My first classes I taught (two of them) at the Charles Schulz Museum and Research Center was fantastically. I want to thank Jessica and the museum staff who made sure the whole thing went off with out a hitch. My visit a wonderful experience.

4-19-06

I arrived at the museum at 7:40am, the sun breaking through the morning fog. Beautiful morning. The kind of day that, after weeks of rain, seemed like a fresh new day. I headed over to the next door ice rink to have breakfast at the Warm Puppy Café. The food is reasonable priced and you can watch student practicing their skating moves. Afterwards I met with Jessica and we got me set up for the class.

The theme of the class was Cute and Crazy Critter creation. The kids were great and they were very focused as they followed on as we went from a three headed animal character, to a two headed character, to finally a character was really just a head. All the time we kept making the eyes bigger and the attitude crazier.

We finally took a break at 10:30 am where we went out to the garden for some snacks and time to run around.

The second part of the class we began to think about crazy characters. We again started with the standard form of a mickey like character. Then we started to morph the character into something more strange and wacky. At this point they were rocketing into all sorts of there own ideas and like any good teachers I knew when to let them do there thing.

By noon the kids were leaving with their folks, drawings of giant eyed critters in hand.

4-21-06

Once again I arrived in Santa Rosa to a beautiful spring day. My second class, on Superheroes and Villains, was fantastic. I chose to give my group of kids some challenging materials, drawing the human figure.

After a warm up exercises, we set out to dissect what a hero or villains is. There real name, occupation, powers and weakness. Then the kids got up and struck some heroic poses, and talked about how we are constructed.

The kid returned to their seats as we worked on the skeleton/stick figure which was followed by adding muscles, face and costume. Since the first figure was masculine, the second figure became a more sharply female hero. The kids finished their drawings by coloring and cleaning them up.

When the kids were ready I gave them a scrap of paper printed with two to three names of heroes/villains, they have to pick one and have to draw it.

The kids took on the challenge to interpret the names as visual characters. This gave me a good chance to walk around and help the kids with any issues there were having. And soon the kids were on a roll and expanding onto their own creations.

Some excellent hero/villain drawings being created

Artist Alexis Fajardo gives a hand with these talented youngsters.

Here are some of the excellent drawings that my students created. NOTE: that I xeroxed these before they were %100 done.

Of course I wanted to draw a hero too. Here is my quick sketch of THE COPPER ZOMBIE!

to see a color version of this image, go here…

I had such a good time at the museum. I hope I get the opportunity to teach there again in the near future. Of course it does not mean that I won’t be there in some other form….JUNE 10, 2006 I will be the artist is residence from 1-3 PM at the Museum. Come by and see me working on my Graphic Novel Beyond the Great Chimney.

For more information on the Charles Schulz Museum and Research Center, visit the official site.

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