Mr. Brushwood

In High School, I had two art teachers - Mr. Brushwood (yes, what a perfect name for an art teacher) and Mr. King, which fit him too. I felt that he believed he was God's gift to mankind. More on him later though. I really liked Mr. Brushwood. Unfortunately, in our high school, art was where you put the potential dropouts and people who couldn't handle anything too terribly academic. Then, there were 3-4 of us who sat at one table and actually did art. The rest of the class goofed off, got in trouble, and made life difficult for Mr. Brushwood and those of us who wanted to learn how to do art.  One time, I was doing a very intricate drawing of a seashell - a very fragile shell - and a boy in the class picked it up and threw it for no reason. It broke. I had to try to glue it back together to finish my drawing. I did manage to finish it before the shell fell apart. It is one of my favorites from school.

Mr. Brushwood actually taught me quite a bit and let me try various mediums. He was very patient with me - sometimes I was a bit stubborn. For example - this drawing here:

I think this might have been one of the first drawings of people that I did (it was done in April of 1988). I know it was the first one I liked. It came from an ad in a magazine - send 5 cents a day to help this poor starving child.  I drew the picture and signed it and told Mr. Brushwood that I was done. Well, he said that I did a good job, but that I needed to put some kind of background, or at least A ground for her to stand on. Otherwise she was just floating in the air. Nope. I wouldn't do it. Now I know that he was right and why he was trying to teach me this concept, but at the time I would not draw one more single line on this drawing. I argued with him a lot over this silly drawing. It seems so dumb now, but I was SO scared that if I added anything to this, I would surely ruin it, and I really liked it the way it was, so I stubbornly refused to do anything to it. I still laugh when I look at this drawing. What is even more stupid is that I covered it with contact paper "to preserve it" which made it turn yellow and now nothing at all could be added to it, even if I wanted to. I covered a few drawings with contact paper, much to my teacher's horror (and mine now). But, I didn't know about fixative and other forms or preservation, so that seemed like the best thing to do. My shell drawing is covered, but with it is a fingerprint that I didn't see in time (you can't see it in the above photo, but you can probably see the glare). I didn't cover any more after that. :)

I am glad I had Mr. Brushwood as a teacher though. Especially when, later, I ended up with Mr. King. He wasn't as helpful to me, which made me appreciate Mr. Brushwood even more.