Educational Materials

My doctoral dissertation, Adapting the Graphic Novel Format for

Undergraduate Level Textbooks, was selected by the National Art

Education Association (NAEA) as the 2014 Elliot Eisner Doctoral

Research Award in Art Education Runner-Up. This is the

12-page concluding chapter from that dissertation.
My full Dissertation Blog can be viewed HERE.

The iPad was created in Photoshop, and the graphics are a

combination of traditional and digital mediums that conforms

to the dimensions of the tablet. Although most of the art was

digitally colored, my shirt and jeans were scanned (sampled)

from my own clothing as a form of personal inclusion.

At the bottom of this section are two additional educational

graphics that were created to show how it is possible to

distill complex ideas into stimulating visuals.

At The Ohio State University, one of the required courses for all graduate students in
Arts Administration, Education and Policy is Introduction to Qualitative Research in
Education (EdP&L 800). “Central objectives include formulating criteria by which to 
evaluate postpositivist research in the human sciences and gaining an understanding 
of the socio-intellectual context within which such research is conducted” (Lather, P.). 
It is an information-dense class. I created this poster in order to show how the various 
Methodologies used for Qualitative Analysis could be formatted into a visual display
incorporating panels from the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. My intention
was to make learning fun by using simple, humorous panels as visual cues for teaching 

larger concepts. The use of Woodstock as a representation of the fluid nature of these 
concepts across ideological boundaries came to me in an "Aha!" moment during the
design phase of this project.

Created for my doctoral dissertation, this Pedagogical Family Tree explores teacher-student 

relationships and the interconnected roots of Fine Art and Illustration.

This graphic will appear in the History of Illustration (Fairchild Books/Bloomsbury, 2018).

In May 2006, I conducted a PowerPoint presentation of Leonardo da Vinci's Narrative Madonnas. Here is a sample of slides from that presentation that contained a "discovery" I made while comparing three of Leonardo's paintings (the two versions of Virgin of the Rocks, and The Last Supper). I say "discovery" because I am not a Leonardo scholar and was not able to find any previous mention of my finding. However, I also did not have access to Italian sources, so my search was limited. I have placed my narrative text on the slides strictly for this display.

Many people tend to look for mysteries and hidden "codes," but most artists are just trying to get the work done on time. Using/reusing what they know "works" is a short cut to making those deadlines. Even Renaissance artists had to complete their commissions if they wanted to get paid, which is something both Art Historians and Conspiracy Theorists tend to forget.

This was another sequence in my Before the Brush presentation that looked at Leonardo as a compositionalist. Once you map out Leonardo's perspective (Slide #2) and sight lines (Slide #3) you can see how he controls/directs the eye (Slide #4). The red line in Slide #2 is the horizon line, yellows lines are for his one-point perspective, and the blue lines divide the painting into four equal sections. Because I was working with a copy and not the original, the vertical blue line appears just right of the Vanishing Point. However, if I were to measure the original canvas I believe those two lines would intersect.