Kev F comic art

1960s Pop Star Colouring Book

Pop Star Colouring Annual with 50 images from 70s to now

Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing and drawing for The Beano, Marvel, Doctor Who, and graphic novels adapted from Shakespeare, runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries and art centres - email for details, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. He is the host of the podcast Comic Cuts The Panel Show.

Thursday, 16 December 2021

1960s & Eurovision Colouring Books - and more growing sales

It never rains but it pours, when it comes to me churning out colouring books. Having got a lot of interest for my 70s, 80s, 90s & 2020s Pop Star Colouring Books through October and November, and finding them really good fun to write and draw, I went to town on my 1960s Pop Star Colouring Book. 45 pages of drawings, most of which are done in a much more detailed style than the previous books, and with 45 new articles, all longer than the previous books, I even like the cover better than the others. This is my favourite colouring book so far, and went on sale on December 9th.

While I was waiting for the 60s book to process and to get its first sales (which appear about 4 days after its gone on sale, I find) I also found myself at Robins & Days garage at Cribbs Causeway waiting for my car to get serviced. With four hours on my hands, and only my phone to work with, I dreamt up and wrote the best part of 30 small articles that would comprise a Eurovision Pop Star Colouring Book.

I also sounded people out on Facebook and got a lot of good feedback, including Ewan Spence, mega-Eurovision-expert, who gave me some top tips on who to include and not. And lo, within a weekend, I'd drawn the 33-and-a-third images that would make up the book. (Okay, it's 34 images, but I've realised branding them as having variously 45 or 33 & a third images works well with my theme).

Having put the word out to, and got a lot of responses from, various Eurovision Facebook groups, sales have started coming in already. In fact Eurovision has started selling faster than any of its predecessors. Being well aware that this is the run up Christmas and sales will be going through a bump that won't continue after the next week or so, here's what sales look like. (NB Dec 14th & 15th so far have seen my single highest sales days, of 15 and 16 books per day respectively)

Amazon sales Nov 16 - Dec 15 2022

1960s Pop Stars (pub Dec 9) - 4

Eurovision (pub Dec 14) - 9

1970s Pop Bumper (pub Nov 20) - 29

1970s Pop Original - 12 (total 24)

1980s Pop Stars - 47 (total 85)

1990s Pops Stars - 11 (total 17)

2020s Pop Stars - 25 (total 30)

Pop Stars Annual - 12 (total 15)

Total Amazon sales Sept 17 - Nov 16 2022

1970s Pop Original - 12

1980s Pop Stars - 38

1990s Pops Stars - 6

2020s Pop Stars - 5

Pop Stars Annual - 3

And now what have I started..?

Eurovision Pop Star Colouring Book

Pop Star Colouring Annual with 50 images from 70s to now

Oinking Pigs & Huge Coke Volcanoes - final kids comics of 2022

A busy year of Comic Art Masterclasses, on and offline, rounded off with a fair cross section of what I get up to. We have an online corporate Christmas party (their live party having been called off because of the Omicron variant of Covid causing folks the collywobbles), a Jewish primary school at Hannukah, more of those damned Among Us characters, a return to the first school I visited after last year's lockdown, and the start of an ongoing project which will continue into 2022.

This pair of comics were produced with kids at Hasmonean Primary, a Jewish school in Barnet, where the classes too place, interestingly, on the last day of Chanukah (on the first night of which, for the record, me and The Socks did Dean Friedman's Zoom show, which was a mini Hannukah special. There you go, both spellings covered, everyone's happy). At one point in the day, the kids had to "bench", a phrase which I'd not come across before. It's a recitation that you do, basically saying grace after a meal. I live and learn.

Eastern Green Juniors in Coventry was a good one to revisit, as it holds the distinction of being the first class I visited in person, in November 2020, after the first lockdown. At time of writing we've been out of the second lockdown for six months and school visits have become almost normal, though we have to wear masks in corridors. And, at time of writing, the Omicron variant of Covid has just been detetected and is now the big sensation, spreading twice as fast as its predecessors while having milder effects. Schools are being affected by people having to isolate when they get a positive test, but we're all double vaxxed now (I had by booster shot on December 11th) so as safe as we're ever likely to be.

The big tiger face comes from a school in Millton Keynes where we are doing a project where the kids interview local residents for oral history work, then turn their stories into comic strips. We shall return to that project in the new year.

And we ended the year with perhaps the driest title ever. Wonde is a computer system used by people working in education, as the employees of Impact Ed all are. I did their corporate Christmas party on Zoom, and jolly good fun it was too. I am delighted to report I went away none the wiser as to what a Wonde Error might be, let's hope I never have to know.

The celebrities these five groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip (MK group didn't do that bit) were Ed Sheeran, Mayim Blalik, Freddie Mercury, Ariana Grande, and William Shakespeare.

Saturday, 11 December 2021

Among Us galore, penultimate kids comics of the year

It's a fair indication of how busy I've been in the last month that, on a couple of occasions, I didn't even get round to colouring the front covers of the comics I've made in my classes. It's part of the aftercare service, essentially, though I've now come to promise as part of the class that I will colour their front cover when I get home and email it back to them. However the first example you see on this montage, from Bridport Arts Centre in Dorset, didn't get its colour added until two weeks later when they chased me up about it. I am a bad Comic Art Masterclass presenter.

Talavera School in Aldershot was a nice one to return to, and included one of the more novel incidents of the year when a kid brought in a live bullet. The poor lad, a year three pupil, totally innocently, after break, was asking everyone if they'd seen his bullet? He'd been showing it to everyone and had now lost it. I enquired what kind of bullet this was, maybe a spent cartridge or an antique of some sort. It turns out to have been a live .303 slug. Talavera is, you see, aligned with Aldershot Barracks, and most of the parents are in the armed services. One, it seems, was more armed than they were supposed to be. Luckily the bullet was found and, I imagine, one red faced parent will be keeping a tighter grip on their ammo than they had been doing.

Though our current state of double-vaccinations and boosters make us as safe as we're likely to be from the Covids, the same can't be said for Ireland, whose restrictions include kids having to remain masked all through class. In fact the situation in Ireland, which also included added paperwork at the airport and potential delays and costs with my travel and hotels, that a visit to Clongowed Wood school, for the first time in two years, became the first and only bit of travel I've cancelled this year. We did the class on Zoom instead and the school have covered the bits of travel I couldn't get refunded. The kids were great, but I'm a bit bugged by their current addiction to the video game Among Us, which is visually pretty untimulating and hard to work into an interesting cover. There are two in this batch (one that managed to include a penguin instead) and one in the next blog.

The Back To The Future parody came from a class I did for a corporate party, for NBC Universal, which was fun, even for a corporate event, with people talking stuff about marketing which I really did not understand. I then, as part of the gig, had to take their drawings, colour them, and assemble them into a printed magazine (see above). None of which I understood either.

The celebrities these six groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip were Boris Johnson, Billie Eilish, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Cristiano Ronaldo, and two that went sadly unrecorded.

Tuesday, 30 November 2021

Colouring Books Sales increase

My accidental publishing empire, making Pop Star Colouring Books when I'm supposed to be making a fortune writing crime novels, seems to be going from strength to strength. November saw increased sales for October's 80s Pop Star book, and a promising start for November's new updated Bumper 70s Pops Star Book. Here are the stats:

Amazon sales - Nov 21

70s Pop Bumper (published Nov 20) - 12

70s Pop original - 11

80s Pop - 36

90s Pop - 4

20s Pop - 10

Pop Annual (pub Oct 31) - 8

Action Blank - 2

FM - 1

Halloween Colouring - 1

Amazon Sales Sept 2 - Oct 31

70s Pop original (Oct 1st) - 8

80s Pop (Oct 19) - 20

90s Pop (Oct 7) - 5

20s Pop (Oct 2) - 3

Action Blank - 4

Super Blank - 3

PODS - 1

Halloween Colouring - 16

So, the popular books (80s and Bumper 70s) are selling a copy each a day through November. All of which bodes well for the new 60s Pop Star Colouring Book which I've just finished drawing, and whose articles I now need to write. Here's a taste of a few images.

Pop Star Colouring Annual with 50 images from 70s to now

Ah, here's Ken Dodd - more kids comics from November

I've been so busy with Comic Art Masterclasses, my travels, and my Colouring Books - oh and another thing that I haven't mentioned at all in my blog yet this year: we're supposed to be moving house. We thought we might even be moved by now. About which more anon. So, I've been so busy with all these things, I've been very slow to update my blog, and may even have missed things. For example, the last blog mentioned a comic with Ken Dodd on the cover, but where was it? Well, here it is.

These comics were produced in classes at the end of November and the start of December, at Iron Bridge Gorge Museum in Telford, in Meanwood in Leeds (en route home from Thought Bubble), at Bridge Learning Campus in Bristol, and at a birthday party in North London.

The four celebs chosen by this bunch (one class didn't do that bit) were The Queen, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, and Mrs Grandridge the Head Teacher.

Wednesday, 24 November 2021

Colouring Books - celebrity endorsements

Did I mention I'd published an updated version of my 1970s Pop Star Colouring Book, that now has 45 acts in it (actually 47, but 45 looks better on the cover of a book about pop music) and new articles on all of them? Well, it's on Amazon now (for £6.50, order now for Christmas) and has just enjoyed its first celebrity endorsement!

Mike Batt, creator and star of The Wombles pop group, picked up on the page he stars in and ordered a copy of the book. Since when he's tweeted about a couple of times, saying nice things and getting a few likes and retweets. Thanks Mike!

Meanwhile, to accompany Mike Batt's "Great job" on the 1970s book, my 1980s Pop Star Colouring Book has received a "Cool mate!" and a thumbs up tweet from none other than Matt Goss of Bros.

The Baddiel, Skinner and Lightning Seeds page of my 1990s Pop Star Colouring Book has had a like from David Baddiel himself.

And of course our fabulous friend Dean Friedman has shared the image of himself from the 70s book, thanks Deano!

Thanks to everyone, famous or otherwise, who's enjoying these books. I hope you'll all be ordering them for Christmas. Let's see if I can produce the 1960s version in time, eh?