic reading event in Sydney
Folio – Ongoing Australia Research Council project about contemporary Australian comics
Graphic Storytellers at Work – A report (and beautifully illustrated infographic) commissioned by the Australia Council for the Arts on Australian comics practitioners and the many industries across which their expertise are being applied
Other Worlds Zine Fair – Sydney’s biggest zine fair
Perth Comic Arts Festival – An annual multi-day festival devoted entirely to comics
Milktooth – Community artspace in Perth, teaching comics and various other forms of artmaking
Small Press Zine Fair – An annual zine fair in Hobart
Moon Ventures – Galleries, studios and event space in Moonah, TAS
Papercuts Comics Festival – A multi-day comics and graphic novel event in Adelaide
