Well I will say with some level of pride that playing Skyrim has been a distraction for me for the last few weeks. In general though, the lack of blog posts hasn’t corresponded with a bundle of sketches that just weren’t posted like it normally did. Transitioning out of Reading Corps into my summer school work didn’t amount to much more free time or spare energy than I had during the school year. I switched from not having time to work, to needing to work on creative stuff — for a class.
I got the awesome opportunity to teach two graphic novel classes at the same summer school where I’ve been an assistant for 4 summers. To teach my graphic novel class I needed to assemble 35 hours of curriculum. Hand-made curriculum. From the girl who looked down on elementary ed during college, and consequently had never written a lesson plan in her life. And, let’s also point out, hadn’t completed a graphic novel in five years. Safe to say I had a daunting task before me. But I was surrounded by educators who believed I’d be able to create an awesome class, and I had a lot of material to pull from from my own writing experiences and also from my college art courses. I had two sets of students, one each week, and it’s kinda interesting how different they both were. But the resounding feeling they both left me with is inspiration.
I chose the age group (6-9 grade) that I did because that was when I was starting Nikkei, between 7th and 8th grade. But what I didn’t realize about making the choice the way that I did was how much I would connect with where these kids were at…and how much it would revitalize my passion for what I used to do. It kind of just struck me, oh, you know, yesterday that I could be sketching while they work. Doing so opened up that door for me again that I’d kind of closed in favor of trying to push my art forward by not trying boring things I liked but didn’t challenge me. One of my students referred to art schools as creating a sense of elitism, which I could agree with insofar that becoming an art student changes your standard of “art” so that maybe the silly character sketches you used to love making wouldn’t make the cut anymore.
I can’t say I can undo all that mentality because I’ve spent a long time trying to do so and part of it has always clung to me.
But for the first time pretty much since last summer, I’ve had snaps of inspiration, the old kind that made me go OH MY GOD, I AM SO DESPERATE TO DO THAT! and one of them could actually present itself as a nice union of what I feel I should consider “sophisticated art” and what I really crave to do. SO IMMA TRY IT soon
I also figured that even though I have no real idea how to revamp the root of my website, I still should do it anyway. I’ve been meaning to use Dreamweaver for my own fun but I haven’t had time up until now. So here’s to making sure this month (or so) off from work proves to be productive, and also doesn’t fly by so fast that I can’t take advantage of any of this creative buzzing I’m feeling.
Anyway, teaching two classes full of little artists was totally fun and kind of a sweet way of following through with my life’s direction. I could see myself picking up more weekend classes to teach during the school year, something I practically had the opportunity to do this last year but failed to take advantage of.
I usually hate making art blog posts without pictures, but hopefully this is more of a STAY TUNED! sort of entry.
On that note, I was showing my kids some pages from Cadence this week, and I think it’s a lot stronger than Raquilidis was visually. And I even burst out today MAN I WANNA KEEP WORKING ON THIS and my kids were like oh yeah you know how that happens! So I pulled up my page in progress and I was like OKAY, IF I CAN REMEMBER THE DIALOGUE FOR THIS, FINISHING THE COLORING WOULD BE TOTALLY FUN, AND GO
Now I just have to decide what actual art supplies to bring to my boyfriend’s tomorrow – just my tablet, or do I want to dive into my traditional project idea?
… Or maybe my traditional project idea should be digital ….
or should I use … yes it should be digital..SINCE WHEN DO I HAVE A DIGITAL ART GOAL?! No I’m still thinking maybe digital lines and traditional color…how would I pull that off…..I CAN CUT 8X10 PAPER MYSELF BITCHES
eeee that sounds cool
but see I can also do some digital color and see if I can emulate my traditional style of coloring – somehow…Photoshop’s gotta be able to do what I have in my head. Hey it’s not that late, LET’S FIND OUT NOW
This journal entry eroded quickly.
