(Teaching Teaser)

Long-time readers are more than familiar with my advocacy for comics in the classroom as a powerful medium in both literacy + art. Relatedly, I've been dropping hints as of late about what might possibly be the personal summit of my entire career. But, as can be ascertained from the above snapshot, I'm still awaiting final approval a little bit longer along the academic food chain, so more on this exciting possibility when it actually goes live... so I'm resisting posting anywhere else on social media about it. Folks following Ink & Snow, as compared to thousands of others across other platforms, are a much more select, almost private group that always gets the news first. Appreciate your time & attention!

"...shhhh..."

In the meantime here's a set of samples done as demos during the linear perspective portion of Beginning Drawing. They literally illustrate the advantages cartoonists have in the studio for showing students how to easily accomplish, with just a few, quick lines, depth on the picture plane.This is the fundamental miracle behind the voodoo magic trick making a drawing can do: a three-dimensional image on a flat 2-D surface. Making marks on a piece of paper that stand for something, and visually communicating a concept to another. How amazing is that.

Best of all, and bonus points for irony here: extra-funny detail that for a linear perspective assignment doesn't even contain any straight lines. Making a hyper-realistic copy of reality isn't what this is all about, no knock on that style but for me it's not the point. Sometimes I'll joke about it and tell students if that's their goal spare yourself the struggle and just take a picture instead. Plus these demos of mine shot from the artistic hip aren’t so good as to intimidate, and not so bad as to inspire a loss of confidence in the instructor’s abilities. Even doing these day after day for fifty-odd semesters I still screw up, which is also an important meta-lesson in itself. I  try to knock these classroom demos out in a couple minutes while Bob Rossing the hell outta the process – for some folks it’s helpful to see someone sketch stuff out in person.

"stool sample"