Gene Hamilton
- Web Site:
- http://quickdrawcartoons.com
- Email:
- gino@quickdrawcartoons.com
Gene Hamilton
Gene Hamilton presents cartooning workshops and utilizes simple shapes while teaching drawing basics and the art of cartooning so kids of all skill and age levels can successfully participate. He also teaches a series on how to create illustrated stories featuring the combined use of watercolor, pencil drawing, and fictional story-telling.
Hamilton's integration of individual creativity and group spontaneity results in learning new drawing and creative thinking skills with a comfortable level of differentiation so all students, regardless of existing talent or skill, can easily participate.
One topic in Hamilton's cartooning course is "The Cartoon Skeleton," where logical body movements and part relationships are drawn, discussed, and demonstrated, so kids can more logically draw human cartoon figures, as well as hands and feet.
In his "Illustrated Stories" series, Hamilton has the pupils prepare preliminary stories, then proof-reads them and suggests how to illustrate them. Word choices and sentence fluency are important in these stories, just as important as the accompanying story illustrations.
Hamilton provides a fun range of integrated units to each workshop to challenge each pupil while holding their creative interest and having fun with everyone.
Des Moines artist and actor Gene Hamilton explores an aspect of his past for a new body of paintings titled “Vent Figure Fun” at Chicago’s Packer Schopf Gallery. These portraits of ventriloquist dummies draw on Hamilton’s stint as a ventriloquist. In 1995 Hamilton produced a public-access sketch comedy show called “The Art Roamer Round-up.” The show starred Hamilton as Art Roamer and a ventriloquist dummy from the 1920s era as Art’s son, Woody Roamer. While Hamilton lost interest in performing ventriloquist acts, the imagery of the puppets has stayed with him. “I love the visual look of ventriloquist dummies,” he says. “As a kid I loved Paul Winchell and his TV show ‘Winchell-Mahoney Time,’ featuring his famous dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff.”
The opening for “Vent Figure Fun” at the Packer Schopf Gallery (942 W. Lake Ave., Chicago, www.packergallery.com) is 5-8 p.m. Jan. 8, 2010. The show will continue through Feb. 13, 2010. This August Hamilton’s portraits and works by Okoboji artist Mari Steward will be shown at the Witter Gallery in Storm Lake, Iowa.