Happy Birthday Roger

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Mr. Cleaves.

Happy Birthday to Me

Thanks to all the folks who made it possible for me to walk the Earth. Happy Birthday to me! Cake and beer for all.

My mom used to make a big tin of home-made chocolate chip cookies on my birthday. She would make extras for everyone else to enjoy, but the cookie tin was mine. I would hide it in my room, and for days I would eat those cookies whenever I wanted. Breakfast, lunch, dessert and even in the middle of the night, I would munch away on my own personal cookie stash. I love cookies.

Thanks Mom!

Happy Halloween

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Love,

Spillmanville

The adventures of Cap'n Jackson

I am working on a few large narrative drawings right now. This image on the left is about 1/8 of the whole story for one of these drawings. This drawing is based on tales of war. The drawing is made up of a fictitious war hero (who happens to be a gorilla), and the many battles fought. This is the snowy land scene. The tanks are coming into view. The drawing has several different scenes displayed in an overlapping composition. I am lining the drawing now, and am slowly staring to lay the value down. More to come.

-Have a good day, and draw something cool to impress your friends.

Welcome to my world

I am tired and I feel like crap! Teaching 500 little kids a week is a sure fire way to catch the crud. They are all snotty and coughing, but the show must go on.

Today, I am going to put out a load of supplies

and drawing books. I will tell them that the only rules are, don't get on my nerves, handle the supplies correctly, make your own artwork based on concepts we have discussed, and clean your messes up. It sounds lazy, but I teach my butt off, and my kids learn in a studio environment. Sometimes artists just need time to apply their own ideas and how they think it should be made. On days like this, some will make their best work, and I can see my influence. There will be a group of students that make masks or cards; they are the ones that will misplace their scissors and leave their tops off the glue sticks. (Tad)

Then there are the kids who will scribble on everything with as many different supplies as they can get their hands

on. They might even just get up and dance crazily to the Art Blakey and Lee Morgan blasting from the boom box. They are sometimes performance artists, and they usually like to do abstract marker drawings (Dwayne).

My favorite kids to watch are the ones who don't want anything but paper, pencils and drawing books. They remind me of myself. They hang on my words when we talk drawing, because they know they are getting drawing instruction from one of the best draftsmen in the whole City School system. I am teaching them all the tricks I figured out on my own, because I don't remember any art teachers until the end of High School. I taught myself to draw from library books, comics, observation, and cartoons. We have a pretty good collection of how to draw books between the school library and my personal collection. The kid above has been through almost every page of the animal book in front of him. He told me yesterday that "all drawing is, is shapes and lines". Really, I think I have told every student from the University of Memphis to Bruce Elementary this since I began teaching. I love it when they get it. Most teachers don't even really get this. Watching these kids makes me remember sitting on the library floor with a worn out Lee Ames "How to Draw 50 Horses" book while my mom grocery shopped across the street. Damn!!!!!! Now I am jealous!

I am going to draw while they have their little "free studio day", because I need to act like little Mr. Spillman today. Have fun. Enjoy yourself, and create something new while your at it.

-Spillmanville loves to draw!

Monsters are cool!

Monsters are cool! We have been drawing monsters @ school the past week. My students have been drawing monsters based on descriptions that I give them in the form of a story. They freak out at the idea of drawing from words at first, but as the drawing unfolds into this goofy, snotty, gross, hairy monster from their imagination, they go bonkers. Kids love monsters, and so do I. How silly can your ideas be. My students love Spongebob. He is a sponge with pants, a ties, a nose, eyes, shoes and a mouth. That is silly! Adults make this crazy stuff up, and the children love it. Maybe, if adults could use their imagination, we could all make up silly characters and stories, and enjoy the things that are just fun and feel good. Age=more footsteps on the planet; that is all. Enjoy your inner-child, and become your own monster!

-enjoy, Spillmanville believes in monsters aaarrrggh!

Drawing pumpkins with kindergarteners

Do you remember when you were excited to have a clean sheet of paper and a big crayon? I spend every Friday with kindergarteners, about 80 of them. I sometimes forget the beauty of the unknown in art. It is real easy to get hung up wanting to repeat yourself. If I don't show my kids something new to draw or a new process, they will just want to do the same thing that they did the week before. They know that they can do whatever that was and as long as they do it the same way, then they will not fail.

I have been going through that questioning stage about what to do with my work lately. Do you wait around for that solo show, illustrate a book, work on large scale drawings, pursue tattooing, or enter a bunch of judged group shows. I don't know. These questions are not the questions I enjoy or even relate to making art. Well, at least I didn't think about these things when I got fresh paper and big crayons. No, I never considered this crap until I decided to go after my MFA in painting. Art became more than just production. Showing work is fun. The thrill of meeting a deadline, having people walk around and talk about your work, and the review in the local paper on the following Friday all play into the grand ego stroke that makes displaying your art work so beautiful.

Painting with little children is stressful, painful, nerve damaging and physically draining, but it has emotional benefits. Ms. Spillman looked at pictures from Friday's crayon resist pumpkin paintings, and she said "they are so happy". Damn, that is what it is all about. Exploration into the unknown. The surprise of watching your own creativity and imagination produce something you've never seen before. That is what real art is. Genuine curiosity, knowledge of process, experimenting with your ideas and loving it!

So, I bought new surfaces, tools, and put on the headphones (yes, they are still necessary). The ideas are endless, but the destinations are unknown. Time to make new work just because I want to see new work. I think I am fine with that!

Thank you Crayola, the little Bruce Bulldogs and their love of art, Ms. Spillman for sage wisdom, coffee for liquid energy, and Sundays for being Sundays.

-Off to see "Baby Hands" to get tattooed! Now, go enjoy yourselves.