LG Pinkston High School

Yesterday I worked live for LGP High in Dallas, for their professional development day. It was the day all their teachers returned from summer break (and the first day for all the new staff). LGP's principle, James Colbert, had seen me perform over a year ago and remembered me and found me when he wanted to do something special this year.

Another facilitator, Terry Stone, already had a strong design for the meeting and allowed me to work within that- drawing live, teaching graphic modeling, and just helping make the day more creative and fun.

Previous years had days like this that were just all the teachers sitting in a room and being lectured at- all day long. This one was filled with laughter and movement and creativity. Many teachers told us it was their favorite professional development day ever.

One neat highlight is the last image above. I had hoped to try and fit in time for a really nice image that highlighted the main points of the day. I had brought some posterboard for it, but when I started I really wanted to do something softer than the markers I brought would allow. I cursed myself for not bringing my colored pencil set, when I realized Terry, the other facilitator, had brought boxes of 24 count crayola crayons. There were among the candy and trinkets she had put all over the tables as fun stuff. Man I hadn't worked with crayon for years. It's actually a really good medium- a lot of fine artists use them. They allow you to shade softly from dark to light, and they mix a bit too. You can get cool effects with them.

The piece came out great. The staff loved it and wants to frame it.

There were several inquiries for more work. Since I'm interested in doing more with schools, and since I already know and like several of the staff at Pinkston, I'm going to try and build a relationship with this school. I've offered to do a few freebie drawings for the staff and I've talked with the principal about future meetings and events, including coming in and talking to students.