Friday Freebie: Deaf and Hard of Hearing Characters

 As a Teacher, I don't always have the resources need to work with my students. Some of the mainstream activities work with my students while some activities need to be modified to cater to my student specific needs. In this case, it's best to create my own.

Last year, an idea struck me one day when I had a student playing Guess Who? with me. As we played, my thoughts wandered to how most of the characters were guys with a few females thrown in. You had glasses, hats, blonde hair, brown hair, etc.

But what about my students? Where is their representation?

I started thinking more and more. 

I grabbed my sketchbook and started trying out new ideas. 

Now don't get me wrong I've never been "real big" in art. Most of my rough sketching over the years have been ideas for projects like laying out a scrapbook page.

Since I have always been better at drawing animals than people, I steered my focus that way to start me off.

I took inspiration from images of animals and glancing at a pile of regular shapes. The jellyfish was one of my first images and one of my favorites. I thought to myself 'Well, ASL is only one representation. What else can I do?'

So back to the sketchbook.

Adding hearing aids and other devices to animals turned out to be easier than I thought it would. Over time, I branched to different animals. Some animals I added glasses, some animals I had signing, and other animals I got a little more creative. In one sketch, I drew an owl taking a hearing test!

Next Steps…

Once the sketches were done, I started deciding how to add color. I'm a decent sketcher, but coloring has never been a strong suit. I took a few test images and started coloring on the iPad.

I have to say I was honestly surprised with how well the work came out.

I would share the app I used to color the scanned image, but I am honestly drawing a blank. Plus I know the app I'm using now is definitely not the app I was using.

Naturally, after completing my work with the animals, I had to move on to people.

People took a lot more trial and error. "Regular" people are hard to draw, but cartoon people can be a bit easier.

I found that the hardest part was adding in the hearing devices. Faces are hard to sketch with ears being the most difficult. At least, ears and hair are the hardest parts for me.

While the animals were modeled after some of my favorite animals and some of the easiest animals to draw, I sketched people as their faces came to my mind.

Once I started finishing the overall drawings, I shared my images with my students. I received nothing, but positive feedback from them.

The only question left was...

What do I do with these now?

I wanted to do a game or activity similar to Guess Who? I started designing different ideas on the computer and comparing what looked nice and what didn’t. I started with a black and white look with just blocks of pictures in it. The image seemed more like a twisted version of Snakes and Ladders without the snakes and ladders.

I finally designed a FM like background with squares of pictures of my different characters. I placed numbers at the top and varied the animals on each sheet. I added it to my Teachers Pay Teachers account and have shared it for free with others.

If you are interested in downloading the final versions for free, follow the links below to my Teachers Pay Teachers store, The Signing Itinerant.

Guess Who - People Version

Guess Who - Animal Version