Thinking

Poking around my classroom today, I uncovered this old painting I did in tempera on matte board back in the 1990's. I don't remember if it was a self portrait (obviously no goatee) or based on someone else (maybe John Bulushi). Anyway, I really like it.

I beg you're pardon?

I drew this along with the assignment I gave to 7th graders. Students keep asking me "why does it look evil?" That's probably a good sign, the fact that they're asking must mean that I don't actually look this crabby all the time.

Southwestern colors

Playing with an old drawing from college and good old Photoshop.

Self deprecating humorous portrait

I was teaching 7th graders about complimentary colors and how they can both contrast and neutralize. Thus an oil pastel self portrait. I think I kind of look a little like David Alfaro Siqueiros- but I have been researching Mexican art for a special Dia de los Muertos lesson this week.

I like the huge nose and cynical, haggard depressive look- but I should've made my self fatter and I think I also look kind of arrogant and maybe even snide (is that an adjective for anything but comments?).

My time at the Sun

Every year our English teacher solicits our favorite poems for National Poetry Month and requests that we give her a picture of ourselves so that her class can make posters of our poems to hang in the hallway. Last year I made myself look like Iowa artist Grant Wood. This year I decided to make myself into H.L. Mencken, political columnist, humorist, social commentator, reporter, and editor of the Baltimore Sun, back at the time of Theodore Roosevelt.

I may never be as famous or influential a writer, I may not even have a weekly column in our tiny local paper anymore but I still love writing. Maybe someday God will even let me make a living at it.

Please note that the beer mug tattoo was drawn on the original photo by Mencken himself- that's not something I added on my own.

Photography can blow your mind

The picture of mental health

Red, Blue, Black, and White oil pastels on paper. I'd been teaching 4th graders about Van Gogh but I can see lots of Picasso, Matisse, and Klee influences here too. Plus, it's pretty obvious that I could use some Prozac or something.

Me and my friend Grant

Here's a picture of my fellow art teacher, Grant Wood, and I hanging out near his studio in Cedar Rapids. We were painting placid scenes of Iowa prairies when he needed a smoke break. Me, I don't smoke, but I do like to lean against trees in Cedar Rapids.

Watercolor self portraits

April 2007

Works in progress

Here is the oil pastel self portrait that I did with 7th Grade Art. I can't decide if it is done or not and if not, what it needs to make it finished.

Here is the drawing I'm working on of Harry Truman. Kids thought it looked like Donald Rumsfeld, yikes. "Who's Harry Truman?" Double yikes, you ask your History teacher. I know this one is a long way off, but at least that lower right hand quadrant is getting close.

Pumpkin Killer

My girls like the guts. You draw it, I'll carve it.
Happy Halloween- don't be SCARED to vote NEXT Tuesday.

15 minutes of fame

Now I'm no Andy Warhol, but this was quick and fun. I don't even think that it took me much more than 15 minutes. I had wanted to run an editorial cartoon- or any kind of cartoon with my weekly column in our local paper. I'm away at college taking a web code programming class. Without access to a scanner, I had to think of something else. SO... with a camera and a few minutes in PhotoShop- I think I managed to capture my mood this week.

Like the bed-hair?

Self Portrait. Pencil. 04/01/2005
Using the Chuck Close grid system with seventh graders again.
Mallory

Self portrait. Oil Pastel on paper. March 2005
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I'm so vain. Just playing and learning in PhotoShop
Mallory

Self-Portrait, pencil, charcoal, and conte. 2000
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During our unit on the Design Element, Value (light & shadows), we enlarged photos using grids like Artist Chuck Close might. Mine make me look like an evil genius, don't you think?
of course, it also makes me look bald.
Mallory

Portrait of the artist as an angry young man. Charcoal on newsprint, WAY back in 1989 or early 90. Look for Pablo Picasso, Humphrey Bogart, and John Bulushi in the background.
Mallory

Tired self portrait sketch in watercolor, 2003
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If I were Van Gogh. Oil pastel on canvas board, 2004. "It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all to prudent." ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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