For the past few years, I’ve been drawing our family’s Christmas cards. It’s been a fun way to contribute to the holiday. Last year’s card was a riff on A Charlie Brown Christmas and we did A Christmas Story in 2011. This year, we went for a somewhat more traditional approach.
I hired Madeleine Witt to color this year’s comic and man, she outdid herself. You should all definitely go over and check out her blog; it’s as awesome as this GIF she made of the drawing!
Every year, as is my tradition, I draw a Halloween themed picture of my family to use as my catch-all picture on social networking sites. This year, I had a go at The Addams Family. I’ve become quite a fan of Charles Addams’ macabre one-panel contributions to The New Yorker but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my first exposure to the Addams’ clan was the big-budget early 1990’s film staring Raul Julia and Angelica Huston.
I have a second version of this drawing I colored based on the Hanna Barbara cartoon which had a more vibrant palate than the black and white strips. I’ve got that one behind the cut but I much prefer my black and white pass at this sketch.
My friend Joe and his wife Jody have a party every December themed toward the classic Seinfeld episode “The Strike” or more specifically, Frank Costanza’s made-up holiday Festivus. I volunteered my services in creating the unofficial invitation this year and I decided to keep in step with our Christmas card I had just recently drawn.
As it stands, I’m afraid this one came out quite a bit better! I mimicked the colors from the stage at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas and I think the softer pink and purple tones make the entire illustration more appealing.
Last year, we had a lot of fun making up our own Christmas cards for the family based on the movie A Christmas Story. We decided to do the same thing this year, but with different yuletide inspiration. I had “After Schulz” written at the bottom of the drawing but it was scissored off during the edit process. I hope the inspiration is plain to see.
For the past few years, I’ve taken some time out of my comic schedule to celebrate Halloween by drawing a picture of Ellen and I with the kids in some kind of Halloween motif. I also color the thing, something that’s not entirely my forte, but I give it a shot.
Two years ago, I drew us as Ghostbusters. Last year, I went the Universal movie monster route. This year, I decided to stick with the monsters but go a little modern.
Ellen is Freddy Krueger, I’m Jason Voorhees, Elliot is Chuckie from Child’s Play, and Henry is Jigsaw from the Saw series of films.
There are things I really like about this drawing, I guess. Ellen’s in a fun, dynamic pose. I always feel like she gets the short end of the stick in these holiday drawings, so that’s a nice thing. Beyond that however… I don’t know. I’m not as happy with this years’ drawing as I have been for past Halloweens. I guess the “monsters” the kids are just don’t pop the same way they have in the last two drawings.
Of course, I’m over thinking this a whole lot. I’m aware.
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!
This year’s Thanksgiving drawing came out a little muddier than usual- I’m a total idiot when it comes to Photoshop, so I’m not very sure why. Our dog Roxanne is actually that cracked out and ugly.
Anyhow, Thanksgiving! Hope you have a happy one, if you’re celebrating. Ellen and I are hosting our first for some friends this afternoon and it should be a good time. I’ve already had to make three “emergency” runs to the grocery store, so I know there’ll be a lot of food.
The second illustration for a proposed illustration gig. Here’s some text from the book:
In a 2009 poll conducted by the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Education Department, 75% of the 704 teachers who responded said that they taught themselves how to teach Shakespeare. A few said they had learned some approaches in an undergraduate methods course. Others said that they searched for lesson ideas online. Many said they got ideas from a colleague or from the textbook they were using. One high school teacher from Hamden, Connecticut summed up the comments of many others: “I beg, borrow and steal ideas from any resource I can get.
…about that September 7th start-up date for the comic.
I fibbed a bit. This being a weird week (with Labor Day and all) I thought I’d start things up by posting a couple of odds and ends I’ve been working on over the summer and at the start of the school year. Teacher comics will begin again in earnest on September 13th.
Here’s today’s post, though. I’m going to stay purposely vague here and say in the last few months, I’ve been working on an project with some like-minded folks that deals with teaching Shakespeare in high school. The guys who are writing this book asked me to draw a couple of illustrations for the book. This is the first one:
You will of course recognize these lines as coming from Act III, Scene V of The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. More to come tomorrow.
I’m not posting comics on Fridays, but I’ll usually try to post something at the end of the week. This is a drawing I did in my sketchbook at a professional development last week; I liked it enough to ink and (badly) color it.
The pretty redhead is my wife Ellen and the kid between the two of us is my son Elliot. Ellen’s currently seven months pregnant with our second son; he’s due in November. The drawing’s a bit of a joke for Ellen… Elliot loves it when we go for walks and we swing him. We usually count “One, two…” and then swing him on “THREE!” but he has decided that he’s going to start counting using only “three” whenever we do that… ’cause, y’know, “three” is when the fun thing happens.
It’s a small regret of mine that I won’t be drawing many comics with Ellen and Elliot (and Baby #2) over the next year. They’ve been my primary source of material for the past few years and as weird as it is, I know that Ellen has a lot of fans out there among the people who have read my comics in years past… but I’m sure she and the kids will break in ever now and then.
Teachable Moments 
