In case you were unable to join us for our fifth Drawing Together event, here is a recap of the exercises we did together. Our host was Ebru Ustundag, a GMIC board member and a critical feminist geographer interested in intersections of health/care and social justice.  Our warm-up exercise was to think about how spaces and temporalities have been shifting during the Covid-19 pandemic. During these unprecedented times, our bodies are navigating in everyday spaces in novel ways, and our relationships with ourselves, our bodies, and others have been significantly altered. In this exercise, we were asked to think about… Read More

In case you were unable to join us for our fourth Drawing Together event, here is a recap of the exercises we did together. Our host was Michael Green, GMIC board member, physician, bioethicist, and artist. Our theme was “masks.” Michael Green walks us through the entire session in this video! (Or you can read the summary below.) Our warm-up exercise combined work from Danny Gregory’s Sketchbook School and Lynda Barry’s face jam. We made a grid of 8 rectangles on a page about 8.5×11. In each box on the page we drew a face, with the intention being to… Read More

guest post by Tatiana Gill This is my story of 24 years on psychiatric medication, and how I discovered behaviors that help my mental health in sustainable ways. I’ve taken many anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications throughout my life and I hoped other people on their own “head med” journeys might benefit from my story. My original intention was to create a comic that depicted the medications I took, why I took them, and their benefits and side effects. To this end I combed over old medical records and journal. Instead of a single narrative I found a hotbed of intertwined… Read More

In case you were unable to join us for our third Drawing Together event, here is a recap of the exercises we did together. Our host was Dana Walrath, GMIC board member, artist, writer, and medical anthropologist. Our theme was “ancestors.” Our warm up exercise borrowed from Lynda Barry’s workshop called “Writing the Unthinkable” that she offered at our Dundee Graphic Medicine conference in 2016. You can find the exercise online here. Introduction from Dana: We draw spirals to unleash the subconscious and let words and stories begin to flow.  Unthinkable referred to stuff you didn’t really know was there…. Read More

In case you were unable to join our second Drawing Together event, here is a recap of the exercise we did together. Our host was Shelley Wall, GMIC board member, medical illustrator, and an assistant professor in the Biomedical Communications graduate program at the University of Toronto (UofT). Our theme was “animals”. We started with a brief update of our Zoom skills, taught by these two companion animals.   From Shelley: Marcus Bullock, in the collection Representing Animals, writes: “What do we see when we look at an animal?… [I]n this moment of our present history, we have begun to… Read More

In case you were unable to join our first Drawing Together event, check out the images below to see what we did. Special thanks to Marek Bennett for the basic structure of the exercise. If you want to share your drawings, and see ones participants shared from this past Sunday’s session, check out #DrawingTogetherGM on your favorite social media outlets. We will be doing this again next week! For details see this post. To watch the video where Marek Bennett explains the comic this exercise is based on, watch this video.

To respond to the cancellation of our 2020 Graphic Medicine conference in Toronto, to combat the social isolation of pandemic-related lockdowns, and to support and promote community, the Graphic Medicine International Cooperative (GMIC) launched a free weekly virtual meet-up called “Drawing Together” on  April 6. We provided a Zoom link, a topic, and a group facilitator.  Members of the world-wide Graphic Medicine community gathered to draw, support one another, and share. See links below to the first thirteen weekly sessions that ran until June 28. Starting in July, these gatherings will now be held monthly, and we are looking for… Read More

by Abbey L. Berg, PhD, CCC-A, FNAP: Pace University, Communication Sciences & Disorders Program and Keyra-Nicole Lecointe, BS: Pace University, Graduate Program in Communication Sciences & Disorders Abstract: 22 speech-language pathology (SLP) graduate students read the graphic novel, El Deafo (Bell, 2014). Groups of 3-4 students produced a 4-frame comic of communication impairment. Five categories emerged from student responses to activity: 1) increased perspective-taking; 2) awareness of knowledge/beliefs; 3) academic/clinical training/practicum experiences tool; 4) advocacy/public health; and 5) intra- and inter-professional collaborations. In summary, incorporating graphic novels and comics in graduate education and training is valuable. Background: Narratives fill a gap… Read More

Hot off the press! – the Top 10 Don’ts and Do’s for Researchers Working with Patient Partners was inspired by a conversation amongst patient partners at REFLECT 2017 – a workshop held by the Hatching Ideas Hub that brought together researchers, patients/service-users/caregivers, and policy makers in the field of suicide prevention to share ways of working (better) together on research projects. Collaboratively designed by patient partners and researchers, and brought alive by the creative talents of the illustrator (Emily Adams) and graphic design specialist (Andy Gauthier), the Top 10 comic depicts some of the common scenarios encountered by patient partners in research and communicates some important… Read More

Mile High: Adventures in Colorado Medical Marijuana by Mister V, isbn: 978-0989384346, © 2019, 8th Wonder Press (8thwonderpress.com), 322 pages.  Cannabis: The Illegalization of Weed in America by Brian “Box” Brown (www.boxbrown.com), isbn: 978-1250154088, © April 2, 2019, :01 First Second (firstsecondbooks.com), 250 pages. Book Reviews by Kevin Wolf This is a difficult review to write. Book reviewers are often called critics. A memoir carries the additional critic’s problem that it could lead to personal hurt; after all criticizing the presentation could be taken very personally. From my perspective, nothing written here should be taken personally, it’s meant for outside… Read More