IT'S NOT GOOFY: CARTOONS HELP TEACH ART

Jennifer Taylor, left, asked a question of art teacher Gordon Brooks about her picture of Goofy.

Rusty Dailey, left, and Daniel Turner worked on their pictures of Boogerman.

Cartoons at school? It sounds unlikely, but that's exactly what you'll find in Norman Brooks' seventh-grade art class.

The Simpsons are drawn on the chalkboard and comic books are neatly stacked on a table.

Brooks, a teacher at L.J. Schultz School, uses the cartoon and comic-book drawings as examples for his grid enlargement unit. Grid enlargement is similar to the process professional artists use when creating murals, Brooks said.

Art pupils at Schultz spend about five weeks plotting, drawing, and enlarging a picture of a comic-book or cartoon character.

Brandon Buttrey was finishing his enlargement last week.

"I like to collect comic cards and draw from those," Brandon said. "I've never drawn from comic books before, but I wanted to pick something simple."

So he chose to draw the Green Lantern super hero. Although the project involved extending the original picture to fit the enlargement, it wasn't hard, he said.

"It's easier because it's bigger than a card," Brandon said.

Brooks uses the comic-book characters to motivate the pupils.

"I'm not here to create artists; I help kids feel better about themselves and what they can achieve," Brooks said. "The projects are designed to help students succeed."

He knows firsthand about success and failure. As an elementary pupil, Brooks failed kindergarten and first grade. "I was just too interested in play," he said.

His life changed at 14, when he decided to go to college.

"I was sitting in study hall as a sophomore in high school, and it just hit me that I'd like to teach art in a school setting," Brooks said.

The rest is history, he said. Brooks has been teaching art for 30 years at Schultz.

"You don't learn by talking, you learn by doing," he said.

Brooks uses some of his own drawings to answer questions about creating colors and textures.

"I encourage them to experiment," he said. "They can copy exactly what they see or they can add to the drawings."

Students enjoy the project because they make all the decisions. It is often some of their most sophisticated artwork, Brooks said.

"This is the first year many of them have ever planned what to do on a project," he said.

Janet Smith admits the project was different from anything she's ever done.

"In elementary school we never practiced, we just grabbed a color," Janet said. "Now we try to get it as close to a color in real life as it can be."

She said she didn't enlarge a complicated comic-book character but chose a Christmas reindeer because she's "not very good."

"I try my best," Janet said. "I'm happy with the way it turned out. It's hard to get the right texture for a reindeer."

Janet selected the reindeer to help her get into the Christmas spirit.

"It's been fun even though Christmas is over," she said.

Amanda Kennedy surprised herself with the quality of her work. She chose to enlarge a comic-book drawing of Heathcliff, her favorite cartoon character.

"I teach them how to enlarge using things they can identify with," Brooks said. "When you draw a small sketch on a bigger scale, you can lose some of the spontaneity and freedom in the first little sketch."

Michael Chambers had trouble deciding how dark the colors should be in his enlargement of a cartoon rabbit until he examined it from six feet away.

"I didn't think I could draw it, but it's easier with the squares," Michael said.

When his picture is finished, Michael will give it to his brother-in-law.

"I'm going to get a picture frame for it," he said.

Each project in the one-semester art class introduces a new process of drawing.

"There are so many different ways you can draw, and I've only scratched the surface," Brooks said.

The final project is the enlargement. It is really a step-by-step process, Brooks said.

First, students use an acetate grid to transfer images to paper. Then they plot the lines onto an 11-by-17 grid. After plotting the lines and creating the larger image, they can finish by adding colors.

"You take each square separately and concentrate on one at a time," Brooks said. "If you look at the whole thing it's overpowering."

Some students like the challenge and others don't, but they all learn the same enlargement process, Brooks said.

"I want them to feel like seventh-grade art has been worthwhile, not a supervised play period," Brooks said.

Two of his pupils combined art and play when they chose their character. Daniel Turner and Rusty Dailey selected Boogerman, a character from a Sega Genesis game, for their enlargement.

"I draw X-men a lot and that gets old," said Daniel. "I looked at his and decided to do something different."

That difference is exactly what Brooks' tries to teach in his classroom. "Education is a process of learning your strengths and weaknesses," he said. "It's about feeling like you have some worth."