TodayAging car gets a little spongey
Ryan Cooper and his daughter, Breanna, make over his ’92 Dodge with some fun cartoon characters.
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Breanna Cooper’s makeover of the 1992 Dodge Shadow her dad, Ryan, drives involved characters from Nickelodean’s “SpongeBob SquarePants” show, including from left, Gary the snail, Squidward Tentacles, Sheldon J. Plankton and SpongeBob SquarePants. (Submitted photo)
Ryan Cooper has driven his 1992 Dodge Shadow for 12 years and the odometer shows 178,000 miles. Primer peeks through a dozen places where the paint has flaked away. The rest of the paint job is dull and weather-beaten.
The car is showing its age.
But, Cooper says, the bluish-green car is taking on star quality since his 11-year-old daughter Breanna made it an art class project.
Her project earned her a 100 percent grade. The brightly colored painting on the hood of the car features SpongeBob Square Pants, his pal Squidward and other characters from the Nickelodeon cartoon.
“I drive it to work every day,” Cooper says, “and someone or another makes a comment about almost every day. People who see it say they like it.”
Breanna says she has plans for the rest of the car that include Patrick Star — the starfish from the SpongeBob cartoon — and Mario Kart illustrations on the side.
Mario Karts are Nintendo racing games spun off the original Super Mario theme.
Breanna says her dad even offered a suggestion for the driver’s door.
“He said paint the bottom half of a man, so he would look like the top half of the man when he’s driving the car,” she says.
Breanna says she decided to plaster Spongebob on the car for several important reasons.
“The car needed painted, Mom said it was OK to draw on it, and I can’t do human portraits,” she explains.
Her mom, Melinda, says the entire project took about two-and-a-half weeks — much of that dedicated to sanding down the old paint, a job done by Dad.
The young artist says she sketched the characters in chalk and outlined them in black before applying the paint and finishing it with a seal coat.
Denise Simmers, Breanna’a art teacher at the Shippensburg Area Middle School, says she has never seen a project like Breanna’s in her 19 years in the classroom at SAMS.
“The actual assignment was just a simple pencil sketch on thin expensive paper,” Simmers says. “Breanna asked if she could this. When she asked when her parents could drive the car in for me to see, I said just photos of the car would be enough.”
According to Simmers, Breanna’s project was the elective portion of a required assignment that also calls for a landscape, an abstract, a portrait and a still life.
Simmers says her assignments in the class are designed to stimulate what may be hidden artistic talents.
“The assignments promote drawing outside the classroom,” she says. “Many students don’t realize how much they may enjoy drawing, so this forces them to do. They may find out that they really don’t like to draw, or they may find they really enjoy it.”
