Courses & Workshops

Learn traditional 35mm film techniques to create beautiful prints in the darkroom. Perfect your camera skills to photograph people, places, and objects, and learn experimental techniques like drawing on negatives.

Learn drawing, construction, and assemblage techniques to create original hanging sculptures with found and recycled materials. Explore themes of social change and personal growth while learning new artmaking processes.

Create papier-mâché masks using your face as a form. Build on the mask to make designs inspired by your culture and the urban environment. Then decorate the masks using paint to express your personal identity.

Make larger-than-life versions of your favorite everyday objects, like a gummy bear as big as your head or a giant pencil that you have to hug in order to draw with! Learn how to use paper-maché, plaster, and paint to create realistic 3D sculptures.

Become a street artist! Work with stencils, stickers, and spray paint to create your own graffiti designs. Gain inspiration from murals, photography, printmaking, and graffiti to experiment with different types of street art.

Learn professional methods for drawing and hand-coloring comic books. Develop characters and give them a story to tell while learning penciling, inking, and coloring processes to create your own comic books!

Experiment with what photography can do to create your ideal version of Chicago! Work with an SLR camera and learn a variety of darkroom and digital photo processes to create a series of photo collages that envision an alternate universe of our city.

Learn hand building and wheel throwing techniques to create your own ceramic sculptures and pottery. Work with a variety of construction methods, surface design, and glazing techniques to create fantastic clay forms inspired from your own imagination.

Design your personal brand! Learn graphic design techniques, and design your own personal logo, resume, college or artist statement, portfolio documentation, and more. Take yourself to the next level!

Create your own fantasy landscapes and creatures like robots, spaceships, dragons, or unicorns with laser eyes! Learn drawing and illustration techniques to explore character development and fantasy design.

Learn the basics of working with clay to create your own ceramic creatures. Working with a variety of handbuilding and wheel throwing techniques, replicate your favorite animal or creature or invent a new one using your imagination.

Create one-of-a-kind clothing using a combination of draping, altering, and hand- and machine-sewing skills! Use paper, pre-existing garments, fabric yardage, found objects, and more to explore fit and fashion to make your own wearable garments.

Ready to advance your comics skills? Gain a deeper understanding of storyboarding, narrative, and comic drawing and digital techniques to create your own comics or graphic novels. Prerequisite: Must have taken 2 drawing courses at Marwen.

Marwen Lab is a 2-term program that gives you the opportunity to work with an experienced teaching artist and your peers to develop your own art-making techniques and concepts. You will have access to all of Marwen's studios and art-making resources to help you complete projects for your portfolio. Your work will also be featured in a special exhibition! Marwen Lab is open to students who will be in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade in the 2019-2020 school-year.

Design original characters using the techniques and software used by professional comic book, video game, and animation designers! Create a hand-drawn character from scratch, then use Photoshop to refine and enhance your work.

Bring your drawings to life through intaglio printmaking -- a process where a design is cut, scratched, or etched into a printing surface. Create a series of images then use Photoshop to digitally combine your prints into short animations.

Learn the basics of graphic design to create art that helps spread the word on important topics. Find your voice by exploring Adobe Creative Suite to design a multimedia zine that captures your own identity or current issues that are important to you.

Make your character drawings and designs come off the paper and into your hands! Learn to use 3D computer modeling programs to give your drawings and sketches dimension, then print them using 3D printers.

Learn how to take your static character drawings and turn them into movable animations! Using Photoshop and Adobe After Effects, learn the professional process called Digital Puppet Animation to bring your flat drawings to life.

How do you choose which colors to use in your art? Learn to be confident when mixing and using color, whether you want to learn to paint realistically, take more risks in developing your style, or strengthen your gouache or acrylic skills.

Discover how to make multiples of your art. Create hand-drawn designs; learn techniques to carve them into linoleum; then stamp them to make posters, t-shirts, bags, and more! Learn the basics of printmaking to print your artwork onto any surface.

Create animated shorts using Photoshop and After Effects. Work with a Wacom tablet to draw a character and setting then experiment with sound, color, and text to make your own unique visual story.