DAY 14 - Back to the Drawing Board, A Viking!

 

Back in junior high school, I had this friend named Denny. He was tall, a little over six feet, with brown hair and glasses. If I remember right, his family owned a farm not far from our district high school (Canton Local Schools, Canton, Ohio).
Denny was really smart but I best remember Denny for reasons other than his exceptional intelligence.

He had a hilarious sense of humor. Making people laugh came second nature to him. He could run. And lastly, he loved to draw, especially unusual-looking cartoon characters; characters that were funny, exaggerated, and more caricature and invention than true-to-life.
Denny got recruited in junior high for the ninth-grade track team. Since I also liked to run (and loved the dry heaves) he turned me in. I became a runner too.
Even running, Denny was a jokester. One night after practice, I walked into the locker room just in time to catch him DRAWING one of his famous figures in the lower right corner of the football team’s chalkboard. It was a funny character and not at all inappropriate. Our track coach was also the ninth-grade football coach. He also taught junior high gym class -- all grades. He was someone who didn't mind the occasional joke now and then. But he did not like anything that might be interpreted as junior high silliness. So when I came into the locker room and saw Denny drawing on the coach's board, I laughed and panicked at the same time.
“Oh, no!" I thought. "The coach will be coming off the track at any time. Denny is a dead man and since I’m in here, I could be a dead man, too!" I stuffed my clothes into my gym bag. We headed out the door leaving the "joke" behind.
It's funny now but that track moment actually turned out to be a turning point for me. Denny could “see” and communicate humor in art. I on the other hand had trouble doing that. I was artistic, on course to becoming a high school art major, and I was leaning toward art school after graduation. But I was too serious when it came to actual drawing. Without knowing he was doing it, Denny inspired me with his take on art to look for humor in people and situations. Not long afterward, I dropped my pencils, picked up markers, and started cartooning. The first full cartoon figure I created was a tribute to the kind of work Denny did. Coming out of my interest in the medieval, it was a Viking, much like the one here.
Most of my efforts then were really just that: efforts. Cartooning is still not my forte. But this cartoon, good or bad, has meaning for me. It's a memory and a tribute to my friend. I think that's what matters most.