Jeff is a storyteller who works thru prose and pictures. As an illustrator and cartoonist his drawings need to
create a mood and tell a story right out of the gate. His quirky style works particularly well for this.
Reliable sources say that Jeff began drawing as soon as he could hold a pencil, and soon there were
stashes of pencils in cubby holes all over the house -just in case. Jeff would draw all the time. Strange
inventions and monsters were always favorites, and still are to this day. At the end of his first year in college
after he'd worked himself into a coma, literally, those who knew him were relieved when he woke up, and
asked for his drawing pad and pencils.
When Jeff was five years old, he was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes. The prognosis was that he would
not live past his 21st birthday, and if he managed to live that long, he would have gone blind and had his
legs amputated, cos that's just what happens to diabetics. Believe it or not, this kind of bedside manner has
an effect on a five year old, but we'll just leave it at that.
In high school Jeff met his friend Mark and started playing Dungeons & Dragons (his introduction into the
world of Role Playing Games -the magic of storytelling and creativity in action!), and music, and all kinds of
strange projects. Even though Mark now lives on the other side of the world, he and Jeff still talk often and
manage to work on projects here and there.
Jeff went to college at a little place in the trees called The Evergreen State College. He studied english, and
a little bit of art, and even earned college credit in vampirology. He got into the Teaching certification program
with an essay on a teacher's interpretion of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, and received his Masters Degree in
Teaching in 1993.
In order to pay the rent until he found a steady teaching job, he somehow found himself doing a lot of retail
management in places like video arcades, comic book and gaming shops, a bookstore, and managed to
teach drawing and cartooning on the side.
It wasn't until Jeff was 32 that his eyes started to fall apart. The next several years were filled with horrible
surgeries and long painful recovery periods. After each surgery he lost a bit more of his vision, but kept
working to relearn how to draw.
This is probably a good time to crack the code of the whole vision rating thing and explain just what this
"blind cartoonist" thing is all about.
For those of you who don't know about vision ratings, 20/20 is perfect vision. The first number, which is
always a 20, says how far you are from the subject you're looking at. The second number is how clear the
subject you're looking at appears. So 20/20 means that an object 20 feet away has the clarity of an object 20
feet away, it looks just how it's supposed to. 20/200 means that an object 20 feet away is distorted so much
it seems as if it's 200 feet away. At less than 20/200 vision they start using "Finger Tests" (holding fingers up
to see if you can count them or even tell they're fingers). At my last checkup my "good eye" was rated at 10
feet for the finger check. This qualifies me as well within the range of "legally blind". It also means that I walk
with a white cane and I'll probably never be able to drive a car again unless I get in a real mood and then,
LOOK OUT WORLD! Because my eye can't focus well I also don't have very good color recognition and I do a
lot of guesswork in that area of my drawings. I draw by strapping on super-duper magnifying lenses and
working about an inch away from the drawing surface. This is a very slow process, but I'm sitll in the race,
just me and the tortoise back here, but we're still chuggin' away.
Ok, So this Jeff guy is a visually impaired artist. What else does he have going on? He's taught a bit at TESC,
including subjects such as distopian literature, Shakespeare, Folklore (with a bit of magic thrown in for good
measure) and of course a drawing/cartooning lesson here and there.
The best thing in Jeff's life, and oh what a great thing she is, is Raquel. Somewhere along the line at that
little place in the trees, Jeff met and fell madly in love with Raquel. They were married one Hallowe'en and
Jeff's been actively "in love" every day of his life since.
create a mood and tell a story right out of the gate. His quirky style works particularly well for this.
Reliable sources say that Jeff began drawing as soon as he could hold a pencil, and soon there were
stashes of pencils in cubby holes all over the house -just in case. Jeff would draw all the time. Strange
inventions and monsters were always favorites, and still are to this day. At the end of his first year in college
after he'd worked himself into a coma, literally, those who knew him were relieved when he woke up, and
asked for his drawing pad and pencils.
When Jeff was five years old, he was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes. The prognosis was that he would
not live past his 21st birthday, and if he managed to live that long, he would have gone blind and had his
legs amputated, cos that's just what happens to diabetics. Believe it or not, this kind of bedside manner has
an effect on a five year old, but we'll just leave it at that.
In high school Jeff met his friend Mark and started playing Dungeons & Dragons (his introduction into the
world of Role Playing Games -the magic of storytelling and creativity in action!), and music, and all kinds of
strange projects. Even though Mark now lives on the other side of the world, he and Jeff still talk often and
manage to work on projects here and there.
Jeff went to college at a little place in the trees called The Evergreen State College. He studied english, and
a little bit of art, and even earned college credit in vampirology. He got into the Teaching certification program
with an essay on a teacher's interpretion of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, and received his Masters Degree in
Teaching in 1993.
In order to pay the rent until he found a steady teaching job, he somehow found himself doing a lot of retail
management in places like video arcades, comic book and gaming shops, a bookstore, and managed to
teach drawing and cartooning on the side.
It wasn't until Jeff was 32 that his eyes started to fall apart. The next several years were filled with horrible
surgeries and long painful recovery periods. After each surgery he lost a bit more of his vision, but kept
working to relearn how to draw.
This is probably a good time to crack the code of the whole vision rating thing and explain just what this
"blind cartoonist" thing is all about.
For those of you who don't know about vision ratings, 20/20 is perfect vision. The first number, which is
always a 20, says how far you are from the subject you're looking at. The second number is how clear the
subject you're looking at appears. So 20/20 means that an object 20 feet away has the clarity of an object 20
feet away, it looks just how it's supposed to. 20/200 means that an object 20 feet away is distorted so much
it seems as if it's 200 feet away. At less than 20/200 vision they start using "Finger Tests" (holding fingers up
to see if you can count them or even tell they're fingers). At my last checkup my "good eye" was rated at 10
feet for the finger check. This qualifies me as well within the range of "legally blind". It also means that I walk
with a white cane and I'll probably never be able to drive a car again unless I get in a real mood and then,
LOOK OUT WORLD! Because my eye can't focus well I also don't have very good color recognition and I do a
lot of guesswork in that area of my drawings. I draw by strapping on super-duper magnifying lenses and
working about an inch away from the drawing surface. This is a very slow process, but I'm sitll in the race,
just me and the tortoise back here, but we're still chuggin' away.
Ok, So this Jeff guy is a visually impaired artist. What else does he have going on? He's taught a bit at TESC,
including subjects such as distopian literature, Shakespeare, Folklore (with a bit of magic thrown in for good
measure) and of course a drawing/cartooning lesson here and there.
The best thing in Jeff's life, and oh what a great thing she is, is Raquel. Somewhere along the line at that
little place in the trees, Jeff met and fell madly in love with Raquel. They were married one Hallowe'en and
Jeff's been actively "in love" every day of his life since.
| ©2007-2010 Jeff Freels - All rights reserved. |
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