The Cool Substitute Teacher circa 1974 is an illustration that fell together as I was playing with shapes in the superlative vector art program Affinity Designer. I was hoping to come up with another monster for my collection of Halloween Heads, but instead I seem to be stuck in grades K through eight when I was either counting the days until vacation or praying for snow days. This chap sprang forth from my laptop during a snow day which I did not pray for. As the shapes and colors fell together, I thought of young, substitute teachers back in the day who had probably recently watched Conrack and thought it would be cool “…to, like, rap with the kids while earning some bread.” The kids doubtlessly liked Mister So-and-So who more than likely had an unpronounceable name so he insisted on being called by his first name. He didn’t stick to the lesson plan and smoked half a pack of Luckies during recess. Needless to say, he was not invited back to substitute, and like the Lone Ranger, we wondered if we would ever see him again. We missed Mister So-and-So who didn’t make us do anything. He didn’t judge. He didn’t make us read. He didn’t do anything beyond taking attendance.
Only a hundred sixty-seven days to go until summer vacation.
I only had one of those, and he was a physicist on sabbatical from TI… He let us blow stuff up!!!
This guy was fun, but not blowing stuff up fun!