Dandy Strictly - a week at the drawing board

A visual gag that no-one will get to see for a year, and most people won't even notice when they do, these are a couple of backgrounds from Sickly Come Dancing, a 4-pager I've just finished drawing for the 2017 Dandy Annual.

There are few things as satisfying as delivering a finished piece of artwork last thing on Friday night, getting home in time for tea, and this week I had that pleasure. A 4 page strip shouldn't take 4 days to do, but I enjoyed putting in the details, and had fun throwing Dandy characters into the backgrounds, so the colouring took as long as the pencilling and inking. And I drew the whole thing as A2 pages, God knows why, just giving myself elbow room.

So, as well as getting Fowlers Christmas card roughed out on Monday (I'm awaiting instructions to totally redraw it from scratch next week, it's an annual ritual), and redrawing one of my recent Bible Society cartoons (there was a theological issue over elephants in Noah's ark so I had to replace them with cows), it took me two days to layout, pencil and ink the 4 page strip, and a further two days to colour and letter it. Drop-Box to the Dandy and home by 6, joy.



It is a rarity these days for me to spend five consecutive days in the studio drawing, with no schools, no Socks gigs (the October mini-tour ended last Friday in Canterbury), and no Socks videos (I could have, but art deadlines are art deadlines, and I'd forgotten how much I like meeting them), and I have enjoyed this week. Next week three days of Comic Art Masterclasses beckon, and after that we have international travel to look forward to.




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. 

Halloween pumpkin 2015 - Rocky Horror

It's become a bit of an annual tradition that I carve a Halloween pumpkin, and this year's no exception. I'm hoping you recognise who I've done this time? Oh shut up, it's Tim Curry as Frank N Furter in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. You're welcome.

I managed to get the reverse side of the pumpkin carved, just in time for our Halloween night dinner party. If you'd like to see my previous years' creations, here's a gallery for you.

2014: Peter Capaldi

2013: An American Werewolf In London

2012: I think we all know who this is. Still my best pumpkin ever.

2011: A bit generic this one, wouldn't you say? Inspiration didn't really strike.

2010: Boris Karloff's Frankenstein's Monster. And before I started keeping a blog, somewhere in the mists of time, I did a Christopher Lee Dracula and a Bela Lugosi. I may well have done more, I'm sure photos exist somewhere.

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. 

More travels - Manchester, Liverpool, Halifax

Don't say I can't sometimes plan my work schedule well. I say well, I mean I can pack an awful lot of work into a weekend and, just for once, keep it all in the same end of the country. So, whereas recent weeks have seen me scudding to all points of the compass, like Norfolk to Brighton to Suffolk to Switzerland etc, this weekend saw me hitting the north and staying there, vaguely. We began with the Socks playing the Kings Arms in Salford on Friday night (above). A simple enough three hour journey which, because it was the Friday afternoon before half term, took over 5 hours.

From Salford, or Manchester, if you can't quite work out where one begins and the other starts as, I fear, I still can't, to Warrington where I'm spending 4 nights at the Holiday Inn. This is partly because it's centrally placed for my travels, but originally because it was the first place that wasn't stupidly expensive. Then, on Saturday morning it was back to Manchester.

To Manchester Central Library for a day of Comic Art Masterclasses as part of the Manchester Literature Festival, and I can report happily that they were very well received. The festivals I've been doing this year really have expanded my audience and gone down well. Saturday night was then a night in my hotel watching Doctor Who and enjoying not driving too much for a day.


Sunday began in Liverpool Exhibition Centre and an event called Toytopia, where I was on the impressive Beano stand doing a short Comic Art Masterclass then absolute heaps of caricatures. At first I was doing my usual thing of drawing everyone who came to the stand, and building up an impressive queue. The, because part of their remit was to sell copies of the Beano, we came up with the idea, as you can see above, of asking people to buy a comic and get the caricatures as a bonus, and it worked a treat. Then, as the afternoon drew to a close, I zoomed off to Manchester to pluck another string of my bow (you don't pluck bowstrings, I realised as I wrote it, but it's too late, I've said it).

What a handsome bunch, eh? Yes, it was the Manchester Sitcom Trials team, at the Kings Arms Salford again, performing the Halloween Sitcom Trials, with me as their host. As always, full details are on the other shelf on the Sitcom Trials' own blog. It's been their busiest year in a while.

Back to the Beano stand at Toytopia in Liverpool on Monday morning and how's this for a guitar? A Les Paul copy with Beano decorations, for £140? I didn't buy one, but I can't say I wasn't tempted. Meantime my day was taken up with another class and lots of caricatures (over the two days I must have done about 250) and more flipchart action, some promotional, some fun for the kids.


After which I got away at about 4 o'clock to get to my evening commitment, a Socks gig in Halifax. Theoretically that should have been a two hour journey but, thanks to me going via my Warrington hotel and it being rush hour on Monday, it was three hours before I got there.

And by golly you get a better standard of decorative ceiling at the Victoria Theatre Halifax, I'll tell you that. A cracking 90 minute gig with a lovely big audience, a fine way on ending a jam-packed, four day, 6-gig Socks/Masterclass/caricaturey/Trials/Socks busy old weekend. Now we just have the drive home to Clevedon to look forward to, and I can get back to the pleasant experience of getting my accounts finished.

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. 

Travels - Harrogate, Belfast, Isle of Wight, er, Clevedon

Look at us all over the big screen. In the foyer of Harrogate Theatre where the Socks returned to give their 90 minute show including Minging Detectives, and nifty it looks too. This was all part of the past couple of weeks travel which has seen me putting the miles in, while doing a little bit of everything that I'm famous for.

Returning from Switzerland I'd had a busy Saturday doing a class in Thame in Bucks then zooming off to Leamington Spa for a Socks show, then on Tuesday Hev joined me on the trip to Harrogate with the Socks. After which we started the proper travel.

The Shirts 1978 album, bought at a retro shop in Harrogate. On blue vinyl on less. Now tell me your plans...

Up at 4am to get the 7am flight to Belfast where I returned to Wellington College and Aquinas Grammar after a few years absence. They did the usual fab work and my librarian Tanja was most accommodating, feeding me and driving me to the airport even. During my time in the airport I was busy reading, reviewing and voting on the 48 scripts entered in the forthcoming Halloween Sitcom Trials (being very active in its parallel universe over at sitcomtrials.co.uk, I ought to mention it on this blog more often, oughtn't I).

Here's me grinning cheesily by a Belfast flipchart. I don't know whether it shows, but over the last month I've had some of my teeth done. The discoloured fillings in my front teeth have been replaced. So, though they're hardly Hollywood teeth, I should have a smile that looks a little more lovely and unblemished.

My flight from Belfast got me home at about 11 at night, after which the alarm was set for 3am so that Hev & I could get to Southampton for the 7am Isle of Wight ferry in order that I could do two days of classes at the Isle Of Wight Literary Festival. A glittering affair, it saw us at a lunch party at the Royal Yacht Squadron rubbing shoulders with the likes of Michael Morpurgo and Whispering Bob Harris. None of whom we spoke to, of course, being far too shy. Though we have a wonderful chat over breakfast with a couple of our fellow authors.

Still can't see the new teeth? Me and a flipchart in Cowes. After a class on Saturday afternoon, we caught the early ferry and were home in time for Doctor Who.

Back on my desk in the studio I've been busy writing scripts for the 2017 Beano annual - with all the Bananaman and Gnasher scripts delivered, I'm writing the Bash Street Kids scripts now - and writing and drawing for 2017's Dandy annual. The Great Dandy Bake-Off has been drawn and delivered, then I had to re-letter the whole thing having discovered they've moved from lower case lettering to caps. I also have the embarrassment of having drawn Beryl The Peril in her Karl Dixon style as per the 2014 annual, only to discover she's being drawn old-style. So in my second strip, Strictly Come Dancing, I'll be drawing her in a different style and making a joke to cover up the difference. Oh yeah, and I've also been doing my accounts for my tax return. How many miles did I drive in 2014? You don't want to know. Oh yeah, and I made a Socks video for The Martian.

From the script for Gnasher: Conkers, the only script to get rejected from the 2017 annual (so far),  only biting the dust because they already had a conker story.

And just ahead of a busy weekend in Manchester and Liverpool, with the Socks, the Comic Art Masterclasses, the caricatures and The Sitcom Trials (house!), last night The Socks played a gig in Clevedon, of all places. In The Theatre Shop, the brilliant new community theatre initiative in a shop in the centre of town, we had a wonderful receptive and voluble audience and a cracking show. I didn't see that coming.

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. 

 

The Martian - Scottish Falsetto Socks new video

Brand new from the Socks, their take on Matt Damon's movie The Martian. Apparently we're in the minority being quite so critical of it, but what can we say, this is what we thought. Click to play.

Fat Pig Unicorn Bat - more comics by kids

Again with the Unicorns. What is it with kids and unicorns this year? Two of the six comics produced by kids in my Comic Art Masterclasses this week have unicorns in the title. This pair come from two primary schools in Cowes on the Isle of Wight where I worked, courtesy of the Isle of Wight Literary Festival.

Indeed this year's diary has been liberally studded with visits to Literary Festivals, this pair coming from my second day at the Isle Of Wight festival and a class at the Thame literary festival the previous weekend. I don't remember working at literary festivals before this year. Then, at some point at the end of last year, I made myself known to all the festivals I found on a list online somewhere, and suddenly I've found myself appearing everywhere from Nairn to Snape and many points inbetween. I was supposed to do one in Glasgow on my birthday, but had to cancel because there weren't flights at the right time. And they seems to like my classes at these festivals, which can't be bad.

And just to prove how much I love early hours and ridiculous amounts of travelling, these two comics come from schools in Belfast. So this week's travels saw me driving to Harrogate for a Socks gig on Tuesday, flying to Belfast and back on Thursday, getting home at 11 at night, then waking at 3am on Friday to drive to Southampton and catch the Isle Of Wight Ferry (this, contrary to the joke, is no longer brown, steams, and comes out of Cowes backwards. It's now red, which either spoils the joke or makes it much more disgusting), then getting to my first school at 8.30. Crash crash busy busy work work bang bang, as they say nowhere.

The celebs this lot chose to tread on a worm in my demonstration strip were Simon Cowell (twice), Katy Perry, Kim Jong Un, Daniel Craig and William Shakespeare. (As a sideline to which, as you can see above, when they're asked which Doctor Who I should draw, they hardly ever ask for Peter Capaldi, but are fairly evenly split between wanting Matt Smith and David Tennant. I don't keep accurate enough records of that.)

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. 

What Are Those? They're comics by kids in Switzerland and Snape

This week I have mostly been doing an incredible amount of travelling in order to teach kids how to do what I do. Firstly driving to Snape in Suffolk to take part in the Flipside Festival on the Sunday, then flying to Switzerland on the Monday to spend two days in schools there. Above you see the work of pupils in College Du Leman in Versoix, a suburb of Geneva.

And here we see the work of the pupils at Collège Alpin International Beau Soleil, which may well be the most exclusive and expensive school I've taught at. It's certainly the furthest up a mountain, with a stupendous view of the alps, based in the village of Villars-Sur-Ollon where every building is made of wood and adorned with balconies and shutters as if to out-Swiss itself. I know that's what's Switzerland's supposed to look like, but I was genuinely surprised to find how much it did. Every building a cuckoo clock.

I was teaching teenagers and, no matter how rich they are (and this school costs 100,000 Swiss Francs a term to attend, so we can conclude they're pretty well off), they come up with the same range of in-jokes and gags that they find hilarious and which no-one else can penetrate. I still don't know if the word Babao is in some way offensive or just random. Migros and Coop, by the way, are the two biggest local food stores, and Ü is how you'd write the word "ugh" with umlauts, apparently.

And here we see the work of the good children of Snape in Suffolk, whose Sunday classes were part of the Flipside Festival. These 7 groups, when asked to choose someone for my "treads on a worm" demonstration strip plumped for Simon Cowell (that was Snape, he didn't figure in Switzerland), Gordon Ramsay, Will Smith, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Miley Cyrus and Barack Obama.

NB: Beau Soleil, according to this table, is the second most expensive private school in the world, costing twice as much to attend as either Eton or Harrow. I really could have charged more.

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.