Holiday doodles for students
I get students asking me for drawings a lot. The way I manage these requests: On the last day of classes before mid-semester exams, I allow students the period to prepare an index card full of whatever materials they think they might need for the upcoming test. While they work on that, I pass around a clipboard and have them write down something they want me to draw for them. I like to joke that these quick doodles are their holiday gifts.
Teachable Moments 
December 17, 2014 at 1:18 pm
BEST. TEACHER. EVER!
December 17, 2014 at 4:41 pm
How long does each one of these take you? For “doodles,” they’re awfully clean. It’s interesting to me how seeing the range (and exactness) of these made me think much more of your abilities. Not that your strip is bad in any way, but it’s one particular style. Seeing a range of items all cleanly reproduced conveys a much larger skill set that I don’t think I granted you.
(And for some reason makes me want you to produce comics in the style of other strips, as a kind of funny juxtaposition/disconnect. Like if Calvin and Hobbes was drawn like Prince Valiant. I think Berkely Breathed (of Bloom County fame) would do that every so often, and it as a great treat.)
December 17, 2014 at 6:54 pm
Well thank you. To be honest, there’s two reasons most of the drawings look so clean, to use your words. The first is that after almost 10 years of education, I can usually pre guess what most kids are going to ask for… or what they do ask for… and I get good at drawing those things. Garfield, Clone Troopers, Pikachu, I’ve drawn ’em hundreds of times.
The other reason they look the way they do is that I lightly sketch with non-photo blue pencils. Cameras and scanners don’t pick up the sketching, so all you really see is the marker.