hanging out with middle schoolers
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In the spring semester, each 7th grade student at Dahlstrom Middle School writes and illustrates an original book to give to students in Uganda through the Books of Hope program. To help with the illustration process, the middle school asked me to come in for an all day school visit. I was able to walk the students through the process of illustration starting from simple thumbnail sketches to finished pieces of work.

It was a lot of fun to see their interests grow in illustration and sketching!

I told them of the importance of drawing daily to improve their skills and afterwards found out that several of the students had started carrying around sketchbooks since my visit. It was so much fun and such a satisfying experience.
Related posts:
- creative sketching
- disappointed in drawings
- lack of tradition or patience
- portrait drawing tutorial
- handbag dielma
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 3:52 pm and is filed under photos.



4:12 pm on May 24th, 2008
so many junior high boys crushing hard. I recently got a smaller sketchbook, and have been drawing a lot more because it’s more portable and easy to hide at work.
6:48 pm on May 24th, 2008
Good for you! I work with middle school kids and I can tell you it makes a huge difference to have other people present things in the classroom. Sometimes it’s hard to ignite the spark that’s inside there, especially with how stifling a typical classroom is. Thanks!
10:12 pm on May 25th, 2008
Yeah, you pretty much do have the coolest job in the world. I’m sure they were impressed!
5:06 am on May 26th, 2008
Nicely done! Good advice too, keeping your hand in so to speak. Shame you don’t have any shots of their work.
9:39 am on May 26th, 2008
Hooray for you! Inspiring the next generation and all that :)
And that program of drawing books to send to kids in Uganda? Kinda made me tear up a bit… Kudos to you for helping with such a worthy program…
10:30 am on May 26th, 2008
It’s just great that the kids started carrying sketchbooks after your visit! It’s such an amazing feeling when you realize people are catching on to what you’re teaching.
12:25 pm on May 26th, 2008
Thanks guys!
AMC, I’m waiting to get some scanned pages of their finished books before they are shipped off to Uganda. Hopefully :)
4:34 pm on May 26th, 2008
And I’ll be back to check them out too!
Actually have an odd question for you. The navigation bar at the top of my blog (the blogger bar thingy)…any ideas how I get rid of it? It’s ruining my aethetics!
6:05 pm on May 26th, 2008
I don’t have blogger anymore so I don’t remember how it’s set up, but try adding this to your stylesheet:
#navbar { height:0px; visibility:hidden; display:none }
9:56 am on May 27th, 2008
that is awesome tina!