Dead Smurf Illustration

...was to draw a cute animal. Our instructor Floyd Covert felt we were only drawing stuff we liked. His long-term plan was to have us show the cute stuff to potential clients in the summer, then have real-world stories to tell the next Fall.

As you can see, I wasn't in a cute mood that semester. This probably had more to do with the Dostoevsky-like flophouse I was living in at the time than anything else. Anyway, we had to use photo reference. I found an old issue of Scientific Monthly. In it was a photo story of Rhino Rats. The photo I chose as a reference was the most disgusting one in the bunch. The skin was pale and looked like intestines.

I also decided to use crosshatch pen-and-ink. Covering one inch at a time took forever. It must've looked like time-lapse photography to see a little bit more inking done to it every week. I worked from left to right, top to bottom. When the top third inked, I found out about the Smurfs Saturday morning cartoon. Trying to pass this off as a social statement, I quickly penciled the Smurf and inked it.

You'd think this was right up Mr. Covert's alley, but he was surprisingly appalled. The exact word he used was "sophomoric". One of the biggest laughs I ever got out of my classmates was reminding him that (a) this was a sophomore class and that (b) if I can't do this now, then when?

Mr. Covert eventually relented, eager to move the class along (did he ever teach more than 30 minute classes?) The Smurf blue and bloodstains were his ideas. After all that drama, the drawing earned an A-, and is currently living in Paris.

Dave Marshall, buried alive under the rubble of the school the tore down to build the old school