Squeaky Scribbles (from yester year)

Back in 2004 when I taught as an art teacher at a private Christian school for one year, I used many marker board illustrations to inspire the young aspiring minds into drawing creative, wacky and far-out funny things for their assignments.  I captured some with a fairly crappy, miniature pocket spy camera from the early digital camera era of the early new millennium...so I had to clean these up a bit to bring out the details.

The white board in the art classroom.

Whatever I could draw spontaneously to make the students laugh and have a good time, I would do, because I knew the principle of laughter and freedom relaxes the mind and encourages creativity.  I also know that the "joy of the Lord is our strength."  So together, we had funny but studious class times.



Funny faces were always popular and I loved to draw something exaggerated.







 

 Also, I liked to draw simplistically to show the students that simple contour lines can be very easy and powerful. 

 

Caricatures in my style helped me to bring out the styles laying dormant in my young artists.  In the other various academics the students participated in before entering my classroom, the seriousness and drudgery would likely follow them and I wanted to shake all those burdens off their minds so they could enter a new world of expressing and experimenting in imagination through art.

A rocket-ship seemed comfortable and commonplace in the playground.

I also had the challenge of helping the students perceive and interpret the empirical world around them.  Their young brain development was rapidly changing and certain concepts were difficult to grasp.  I attempted illustrations that would easily demonstrate concepts like depth with foreground and background and showing how things appear large or small depending on location on the 2-dimensional page.  The light bulbs went off with a satisfying sound of 'Ahh!'

Making up funny creatures and silly monsters was my favorite thing to do.  I had to teach a wide over view of curriculum with different sorts of mediums like paints - but painting with real paint is not really my talent or interest, I just liked getting out something to draw and design characters with.

I even went crazy one week and started drawing and drawing and kept drawing parts of a crazy scene of a urban area under siege of rampaging monsters and aliens with people running around screaming.  Every class session would reveal new parts of the evolving mosaic, compelling students who had already attended my class back again throughout the day to see what new mayhem was drawn.

Of course, adults might thing that would scare kids, but kids usually saw themselves as the rampaging BIG funny monster having fun and playing.











I think it gave them a sense of empowerment that their little bodies and personalities couldn't have in real life.

And then there were the familiar characters, especially seasonal/holiday well-known celebs like Santa Clause. It was a picture to say goodbye and Merry Christmas to everyone who was about to enjoy 3 weeks of holiday vacation time with their family and loved ones.

...and boy, does Santa look tired.

The kids really got a kick out of Santa. (this also reminds me of my recent idea of the Santa Clones and some crazy tangent of a wild idea that will never go any where but I got a good chuckle to myself...as most of my wayward wacky thoughts end up achieving - a chuckle and a sigh.)

Here Santa on his Santamobile.
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na San-ta!

And then there's the Snorp-B'looga who lives on an alien planet with his alien friends in their Dr. Suessian-like space surroundings.  Who knows what I was thinking that day.

And with that, I'll zap on out of here with an Olympian THunder Cloud wearing a Greek Parthenon for a cap.  Zapoooowwww!!!!