Here is my last project for the 2023-2024 school year and also the final project of my thirty-year career: pencil-only portrait drawings of teachers on Arches drawing paper by my eighth grade Studio in Art students (at Chittenango Middle School, Chittenango, New York).

I’d displayed the drawings on the magnetic wall boards in my classroom because the hallway walls were getting slippery from the humidity of the not air-conditioned school in the middle of June.

Students were taught how to place and measure the facial features. We used 2H pencils for the contour line drawings.

Shading was done with 2B pencils. The trick is to shade the entire face with a light shade. While dealing with that medium value, students were able to erase with a kneaded eraser to get the highlights then use pressure to get their darks dark. Except for the ones who didn’t want to.

I am grateful to those students because I did what I could to educate them. Their refusal helped convince me that I made the right decision to retire. I never thought I would be anything less than youthful, but I guess I must admit I am of a different generation and the gap just started to feel incredibly vast – kids these days, am I right???

Good-bye, yellow brick road.

And thanks, for the memories. It’s all just a dream to me now.