Illustration: The Art of Storytelling

Illustration: The Art of Storytelling

10 Week Class | Registration opens 2026-10-15 12:00 PM

Adult: Introduction-Intermediate
2027-01-11-2027-03-22
6:00 PM-9:00 PM on Mon
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$520.00 CAD
04-11-2027

Illustration: The Art of Storytelling

10 Week Class | Registration opens 2026-10-15 12:00 PM

Building on Illustration Essentials, this course explores illustration as a powerful medium for storytelling, interpretation, and communication across editorial, fashion, entertainment, and commercial contexts. Students investigate how top illustrators convey time, movement, emotion, and narrative within single images and sequential layouts. Through hands-on practice, students learn to leverage gesture, setting, composition, pacing, and visual cues to bring static images to life.
Through various course projects, students will interpret briefs, identify audiences, develop and iterate concepts based on feedback, and adapt their visual language to diverse scenarios, all while refining their personal style.

Note:
- This course is open to those who have not taken Illustration Essentials. If you have taken Illustration Essentials, this course explores new projects and ideas, allowing students to continue to develop their individual voice in this discipline.
- There will be no class on Monday, February 15th for the Family Day Holiday.

Base Tuition: $500 + Material Fee: $20 = $520 Total
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  • What You Will Learn:
    - Telling stories through gesture, objects, and places
    - Using colour, composition, and space to create emotion
    - Visual metaphor and imaginative ways of expressing ideas
    - How audience and context change the way an image is displayed and read
    - Experimenting with different visual approaches and styles
    - Finding new ways to communicate ideas through images

Karen Justl
Karen Justl

Karen is a visual artist, illustrator, graphic designer and educator whose work has appeared in galleries in Winnipeg and Toronto, indie films and print publications including at the Sundance Film Festival, TIFF, HOT DOCS and the Winnipeg International Writer's Festival. Her work was featured in the Fantagraphics show Misfit Lit, and her series People and Their Problems won an illustration prize and appeared in Applied Arts magazine. She gained wide acclaim for her 'Cougar' cover for Herizons Magazine and illustrations for Pilot Pocketbook Project and was awarded the Herman Miller Prize at the Toronto Offset Design Festival for her 'NOIR' installation at the Toronto School of Art, among other accomplishments.


Karen holds a Master of Design from the Ontario College of Art and Design University and a BFA Honours from the University of Manitoba. She teaches at OCAD University in the Faculty of Design, and has taught at the University of Manitoba,  Ryerson University's Chang School and Toronto School of Art.