Perpich High School - Pat Benincasa - 12 hours
What a week it's been. It's a little surreal that I'm back at my high school just about five years out of graduating, but with the amount of work I'm putting in, it feels right.
I spent three hours of four days at Perpich and got reacquainted with the building and the people that were still around teaching. The energy, the excitement of the students is very much the same as what I experienced while I was there. All of the faculty seemed very excited to have a cartoonist around and relayed that the students were really interested in comics. Pat walked me through the routine and on Wednesday I presented a quick explanation of my practice and my life Post-Perpich, the students were really interested and asked a lot of questions about the MCAD program, some were accepted Seniors, so that was exciting. After words, I had a handful of students showing me their comics as well. So cool.
A lot of the questions were sort of teetering on "How do I do this?" "How do I put my passion into something I can do daily and make money for?" Immediately I knew that they needed to get their hands on some real comics. On Friday, I brought in some of my own print work, as well as a wide swath of small press/self published titles. Pat was gracious enough with her time to bring me into the gallery space and sit down, showing the students different examples of work. Comics are a medium, not a style. They were very interested.
At Southwest, the comics bug is smaller but definitely there. During 7th hour class, I sat down with my tools and invited the students to sketch and doodle. They were especially interested in the Kuretake brush pens I use for cartooning and lettering. Bi-weekly art club was great as usual- I have one student in particular that likes to sit with me and ask me questions about inking and illustration. I invited him to draw something for me that I could ink and we could trade.
Lots of exciting stuff, my head is turning with thoughts for my Perpich lesson.