Friends, I have returned from Armenia and I’m safely back home in Chicago. I’ve had a few really good nights’ sleeps in my own bed, and the jetlag honestly isn’t so bad this time. I have a lot of work to catch up on, but I wanted to tell you a little bit more about this trip to Yerevan, and the work I did with TUMO.

Basically, a few years ago, TUMO came across our book Let’s Make Ramen!, and wondered: what would a comic book cookbook of Armenian recipes look like? I went to Yerevan and guided a roomful of extremely talented students through a two week workshop on recipe comics, and we worked our way through a good handful of recipes!

But two weeks wasn’t quite enough time to really finish the project. TUMO held a workshop with an Armenian artist to move the project forward last January, and then invited me out again last month to finish the work.

It was a huge challenge to get three workshops’ worth of artists with completely different styles to put out a cohesive book with a unified aesthetic! Our first task was standardizing things like typography, layout, and panel treatment:

We also unified color schemes, edited the recipe text and comics panels for accuracy and clarity, and then added three whole new recipes to the project!

The students and I talked about personal work, client work, and publishing work, and the different standards and strictures for each, as well as how to conform to a “house style” for an artistic project. We talked about how to use comics to make techniques easy to understand, and how to draw food so it looks enticing and delicious. The students really rose to the occasion and turned out some incredible work.

At the end of two weeks, we presented our work to all of TUMO, along with all of the other workshops that were being held at the same time (more about this below)!

As an added surprise, the TUMO team had taken our files and printed them up into a book overnight!! I was not expecting this; it was an absolute delight and the students loved flipping through it and seeing their work. There are two prototypes - one at TUMO, and one that they let me take home. I’m going to go through the files and do some tidying up, and then send everything back to TUMO for eventual printing! At some point, it might even be available for online purchase. I’ll keep you all updated on that front. :)

What I’m Into Lately:

Right now I am into the astounding work of all the other lab leaders that were teaching workshops at TUMO! I met some amazingly talented people from all sorts of disciplines, and got to see presentations from their classes’ final projects too. It was honestly pretty humbling to be included in such an extraordinary group of creative powerhouses. Here are some of the friends I made:

Julia Parris, a super talented photographer who taught a workshop on photographing skate culture

Andrew Joyce, a brilliant illustrator from the U.K., who taught a super charming workshop on illustrating Yerevan’s courtyards

Bogdan Dumitriu-Strat, a phenomenal illustrator and motion designer from Romania, who taught a really fun workshop on animation

Iulia Dumitriu-Strat, Bogdan’s wife, who wasn’t teaching a workshop but who does truly impressive work in sustainability and communications

Anastasiia Noguier, a whip-smart software engineer originally from Russia (now living in Chicago! we’re gonna hang out!) whose workshop taught the students how to build their own interactive apps

Kurt Hartmann and Gegham Vardanyan, two Disney illustrators and designers from L.A. whose workshop created one of the most delightfully charming children’s books I’ve ever seen

Katsiaryna Dubovik, an immensely skilled Belarusian illustrator living in Amsterdam who taught a workshop about sport-related illustration

Jorgelina Zabert, an Argentinian photographer living in Barcelona, who taught a workshop on commercial product photography

What Toki’s Into:

The Young Prince has been a little clingy since my return. He’s mad that I wouldn’t let him sit on my lap while I wrote this newsletter, so he’s sitting on the windowsill directly behind my head.

(the shop is back open now that I’m home!)