Betsy Streeter, Drooly Dog: September 2009

The School Mural Project continues...

Alrighty, I've got our science-lab mural for my kids' school up onto a grid now, so I can look at each and every square and make sure there's something cool there for the kids to paint. I'm still working out space on the right, I need a space shuttle and some more stars and asteroids and things. But the DNA and leaf stomata on the left look pretty good, as do the oak leaves.

We're going to make this into a giant coloring book with thick black lines I think, then the kids are going to paint it in one square at a time. We were going to have them sign their squares, but that gets pretty crazy so I'm considering just having them make a thumbprint if the science teacher thinks that's cool.

It's going to be great fun to see this as it migrates up onto the wall!

A Story in Pictures

As a cartoonist, I love to tell stories. Each of my cartoons has a past, a present, and a future - you have to get all the characters, dialog, scenery, and time into a single panel. Each one is about something that is happening, something that just happened, or something that is about to happen. I know, it's a jam-packed bit of ink and paper eh?

However, I also love to work in longer form, which for me means getting all crazy and doing more than one drawing.

So here are the first 8 pages of a story told in pictures. Or, you can just look at the slideshow above.

This started with an image I've drawn all my life - a figure in a chair, facing away. I think I draw this when I'm feeling overwhelmed, or confused, or just hiding.

Then, I just got up and left the room and went to see what happened.

These 8 pages are the very, very beginning of what happened.

Enjoy!

The Bubble Wrap Dance

We got some stuff in boxes this week, but they didn't send us any bubble wrap. They did, however, send us a tiny item in a big box with a bunch of crumpled paper. Does Amazon have some problem with getting small boxes? I with there was a way to turn your boxes back in for them to re-use. Or they could take some of their huge boxes and cut them up and make smaller boxes. But next time we definitely need bubble wrap so we can do our dance.

Every evening....

... I think of this.

Enjoy a Maira Kalman Talk

This is a very enjoyable talk by Maira Kalman, who is the wife of Tibor Kalman. Between them much creative fabulous-ness has transpired. Take a look and just enjoy her process - or lack thereof. Much to learn from her.

Drawing Moving Targets: Gestures

Gesture drawing is one of those things you learn about in art school. It's all about capturing the essence of form and movement as simply and quickly as you can. It sneaks past your brain so you don't have time to say "That's not right" or "That's rubbish" or pretty much anything, because by the time you've done that, your subject is gone.

Yesterday I sat on the curb at a local arts festival and watched people walk by, and then attempted to draw them as they passed, which meant I had to work really quickly..

One of the main shapes I encountered was the "lady with big purse" where there was a body shape and then a big bag in front of it...

There were also various kids and small dogs...

And then, of course, bermuda shorts.

Various children needed to be held or carried, too.

Gesture drawing is about catching the basic shape and personality of something, just as you see it. And, when people are walking away, you can't get too picky about finishing it. But it's a terrific way to see better and not get stuck.

You can read more about gesture drawing here, and of course there is the Google. Or, you can just go out and try it. Just bring a lot of paper, you go through it really fast!

The Return of the Puppet Theatre

A while back, I taught a class on art and design for theatre at the local theatre company. We started out drawing costumes and making marionettes and masks - but then we hit on something that consumed the rest of the class.

It started when we made some sock puppets. Then the puppets started to take on personalities, and then I got out my flip video camera and started "interviewing" the characters.

From there, we developed a script called "Sockzilla vs. Super Puff," cast all the puppets as characters, made a bunch of fuzz balls with eyes, and painted some scenery.

We were working in a really small room, so it got a little tricky for the puppeteers and their puppets to all fit onstage at once. We learned that in puppet shows you need to really limit how many characters are on at the same time. Otherwise people can get trampled or bent in uncomfortable ways.

Anyway, it came out pretty cool (the puppet shown above was "Buck," who was our narrator and who read the credits at the end) and the students got to try everything from puppeteering to scenery to writing. So, I thought, maybe we could do a whole class that's just this.

After all, it's like shrinking the whole theatre down to a small size, so the students can get involved in every aspect of putting on a production. And, it gives kids who maybe don't want to be onstage by themselves in front of a roomful of people a means to explore all sorts of aspects of performance and theatre - there is so much that goes on, and a lot of it happens "behind the scenes."

So we're going to try it starting next week. In a bigger space, thankfully.

We're going to structure it like a standard theatre class, where we figure out the show at the beginning, and then cast it, rehearse, do sets and props, and then do the performance.

And use a lot of felt and glue in the process...

All this talk of Graffiti...

... is making me want to sketch out some ideas.

First I did "Peace," then I got into making things out of the letters in a more literal way - which led to this:

Then I got even more into forming the letters into things, and got this:

This is fun. I may feel the need to make an alphabet.

In Honor of Healthcare Reform...

This one is actually framed on the wall of a waiting room of a doctor's office. That's how far we've gone into the land of not-healthcare. So here's to all you folks out there filling out your various forms (or sitting there on hold to your provider) and hoping it will be worth the effort...

Graffiti IS art, when it's done well.

This is a really nice video in which the artist explains what he's doing - and it's got good music, too (try to ignore the "subscribe" thingies that pop up).

I've always been fascinated by graffiti and street art, maybe because I grew up in the SF Bay Area where you see a lot of tags and murals (especially in places like the Mission in SF). I notice that kids' eyes light up whenever they see art on a wall also.

In college I spraypainted the basement of my dorm. I did not do a respectable job in terms of art or lettering, and watching this guy reminds me of the fumes -- which were not good.

But check out the way he layers the lines and shapes, and how he visualizes what he's going to do before he does it. It's really neat.

And, this is super cool too - a Taxonomy of characters used in graffiti in Paris. Click on a word, then click on the red character to see examples of it on the street.

Good graffiti is definitely art, bad graffiti is, well, bad art. Tags with no care or creativity get on my nerves. And irresponsible painting of things that should not be painted stinks, too. It's hard to separate the graffiti form from its roots of course, and I'm not sure that's what's desirable. But it would be nice to hit a middle path where the art can be developed and appreciated minus the class and culture baggage. Yeah, I'll get right on that. Sigh.

Sappy Sentimental Sketching

This toy tractor hangs out in our backyard - it's one of those oversize ones, best for toddlers. Thing is, I don't have any toddlers any more. I mean, they still play with this, but not the same amount or in the same way. It's well on the way to getting donated to a real toddler.

While sketching it - and seeing it a lot more deeply of course while I did that - I got all melancholy about how this toy sitting there represents just how fleeting childhood is. I know, total sappy goop. Sorry. Sigh.

DumDum Lives in My Yard.

If you've seen "Night at the Museum," you're familiar with the term "DumDum." Well, this fellow lives in my yard, and I can see him from my drawing table. He's a good dude. I haven't tried giving him any gumgum though.

Mural Project: No Boring Squares!

As I've mentioned, I'm designing a mural to be painted and put up on the side of the science lab at my kids' school.

Murals are a tricky business, regardless. But in the case of this one, we've got the added dimension of ensuring that as many students as possible get to participate in making it.

We've based it on a grid, so we can size it up to go on the wall - but also so we can build it out of 1-foot squares and have the kids paint each one.

This makes it so we don't have to have huge sheets of plywood laying out for this process - each kid or team can take their square and go paint it and bring it back...

It also means we'll need to number the squares and mark which way goes up so we don't spend the rest of the school year trying to put the thing together again.

My next challenge, after getting DNA right and figuring out the general layout, will be to make sure that each and every square is fun to paint. No dull plain-colored squares! So I think we'll be adding labels, and a title, and anything else we can think of. Oh, one other thing - I have to make sure that when we cut the labels apart across squares, we don't end up with any swearwords.

Yard Gnome

Our new kittens are really into looking out the windows. I wonder, what do they see out there? This is one possibility.

It's bigger on Flickr.

Monstrous Checkers

I seem to draw a lot of these scenes, in which a child has an, um, interesting playmate. I've been drawing them forever. I just hope this guy doesn't eat the board...

If you want to see this bigger you can check Flickr. It's in ballpoint and Prismacolor pencil.

Just the Ears, Please

Sometimes you don't have to look far for a drawing subject - in this case I just had to turn my head slightly to the left. Our new kittens don't quite see over the arm of the chair yet - so you get this hint of fuzz and ears and that's it. I fell in love with all the shapes here, between the cat and the chair. This is in ballpoint and Prismacolor pencil.

PS to see this bigger you can check it out on Flickr.

Blog about Cartoons about Blogging

I'm messing with my webpage and blog today (colors! formats! files!) so these two came to mind...

Welcome Drooly Dogs!

So, for some reason that is known only to the cosmos, I have been running two blogs for some time.

And, those two blogs have stuff in them that should be friends.

You see, one of them is this one, with my various cartoons and drawings and artwork in it...

The other one is all about kids, art and creativity and meant to inspire with cool projects and ideas.

So, you'd think that sharing my process and stuff as an artist would be good to combine with writings on creativity, eh? And you would be right.

So, from now on I'm going to combine both of my blogs into this one right here. Which means, you'll see both my teaching projects and my artist/cartoonist pro

jects all in one place.

Nifty eh?

I'm going to leave The Drooly Dog Blog up, while I figure out how to import all those posts here (there's a button to do that, but it doesn't seem to do anything.) So for those archives, you can still look there.

So if you've been reading the Drooly Dog Blog, welcome! I hope that his newer bigger bunch of art and projects and ideas and links and thoughts gives you inspiration and a reason to smile.

Enjoy!!

The Mural Project: Update

Well, we're going to create a mural at my kids' school. It's going to go on the side of the science lab, shown here. I'm going to post updates as we get started... after much sketching, we've come up with a plan that involves 5 big panels (not 6 as I've mocked up here), and the concept is "Powers of Ten" or "Powers of 37 1/2" or whatever it turns out to be - we're going to work our way out from cells to DNA to Earth to the galaxy.

Part of the challenge is determining how the kids will participate in the project, and still get something that looks right and they can be proud of (and that will last a long time). Fortunately, another parent has plans for these things, like what types of wood and primer to use and how to cut this up properly. We're going to paint it in 1-foot squares, so the kids work on their own "tile" and then we put them all up, like a puzzle.

So my next task is to get the design nailed down so none of the square "tiles" is boring to paint, and so the science teacher feels that it's sort of accurate. More to come as this take shape...