Mastering Composition Through Comics

To see the bigger picture. Hüseyn says, that’s the main idea of understanding composition. And this applies to comics as well as to real life. Yuen Yi Wong, Hüseyn Hüseynbayli and Shriya Singh wanted to see the bigger picture and use comics as a medium to understand composition better. They are the three student teachers of the Bauhaus.Module “Mastering Composition through Comics”, which took place in the summer semester 2025 under mentoring of Prof. Jakob Hüfner.

Initially, Yuen Yi was more interested in comics. Hüseyn has been working on and with composition for quite some time. When they thought about how to convey ideas about composition, they decided to combine their expertise and use comics as a medium and tool to think about composition, together with their students.

The topic was then approached from two different sides in the module: While some of the classes were conducted as theory sessions, most of them were actually practical workshops, where students could apply what they learned from the theory. In the theory sessions, Shriya offered introductory classes to Styly and Krita, tools that can be used to draw comics digitally and implement 2D-drawings in a 3D real-life surrounding. In addition, illustrator and comic artist Jens Harder held a guest lecture for the group.

However, the idea behind it was to create a space for mutual learning, as Shriya expresses in her introspection:

“[A] great thing about being able to shape the way we taught this course was that it felt like a shared space, there was no hierarchy, just a flow of ideas between us and the students. Everyone could contribute, and that made the course feel alive. The students even came up with their own events, like a spontaneous spray-painting session where they invited everyone from our class to join in.”

Based on the student teachers’ experiences, for some people visual expression can be more comfortable than oral expression. This also partly counts for them. Yuen Yi and Hüseyn are studying media management and media architecture. During the class, they were able to enrich oral expression through visual expression via comic-drawings.

Comics are not part of their regular studies. However, they were able to take many things from their studies into the Bauhaus.Module. For Hüseyn, it’s the visual side and the topic of composition, whereas Yuen Yi works on comics in her thesis and has read a lot of scientific literature on comics during the last semesters. She sees comics as a “medium you can use for interdisciplinary approach in different types of subjects, because there is almost nothing that comics cannot apply on.”

This is why she has offered a Bauhaus.Module on the topic of Comics in East Asia during the previous semester. This class focused on the cultural significance and further aspects of comics in East Asia, and Hüseyn was one of the students that took part in it. Their collaboration in this semester, that was enriched by Shriya’s inputs, highlighted the creative part of visual expression. In the end, the students produced beautiful comics.

However, not only the students learnt a lot during the semester. The teachers were also able to learn from the students, improve their drawing-skills, enrich their understanding of composition and, finally, collect teaching experience, which helped not only improve their skills in visual expression, but inevitably also their oral expression, communication and understanding of collaboration.

Especially the interdisciplinarity of the students’ studies had a positive effect on the class, as all participants were able to learn from each other. The student teachers see Bauhaus.Modules in general as a special opportunity for students to be able to choose their topics and work on them with students that share their interests.

In this regard, they are very grateful for the talented students who put a lot of (voluntary) effort in the class and added to the successful exhibition, which shows that something special was created in this class.

The exhibition during this year’s summaery also took place at a special place: The Co-Labor right in front of the Stadtschloss in Weimar. During the exhibition, the group showed the comics they produced during the semester. The exhibition shows what can be possible, if a group of motivated students works on a topic, they are truly invested in. It also produced very positive resonance in the diverse audience, that, thanks to the location, was not necessarily part of the Bauhaus Universität.

Because of the all these positive outcomes, Yuen Yi and Hüseyn offer a follow-up Bauhaus.Modul with the title “I-Comic: Identity, Intimacy & Introspection” in the winter semester 2025/26. They hope to build on the success of this semester’s module and look forward to seeing familiar faces and new people that share their interest and love for all things composition and comics.

This article was created as part of an interview with two of the module's student teachers.

Title: Komposition durch Comic meistern: Umdenken des visuellen Diskurses über räumliche und soziale Positionierung

Lecturers: Hüseyn Hüseynbayli (stud. Ma AU), Yuen Yi Wong (stud. Ma AU), Shriya Singh (stud. Ma M)

Mentoring: Prof. Jakob Hüfner (KG)

Semester: Summer semester 2025