Artist brings comics to the classroom

WASILLA — Friday morning in Susan Hocker’s second-grade class at Tanaina Elementary, Dimi Macheras stood drawing a cartoon bird on a smartboard.

“If you want to learn how to draw, you’re going to have to learn things aren’t always flat,” he tells the kids as he launches into a demonstration of three-dimensional drawing.

The students follow along with their own pencils and paper. Macheras makes sure to tell them it’s OK if theirs don’t look like his. In fact, it’s better.

“You should have your own unique version,” he says.

He also sprinkled in advice: “The more you practice at it, the better you’ll get.”

And anecdotes: “I could never understand how he could make them look like that,” he said of a cousin who learned how to draw in 3-D before he did.

Macheras, raised in Chickaloon but now based in Seattle, has been touring the state as part of the Spirit of Alaska reading program. The book he’s touring the schools behind, “Strong Man,” is a work he collaborated on with Juneau storyteller Ishamael Hope to create.

Macheras said it’s based on a traditional Tlingit story. Hope and Macheras gave it a modern twist, with the hero — an outcast teen looking to overcome obstacles and gain strength — struggling with things like basketball tryouts.

Macheras has also illustrated work for the Chickaloon Tribe, including language instruction materials. He collaborated with his mom, Patricia Wade, on “Luk’ae,” a graphic novel about the life of a salmon. One of his recent projects was illustrating one of the stories contained in a graphic novel collection of Native American stories called “Trickster.” The book has been widely distributed and, Macheras said, received positive reaction.

Macheras has been to Colony Middle School, Tanaina, Kodiak High School and Kodiak Jr. High School. Next stop is Sitka.

His presentation focuses on the work he’s done, showing kids his work as an illustrator and how he’s harnessed the web to come up with good, interesting projects to work on.

“I just kind of worked something up for this particular visit where I put a collection of a lot of my artwork together kind of in order,” Macheras said. “It helps to maybe encourage kids who are into artwork who a lot of times tend to be self-conscious about their own artwork or feel they’re not as good as they maybe want to be.”

At Tanaina, he added a little more of the interactive to his presentation. But, he said he’d love to try that sort of thing with older kids as well.

At times Friday, he paused to take requests for what the students wanted to draw. After a couple dozen requests he showed the kids how to draw a ninja turtle. He also showed them a robot he likes to draw.

Macheras said he’s had a lot of fun on these school visits and the kids seem to have, too.

“I think talking with students about fun things like comic books and graphic illustration and stuff like that keeps their attention,” he said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.