State of undress

Well, this one might not make it to an actual hard copy page in the DCN. I've gone back and forth about it a few times since sketching it up over the weekend.

The situation at Tallahassee Classical School has caught plenty of attention over the last week or so. News reports said a school principal was essentially given an ultimatum – resign or be fired – after the school received three complaints that students in an art class had been shown several images of Renaissance work, including Michelangelo's famed statue of David, which depict nude figures. And one of the parents evidently felt the material was pornographic. The principal had evidently failed to inform parents of the lesson plan and the art instructor apparently didn't confirm whether the notices were sent out as requested, but other school officials say the principal's forced resignation wasn't solely based on the issue of classical artwork – as in classical school, I might add.

None of the quotes I've read from the school board chairman give any other reasons for the ultimatum, just that there were others, but he's also said the former principal falsely claimed her dismissal was about the David in order to cast a shadow on the school. Make of that what you will.

Now, to be frank, my mother had a book full of photos depicting Michelangelo's work. Ironically, I was the kind of kid who liked to lay on my stomach on the living room floor and draw, so I needed a hard surface to put under my paper, and mom always let me use that book. So, eventually, I realized it was a book about an actual artist, and I looked inside – and I was much younger than the kids in the art class at Tallahassee Classical. I not only saw the David, I saw the Pieta, the tomb of Lorenzo Di Medici, Michelangelo's unfinished "Prisoners," his sculpture of Moses (sporting mistranslated horns and all) and let's not forget his well-known paintings in the Sistine Chapel.

And I can tell you now that the value in such work is that one gains understanding of how the human form plays into any figurative artwork, whether the subject is clothed or not – or to put it another way, Michelangelo was so good that his work can stand on its own centuries later as a great example for instructing art students.

Of course, I'd imagine there are some who would argue their child isn't interested in art and therefore such subject matter should be optional. But I don't believe that's how education works and, having a father who taught high school for more than a quarter-century and a mother who worked for the school's curriculum coordinator, I think I understand public education a little better than most. So let me be clear.

Public education exists to teach students as much as possible in order to successful in life – not just what the student (or their parents for that matter) believe they'll need to know. I mean, gosh, if we only needed to know what our parents knew, there'd be no point in classroom education at all – children would simply observe what's always been done, duplicate that and things would never change.

I mean, the very name of the Renaissance Period is a reference to the rediscovery of old techniques and the improvements that came from that. And to label artwork from that time as pornographic – or to dismiss a school administrator because some deem it so – closes the door on future growth for tomorrow's students.

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It was a little cathartic for me to do a quick study of a classical piece again. It's something I haven't done in years. It's actually in my sketch book upside down just so my drawing hand didn't have to contend with the binding, and I think that made the experience more enjoyable.

Somewhat ironically, I've fallen victim to one of the classic blunders (not involving a land war in Asia or a Sicilian when death is on the line), and my depiction of Michelangelo's David isn't quite proportioned the same way as the sculpture. That's because the sculpture itself, despite being one of the paragons of figurative work, is itself out of proportion – it's head too small, it's arms too long. We were told in college that the reason for this was because the statue was originally to be installed on the roof of the Duomo in Florence – possibly the first of several sculptures depicting biblical figures a top the cathedral, as I recall. As such, Michelangelo actually proportioned the sculpture so it would appear more correct to viewers on the ground.

Of course the sculpture wasn't ultimately placed on the cathedral's roof, so many a trained art student instinctively draws the David with more correct proportions. Nonetheless, the pose is so iconic that it serves its purpose for the cartoon.

I'll toot my own horn a little bit here, and note that I took a little different approach to shading in my sketch, which not only gave the drawing more depth but informed my design decisions in finishing the cartoon. I don't usually draw in the edges of major shadows, but I did this time, which helped guide my hatching. The combination then gave me two distinct ways to render the form, which I was quite satisfied with.

But when I started doing the work digitally, it lost something – initially anyway. I've always felt preparatory sketches hold so much more energy than refined finished works, and this was no exception. Luckily I didn't let that go this time as I have in the past, and I changed some settings to make a custom brush which very much imitated the roughness of the graphite marks in my sketchbook. It's actually the closet I've ever felt to analog work while using my tablet (and to be up front, I do these digitally from hard copy sketches just for the sake of easy reproduction in the paper).

Of course, the "punch line" of the piece is the covering of the statue's groin with one of the most phallicly-shaped states in the union. Originally, it was going to just be slapped on there flush for added contrast, but there was an issue with what we call tangential lines – when two shapes' edges touch in such as way the relative depth isn't clear to the viewer. So it was put at an angle, which opened the door for the state's panhandle to pass behind the statue's forearm.

Florida was naturally going to be red in the color version, so the rest of the composition was made blue for contrast, and because blue works well in lighter tones to convey stone material such as marble – again the result was somewhat like working on actual toned paper, but that might have just been my excitement over the textured brush carrying over into the color side of things.

In total, this piece probably took about four hours and some change to complete.

Thanks for reading.