I had a few good teachers who realized that I paid attention better if I had drawing materials in my hand. Certainly you couldn’t do that with certain things, math or something like that, but if they were reading to me or if they were talking about history or something I could sit and draw.
Certainly I went to grade school in the 60s and that wasn’t accepted very often. But I did have a few teachers who realized that that’s how I communicate, that’s how I concentrate. When I got into college I even wrote English papers where they let me illustrate part of it because you know they realized this is the way I see the world.
And thank you for that. Even in college when I was taking art classes I took it from a lot of guys who were modernists, people who were in college during abstract expressionism, that sort of thing, and they didn’t want narrative art. But I’d have a few professors who said okay, you know, this seems to be who you are and what you do, so go with it.
I was lucky; every level I had one or two teachers who kind of winked at me and said you know just keep up what you’re doing.
I’m always amazed when I go to schools. When I go to schools I talk about visual storytelling. It seems the most compelling thing, I can stand up there and tell stories with pictures, and the teachers come up to me and they say “if I could only draw … you obviously got to a point in a minute where it takes me so much longer because
” and my response is always “take a drawing class.” I’m not doing, this is Dean Chapel up here, these are pigs on skateboards, you know, there’s not a lot going on here, except they’re simple enough for you to draw and complete enough for the kids to understand what I’m doing.
I think we forget the visual as we go
our job is to learn how to read. Our job is to
well, let’s say you’re walking through Grand Central Station and it’s crowded and your mother walks through. You would recognize her, right? Now draw me your mother right now, I mean, you’d recognize her among a thousand people, but could you draw her for me so I’d know what she looks like her? Perhaps not.
That’s because we learn to see in symbols. We just see quickly. We identify who it is and we move on. Kids don’t do that. By using that visual language in the classroom it is another language, another way in. It certainly is another way in with a small group of kids that I belonged to. Some of the other illustrator/authors you talk to when you ask that question will say the same thing, I drew all the time, I was, you know, the paper was being pulled away from me. But that’s usually how it works. A good teacher I think finds that.