As part of West Sedona School teacher Kelly Cadigan’s fourth-grade class, students helped make paper chains and icons of teachers as elves for an upcoming holiday party, the other half was learning cartoons.

Jan Marc Quisumbing, the scheduling coordinator at Community Library Sedona and a published cartoonist known as “The Janimal,” sketched on a digital white board in front of the class on Thursday, Dec. 4.

The half of the class that weren’t working with Quisumbing on Thursday and Friday had worked with him on Monday and Tuesday that week.

“My process is, I tell everybody that I break things down by shape, and if you know your shapes, you can pretty much draw anything,” he said.

It’s harder with younger students who might not know all of the basic shapes, he said, but fourth graders who are 9 or 10 years old can handle the basics.

“I kind of tell them, ‘hey, I’m throwing a lot of heavy concepts at you because I’m going to treat you like an adult. I’m not going to sugarcoat it,’” he said. “But at some point, as you get older and you do still like to draw, this might click, ‘oh, you know that weird dude, bear person who came to my school one day. Oh, he was right. This is how you draw a face.’”

Quisumbing took students through the basics of identifying shapes to draw by using examples like a face, an octopus, a disembodied hand, Captain America and Spider-man eating a sandwich.

“You have to think of all these things that if my character has a really weird left ear when I draw him as he gets over, he’s going to have a weird left ear,” he told the class. “So it’s about consistency.”

Quisumbing has been drawing since he was 7 years old, he said, and has always taken a lot of inspiration from comic books like “Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Far Side.”

The following day, Friday, Dec. 5, the class drew three panel comics themselves following their own stories.

Quisumbing got into Artist in the Classroom program after he started his job at the library, because he had a little more flexibility in his own schedule and could come in the mornings to help with the kids.

The program, organized by Sedona Arts and Culture Specialist Nancy Lattanzi, is aimed at exposing the students to local artists to get a better picture of opportunities in life while keeping with the teacher’s curriculum.

“So I create this PowerPoint presentation, which I present to all the schools at their staff meetings,” Lattanzi said. “So I go to all different four schools, and then I have newsletters, … one little program booklet, and that has all this information in it, and it has all the artists, so that they keep it all year round to refer to.”

In these presentations, she gives basic information for everyone who’s agreed to be a part of the program.

“I also give them a sign up sheet, so while I’m presenting,” Lattanzi said. “I say, ‘just jot down, you’re not committed to anything, what interests you or what sparks you.’ and then they can put down, ‘hey, I’d like so and so to do X.’ And they can write what their curriculum is, and it’s just a way to break the ice and to see where they might fit in.”

Cadigan said this was her first time with Quisumbing. She’s had other artists before, and has always had a good experience with them, she said.

“This helps with our ELA, which is English Language Arts,” Cadigan said. “It helps with writing. It helps with sequencing. And then using key details to connect the story.”

She said she wanted Quisumbing because a lot of her students are interested in graphic novels and comic books which this artist can connect to the curriculum objective.

For more information on the Artist in the Classroom program, contact city of Sedona Arts & Culture Specialist Nancy Lattanzi at nlattanzi@sedonaaz.gov or (928) 203-5078.