I instantly fell in love with Zen Pencils cartoons and immediately joined the subscription list. The cartoonist is Gavin Aung Than and he creates cartoons based on quotes from poems, letters, speeches, interviews, and other texts that capture his thinking.
Here are three of my favorites.
Poet Taylor Mali, “What Teachers Make”
Radio Broadcaster Ira Glass, “Advice for beginners”
Scientist Carl Sagan, “Pale Blue Dot”
A little more about Gavin…
Gavin Aung Than is a freelance cartoonist based in Melbourne, Australia. After working in the corporate graphic design industry for 8 years he quit his unfulfilling job at the end of 2011 to focus on his true passion, drawing cartoons. Gavin launched Zen Pencils at the start of 2012, a cartoon blog which adapts inspirational quotes into comic stories, and hasn’t looked back since.
Zen Pencils has been featured by The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Slate, Upworthy, Buzzfeed, The A.V. Club, News.com.au, ProBlogger and The Design Files.
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Translating into classroom moments …
- Have your students interact with Gavin. Suggest a quotation and explain the reason why it is so compelling; make a comment on one of the Zen pencil cartoons.
- Be inspired by Gavin. Take one of the quotations and illustrate it differently; do what Gavin does and find a quotation and create a cartoon; create wallpaper based on one of the cartoons and submit it to Gavin.