Hey, darlin' - I remember when you could stop a clock!

I was reminded today of my old art teacher from high school, Mark Vanslyke (yes, he is related to former Cardinal Andy Vanslyke, which I always thought was cool).  Anyway, he's the track and field coach at East Newton high school down in southwest Missouri now, and a guy from my high school who works with Mark there posted a picture of him.  I never would have recognized him if I had just bumped into him on the road!  I guess in my mind I still had a picture of him from 20 years ago.  I figured I was the only one aging here - everyone else I know from back then still looks great - they look like themselves!  I just got fatter and more white headed! :-)

Mark was a great teacher.  I actually wish I would have taken more of an interest in art back then - listened more.  I mean I liked to draw, and that was really about it.  And most of my artwork was comprised of album covers from the heavy metal bands I listened to (there were some great covers, though, really!): I did Metallica's "Master Of Puppets" (not to be confused with "Master Of Puppies", or even "Pastor Of Muppets", mind you), also Metallica's "...And Justice For All" - I remember learning a lot about shading on that one.  I did a couple of Iron Maiden albums - "Live After Death" and "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son" (I did that one in colored pencil - I was pretty darned proud of it!).  I'll have to see if I can dig up any of these sometime and post 'em on here - I think they're in the basement somewhere. 

Anyway, one of my favorite projects that Mark had us do was called "Pink Houses" (he was a huge Mellencamp fan!).  For this project we were supposed to take any song and draw or paint a picture about it.  I would love to do this project now, actually.  Maybe I will. 

This is one of the instances, though, where I just knew it all - didn't need to take no stinkin' advice from anyone!  My song was Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven".  Yup, you guessed it: my drawing was a set of stairs going up into the clouds.  Way to put some thought into it, Captain Obvious.  :-/

Mark kept trying to get me to do something more interesting - to actually put some thought into it, but I was just stubborn, and thought that was what I wanted to do, and it would be cool enough.  Yeah, well, ya know - live and learn. 

Today's "little pink house" is for you, Mr. Vanslyke - hopefully you'll check out some of my newer artwork - lemme know whatcha think!