pearce family holiday drawings: christmas 2010

I do these drawings of my family for most of the major holidays (click here to see last year’s Christmas drawing and I really had a good time with this year’s Halloween illustration).

If you’re looking for holiday content, I’ve written up four Christmas Comics Cavalcades this month and I’ve bookmarked them all for you! Check ’em out if you haven’t already. I really enjoyed writing about these books and definitely plan on doing another round in December of 2012.

Takin’ the rest of the week off from posting, but I wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a very happy holiday!

2010-2011 school year: day forty nine

To be clear: My 7th period students were NOT making fun of me. They genuinely thought my hair looked awesome and I was being fashionable for once in my life. I think the comic works, even if it’s not 100% clear.

2010-2011 school year: day forty eight

I am not much of a colorist, but I thought it would be a fun way to spice up today’s comic.

Other words I have trouble with, to the delight and chagrin of my students: bagel, awful, forward.

And of course, to be fair, I think EVERYBODY outside of the Tri-State area pronounces it “oar-enge” so I’m not trying to be a martyr or anything.

2010-2011 school year: day forty seven

As I mentioned before (but admittedly, not in awhile), I’m not a huge fan of the content in the 10th grade textbook. Neither are my students.

no chalkboard photo post this week!

Sorry folks! Over the weekend, I got a brand new cellphone to replace my seriously busted Verizon Voyager. I like the new phone, but I forgot to import all of this week’s chalkboard photos over to the new phone.

This is yet another indication that the holidays have started in full force. As of this afternoon, I have no comics drawn for the upcoming week. I have a few sketched out, but none are inked or lettered. Given this fact, I haven’t decided if I’m going to take the week off or not. If memory serves, I took a week or two off around the holidays last year… but I was also about ten comics ahead of where I currently stand in the 2010-2011 school year.

Eh, I’ll let you know tomorrow.

Christmas Comics Cavalcade: Christmas with the Super-Heroes Special #2

Alright, here it is. This is the whole reason I wanted to take the month of December to write about Christmas comics. Ladies and gentlemen

Christmas with the Super-Heroes Special #2, published in 1988 by DC Comics.

odds and ends

We’re in firmly entrenched in Exam Week here at my high school. If you are interested in the process, I drew a comic last year which all but tells you exactly what the next four days of school are going to be like. Take a look.

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I enjoyed this brief post over on NYC Educator about the effectiveness of hiring a tutor for your son or daughter. I’ve both been a tutor AND asked by parents about hiring a tutor for their child. My response to parents is usually, “What do you expect them to get out of the experience?” I’ve had students who probably did benefit from tutoring, but oftentimes you could replace a paid tutor with a watchful eye at home, making sure that Junior is doing his homework. I hate to generalize, but if you do that second thing? Your kid will probably get as much “bang for your buck” as paying a tutor to do the same thing.

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I’ll remind everyone here that I have a NEW DonorsChoose project posted– I’m trying to get a bunch of new books not for my classroom library, but for our high school’s media center. If you’re interested in helping out but don’t have any funds to do so, please e-mail me at journalcomics at hotmail dot com. If you have five minutes, I have a unique way that you can help support my students.

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Some end of the year indulgences:

Cartoonist Lucy Knisley is taking every Harry Potter novel and condensing it into one poster-sized comic/illustration. I don’t know what the legal department of Warner Brother/Scholastic would think about this project, but as a fan of Ms. Knisley’s work and Harry Potter, I am excited to get mine in the mail! I picked her take on Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, both for how dense the illustration is and the color. Click over, check out all three posters currently up for sale, and wonder how on Earth the artist’s going to fit all of Deathly Hallows onto one page.

I also picked up a copy of Alex Robinson’s A Kidnapped Santa Claus for Elliot and Henry… although who are we kidding, I’m excited to read it myself. An adaptation of the L. Frank Baum story of the same name, Mr. Robinson was offering to sketch in any copies ordered direct from the author. I’ve been slowly putting together a nice collection of signed books for Elliot and Henry, and this one will make a fine addition. Alex Robinson’s website can be found here, with links pertaining to A Kidnapped Santa Claus and his other awesome comics.

not teaching comics: some drawings for students

No comic today, but like any one of my students who comes to class unprepared. I have several good excuses.

1. I have been up for the past 24 hours tossin’ my cookies. It has been an… experience, to say the least. I actually started throwing up at school in the middle of the day yesterday. I felt so punk, I can remember distinctly thinking “I am going to die. I am going to die and they’re going to find my body slumped over the toilet in the teachers’ lounge and then I’ll become some kind of hoary school myth- The Teacher That Died on the Toilet.”

2. At this gift-giving time of the year, I like to do something special for my classes. I’m not a candy guy, nor am I a “free movie day” teacher… so I draw for my students. Kids ask me all year to draw them things and I turn them down every time besides the last day before First Semester Finals. Basically, I pass around a clipboard and ask the kids to choose something they’d like me to draw, with some limitations (I won’t do caricatures, I won’t do something that will take me an hour and a half to detail).

It’s usually a really fun day for the both the kids and myself. I don’t do a lot of drawings for people. It almost makes me feel like I’m a real cartoonist, taking requests at a comic book convention.

Here’s a bunch I drew for my fifth period. I believe this will get bigger if you click on it:

Anyhow, I’m all drawn out from doing an entire day of these.

3. It’s a snow day!

2010-2011 school year: day forty six

I have NO idea why this comic didn’t show up in the original post this morning- likely it was because I tried to post it from our ancient iMac. That’ll learn me.

2010-2011 school year: day forty five