Art

From the time he was a small child until he was in middle school, Stamps drew hundreds and hundreds of drawings. Most of those drawings have not survived, and of those that have most are not good enough to post on the Internet. Many would argue even these posted here should not be, and I'm not sure I would disagree. Nevertheless, here are a few of his artistic attempts. Unfortunately, due to things such as school and work taking up all his time, he has not drawn much of anything in years and have lost most of his drawing skill.
These are experiments in geometry, trying to understand why the Four Color Theorem is true. 1995.
"28M" as in Maze 28. In his early childhood Stamps became obsessed with non-representational art, especially mazes. He drew scores and scores of mazes just to draw them. Sadly, pencil is not the best medium in the world, and he never went on to develop his artistic ability into other styles of drawing such as his long time wish to draw anthropomorphics.
31M, like the previous drawing, this is another in a series of mazes he started to draw in 1985. This series of mazes ended up numbering about 70 or so but by no means includes all the mazes he ever drew.
46M. Mazes such as 31M and 46M are not conventional style mazes. Rather than a simple system of winding paths, these "mazes" feature weapons, monsters, traps, etc. Several children at school got into drawing these mazes, which they saw as a kind of written video game.
47M
51M; a small maze based on the design of a postage stamp (imagine that).
55M
56M
Yet another maze. This one was drawn outside of the series of mazes of which a few are shown above.
What? Another maze?!
Stamps drew this ship in the sixth grade for a report on Magellan. He took a much larger wall decoration and sat on a swing outside in the backyard, sketching it detail for detail. I have heard that the decoration he used for the model of the drawing was actually taken from some painting, but I have no clue what painting.
Mr. Zeagler in seventh grade had the art class draw these perspective drawings over and over again, and Stamps got caught in this cycle of drawing these pictures with that same panorama.
The same style of perspective art as the previous drawing. Stamps was insulted by the simplicity of art education given in school--like he didn't already know how to draw in perspective.
The same view as the two previous drawings, this one an abstract.
Computer generated art of the same view as above. This was drawn on an old 386.
Computer art similar to the previous work.
More computer art, still drawn on the same old 386.
A design for a flag minus stars which were included in the actual flag. 1992.
"Filosofo." Stamps must have been very bored to draw this.
While vacationing in Colorado back about 1986, Stamps met a deaf cousin who showed him how to draw a simple compass rose. His young art skills were highly influenced by the newfound knowledge of how to draw perspective in this fashion.
The outer web design he traced off of a poster of geometric designs in high school and filled in the rest with highly symbolic characters. The three pairs of opposing webs which meet in the middle represent opposites; good and evil, reality and imagination, and past and present.
A family coat of arms he was required to create for a middle school homework assignment.
The basic layout of a harbor of a fictional city; one of many that Stamps created.
Stamps drew this picture of the Bloom County comic character Bill D. Catt on his high school binder. When the binder became old, he copied the art on it before throwing it away.
"Triceratops." A detail only from a much larger illustration for a sixth grade report on dinosaurs.
This is one of my favourite drawings. It is very indicative of his one tone, two-dimensional, nonrepresentational art.
This drawing is a kind of sequel to the previous piece.
Another "sequel" drawing to the two above. All drawn circa 1991, he must have been in a drawing mood. This piece was never finished.
This is actually an emblem poem Stamps wrote and drew January 24-26, 2000, entitled "WALLS."