Potatoes, Cats & Trumps - new comics by kids

This week has been a bumper time for Comic Art Masterclasses and for travelling. Saturday saw me doing two classes at Strule Arts Centre in Omagh doing two sellout classes that produced these wonderful comics you see before me. It's great to be able to fly to these various destinations and to know that, with a combination of hire cars and guest houses - and by flying Friday night and returning Sunday - I can get anywhere within reason. Bring on those international trips I say.

No sooner had I returned from Northern Ireland than I was back on the plane, Monday morning, to Glasgow airport and then to St Bernadettes Primary in Stenhousemuir, where the two classes (the second of which was in fact Primary 6, which I accidentally labelled on their cover as Primary 5, because P6 is the equivalent of the English year 5 and... whatever) had a common theme on their minds. Sigh. Still, always fun to do a Trump drawing, and to add to the vast library of Trump covers that's been building up.

In an unlikely coup of scheduling, I managed to get two days in a row close to each other, spending Tuesday at Victoria Primary in Falkirk. Their covers, both by Primary 6, were food related fun.

Furze Down School in Buckinghamshire is a Special Needs school, and it's a bit of a triumph for me being able to make my class work with kids of all abilities. As with every other group, everyone produced a comic strip page and went away with the A5 photocopied comic containing all of their strips and their individual caricatures.

Another oddity, which I do occasionally, is a Comic Art Masterclass at a party, in this case a 9 year old's birthday party at a church hall in Potters Bar. It's a little harder to keep the kids focussed sometimes, especially if they weren't expecting this as their entertainment, but by golly it worked, and 15 8 and 9 year old girls make a grand comic (and birthday girl went home with the flipchart drawing, as you can see).

The celebrities these nine groups chose for my demonstration strip were Donald Trump (twice), Kim Kardashian, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, Michelle Obama, Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg and (very much fallen from popularity this year, but hanging in there) Simon Cowell.

Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing and drawing for The Beano, Marvel, Doctor Who et al, runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries and art centres - email for details, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. View the promo video here.