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People, 2016

Artwork by Kot Bonkers

Black History Month!

2017 note: Hey, guys.  With Black History Month just around the corner, I wanted to repost this so that teachers have a chance to print the (FREE) poster before February so that it can be used as a classroom resource if anyone feels like it might be worthwhile to have on hand.  Let your teacher pals know! 2016 edit: a lot of teachers and librarians asked if there was a poster for this that they could buy.  Nope!  This post was made as an educational aid and teachers oughtn’t have to pay anything to get it in their classroom.  So here’s a link to download the poster’s print file to print it yourself: https://gumroad.com/l/Exvau I did include the series in my recent art book 555 Character Drawings, so if you want it in a book with a lot of other stuff, that’s available, too. http://crogan.bigcartel.com/product/555-character-drawings-preorders

My favorite parts of history (as might be obvious from my choice of subject matter when making books) are the ones that fall into easily-categorized genres, genres with associated visual iconographies. This is the sort of stuff I loved as a kid: pirates, knights, cowboys, explorers, romans and Egyptians and flying aces. Stuff you could find featured in a bag of toys or a generic costume. For Black History Month, I thought I might visit some of these adventure-leaning periods and pick a few historic black people from those eras to draw, just for fun. If you’re doing a project or report in school this month, you could do worse than to tackle one of these toughies.  Feel free to share some of these with youngsters that you know.  And call them youngsters, they LOVE that.

(longer write-ups under the break)