Bible Comics: Moses in the Wilderness

Once in a while I teach a Sunday School lesson at my church. I like to make my own comics to give the kids. My favorite Bible to use is the Message Bible. The script for this one is almost straight from it. This Bible paraphrases the text in to "street language".

The story ends kind of abruptly since I stopped working on it when I ran out of time. I think the main lesson this story can teach us today is "Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better."

Women in Art

While I was getting a Master's in Art Ed at Mansfield, I took a course called Women in Art. It dealt with women artists and how women have been portrayed in art. Guess who I wrote about for my final paper? You guessed it! Wonder Woman. The paper was published in Papyrus, the art history e-journal at MU and can be read here.

Roy Lichtenstein: A Modern Master

It's no secret that Roy Lichtenstein is one of my favorite artists. A couple years ago, I wrote a paper about him for an art history course and it was published in Papyrus, the art history e-journal at Mansfield University.

You can read the article here.

Art History Bio-Pix

Children's books about artists used to be few and far between. Now there are tons of them and many of them are excellent. At my request, our librarian has accumulated about 50 of them over the years. Some of the best ones, in my opinion, are:

1. Chuck Close Up Close by Jan Greenburg.



2. My Name is Georgia by Jeannette Winter.



3. Roy Lichtenstein: The Artist at Work by Lou Ann Walker.

We have enough different books that I can sign them all out, set them up on a table, and allow a class of students to choose which artist they would like to learn more about. I ask them to read some of the book (not all) and then to make a drawing that shows the artists' name, what the artist looked like and what one of their works of art looks like. I ask them to write a couple things that they find interesting about the artist. Sometimes they find a quote to include.

Here are a few that I've made over the years...

...and here are some of my students' drawings.

The First Bank of Wales

A while ago some fifth graders were making caricature mugs. Mine was a self-portrait, but to do my chrome dome justice, I had to turn it into a bank. I'm not crazy about how the color turned out with glazes, but the kids get a kick out of it.

Advice for Young Cartoonists Starting Out

I found a great article about an artist named Gene Yang. This creator is especially inspiring to me because he's also a teacher. His latest graphic novel American Born Chinese has gotten a lot of positive reviews and it received several awards. His advice to cartoonists is to "get a day job"! He then explains how it can actually help your art. Here's some of the article:

Advice for a cartoonist who’s just starting out? Get a day job. I know people tend to see day jobs as a sign of failure, but really, there are so many benefits:

1. By separating your comics from your need to feed yourself, you keep full control of your comics. You’ll never have to draw someone else’s story simply because that someone else is going to help you make rent.

2. Health insurance.

3. Your day job can be a great source of material. Stories occur
around us all the time, especially when we’re interacting with other people.
I’ve found that some of the best stories come out of interactions that you
wouldn’t necessarily choose to have: ones with your co-workers, your customers,
or your students. There are lots of great characters out there, walking around
on the street and in office buildings and on campuses, just waiting for you to
bump into them.

You do have to exercise good judgment in picking a day job. It should be something you like – not every day, but overall. It should be something you find meaningful. And it should be something that will leave you with enough energy to make your comics after work. For a lot of us, that means a day job that doesn’t involve cartooning.

Personally, I think classroom teaching is a great way to go. Everyone knows we need good teachers, and teaching, at least for me, draws from a different “energy well” than cartooning. Teaching is so extroverted, so people-oriented. At the end of a day of teaching, when I’ve had all the human contact I can stand, I go to my drawing board and recharge by inking a page. Then, when I’m sick of being holed up in my home office, I go back into my classroom. Plus, you can catch up on your comics
during summer vacations if you fall behind during the school year. If you’re a cartoonist who’s ever even had a passing interest inteaching, I’d encourage you to explore it. Heck, I’m one of three cartoonists on staff at my school, and we all put out comics fairly regularly.

Of course, plenty of comics creators do just fine with art-oriented day jobs. The incredible C. Scott Morse works at Pixar during the day and still finds the energy to create brilliant graphic novels at night. Plenty of others don’t have any day jobs at all. Jeff Smith hasn’t had a day job since the start of Bone.
But for me, I’ve found my own day job to be a blessing rather than a curse.

Stan the Man

Stan Lee is the writer who along with some fantastic artists brought to life such great characters as Spider-man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Daredevil, and so many more. What made his work so cutting edge at the time was he introduced to comics characters that were powerful yet flawed. They had problems or disabilities and this made them more naturalistic and complex.

He is 85 years old now, but in almost every Marvel movie they give him a small part. One of the fun things about watching the movies the first time is seeing where he might pop up. Someone has put together a compilation on You-Tube of many of them, which I've embedded below.

An interview with him about these appearances can be found here.