More Student Gags

Another brief sampling from student work - as jaded as I am there never fails to be many snorts in store during this portion of the course.
Trying to teach "how to be funny" can be a challenge, and there are those who claim it can't be taught, that it's an innate skill that one is either born with or not. To that I say hooey and base that informed opinion on years of parallel experience teaching beginning drawing. The acquisition of any given skill is contingent upon factors that have more to do with basic discipline and focus than divine influence or providence.

Even individuals who might at first come across as rather dull and uninspired (look who's talking) more often than not posses a droll, dry wit which lends itself quite easily to deadpan gags. And just like at least half the time with my own material there is always gonna be the occasional (or frequent) "I don't get it" - doesn't mean much and should never, ever stop anyone, much as it will sincerely annoy many friends and co-workers. If everyone on the planet was a little bit less afraid of making an ass out of themselves by trying to be funny, we'd all be better off anyways.

Always well worth mentioning how even if one subscribes to the erroneous theory that "it's all been done" and there's no such thing as an original idea (in this case a joke) it doesn't ever detract from the fact that you haven't done it yet, and once you do there'll never be another one like it. 

“Animals outline their territories with their excretions, humans outline their territories 
by ink excretions on paper.” - Robert Anton Wilson