Masterclass - a little bit of detail

To be honest, in most of my Comic Art Masterclasses there isn't a lot of opportunity to go into details with the pupils and their work. I work with quite large groups, only for a couple of hours, so I do a lot of demonstrating from the flipchart, but only a little bit of helping the kids out individually. And inevitably, given the size and mixed ability of many of my groups, there's sometimes more effort goes into crowd control and attention-grabbing than in going into detail on how each kids work could be improved.

So this week's day long class at Backwell was a treat. Not only was it a small group of only 17 pupils, but they were all interested in the subject. (There is nothing as dispiriting as a kid who's ended up doing your class against their will. None of those today.) Which meant I was able to answer their questions about how to draw things, and tackle a few challenges. For those of us who write and draw comics all the time, these things might seem obvious, even cliches. But to year 7 and 8 pupils who are just getting into their manga and comics drawing, I like to think it was invaluable.

Above, for example, I rather went to town on the challenge of showing a giant chicken attacking a city. I'm rather pleased with how the perspective turned out - remember I'm drawing this quickly, on the hoof, while talking to a class full of kids, doing most of it straight on with pen. This sort of thing can go very wrong very quickly. The biplane and the chicken, from the kids suggestion, are googled on my phone, and I demonstrate how working from reference can look good and be done quickly.

This flipchart page contains a few different strip examples, based on idea the kids were struggling with. We can see someone being woken by an alarm clock, a day divided up around a clock face, someone discovering they've missed their plane, a motorbike race from the commentators box to a cutaway from a crash, and a half-man half-cat ordering a drink at a bar. Well, they seemed to work at the time.

Crowd scenes are always good to help kids with. The pupil who prompted the top sketch had drawn a crowd scene which was just a grid of 100 equally sized stick figures. I showed him how a few lines of people with perspective could show the scale of the crowd, without needing too much actual detail. The second picture was the classic "audience watching a stage", which came out nicely despite being drawn straight on in fat felt tip.

And these doodles, while less impressive, are nice examples of how kids struggle to bring things to life, which can be easy to demonstrate. They are someone opening a door, a TV news broadcast going on the fritz and, possibly less often needed, someone swinging through a forest on their hair.

Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing and drawing for The Beano, Marvel, Doctor Who et al, runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries & art centres. email for details. Facebook, Twitter. Promo video here.