I thought I’d share some illustrations I did for the National Council of Teachers of English’s annual NCTE Conference in Atlanta, GA! I was super happy to be asked to contribute some of my doodles and they came out looking really great. Some examples are behind the cut.
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.
Some friends of mine have an annual holiday party for which I’ve been drawing the invitation these past three years. This summer, I made the mistake of mentioning how cool it would be if I did the invite up in the style of the album cover to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
As soon as I said that out loud, I regretted it because immediately that became the idea for this year’s invitation… no ifs, ands, or buts! I was dreading the amount of work I was going to have to put into this piece, but it ended up being great fun. I gave up on having one-to-one representation of the album on here, but in general I think I got the spirit of the original right on.
There’s a lot of little in-jokes and references from within my circle of Midwest friends on there. Don’t feel bad if they’re a mystery to you.
Here’s last year’s Festivus invite, which I colored and I don’t believe I’ve ever posted. Frankly, there was no way 2014’s Festivus invitation was going to be colored, with all the tiny details.
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 we did a standard Santa Claus scene featuring a pregnant Ellen. This year Joan makes her debut as the Sugar Plum Fair in our production of The Nutcracker.
Here’s a little doodle I did in preparation for second semester’s Shakespeare work in my classroom. I liked it enough to ink it and scan it… but not enough to color it. If you’d like to color this, you’re more than welcome.
On the other hand, here’s a doodle I did of the characters from the Cartoon Network mini-series Over the Garden Wall. I liked this one enough to get out the Prismacolor markers… but marker colored pieces always look weird when I scan ’em.
OTGW was fantastic, by the way.
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 