Not exactly a thrift store find this week, I’ll admit. Where I live in Southwest Ohio is within a twenty mile radius of three Half-Price Books. Four times a year, HPB sends out these great coupons where, during a week of sales, you can get 20%, 30%, 40%, and on Sunday a whopping 50% off one purchase. It’s perhaps a bit gluttonous of me, but on those 50% Off Sundays, I hit all three stores and these are my finds.
I debated long and hard as to whether I wanted to continue posting my chalkboard doodles for the upcoming school year. After three years solid of Sunday postings, I’ve done just about every character or situation I can think of. Further, I often draw the EXACT same drawings, year in and year out. It’s the nature of the job. Just as I teach Romeo & Juliet to every new group of Freshman, I’ll continue drawing myself as various superhero characters on the blackboard.
I’ve decided to keep posting these however, because… quite simply, they’re popular. I understand very little about “site views” and all that jazz, but when I do look at that widget, these are always amongst the most viewed of my posts… and that includes the comic. Over the past six months, a number of these have become popular on the website Pinterest. I know less about Pinterest than I do about site views, but if people are liking something I do well enough to share it somewhere, I should probably keep doing it.
Anyway, here’s the first drawing of the year. I decided I wanted to go big for the first week so I designed an elaborate Welcome piece for the Class of 2016 which took up the entire space of the classroom’s chalkboard.
I have to be honest- this was a larger undertaking than I anticipated! I thought I’d only need a half an hour to draw this beast, but it took double that when you figure in the sketch planning I needed to do to fit in as many characters as possible. I tried to run the gamut of cartoon characters that I found interesting and were relevant to someone who’d be in 9th grade this year. The only one I might have missed the mark on is Yakko Warner, but as established this summer, the characters are making a huge comeback, if only with my sons in our house.
A couple of new comics about my kids before I go into pre-school hibernation. I go back to my classroom VERY early compared with most other schools. I’ll be back in the swing of things before the end of August. I know, I know.
You might recognize the bin of toys from this comic a few weeks ago.
…and you WILL recognize the theme song to Animaniacs. Or art least, you should. One of the best cartoons of the 1990’s, I’ve shown the boys a couple of episodes of the show and it’s safe to say they are obsessed.
That’s fair enough, because I was obsessed with Animaniacs when I was a kid. The show’s mix of satire and classic Warner Brothers gags completely won me over. To be fair, there were a couple of less enjoyable segments in the show (I’m still not a Hip-Hippos fan) but SO many good ones.
Teachable Moments 