Awesome Sauce - kids comics from Guernsey to MK

And suddenly I found myself in Guernsey, courtesy of the Guernsey Literary Festival, doing not one, not two, but three Comic Art Masterclasses in one day, in two schools and the Guiles-Ailes Library (try and guess how you pronounce Guiles-Ailes, and indeed most Guernsian place names. You'll be wrong). As ever, the groups produced an A5 comic to take away, and I did a caricature of every single one of them. Along with the caricatures I did the previous night at a book launch at the library, that's well over 100 faces drawn during the visit. A greatly enjoyable trip it was too.

The colour on these front covers is just a little something I do afterwards, for fun, and to add to the quality of the kids' end product. I'm worried I may now be taking a little bit longer than necessary colouring these covers, but somehow once you've popped you can't stop. The photo on the right is me in the library, with odd lighting that makes me look like I'm in Christopher Eccleston's Tardis (in reality the lights merely made all the colours of the comicbooks look wrong, like you'd added too much blue or something, most unusual).

The third and final day of the MK50 project in Milton Keynes produced these two front covers and, more importantly, many pages of strips and drawings by the pupils, which I must now stitch together into an 8 page full colour magazine by the end of the month. No pressure.

I've done my classes at the Dorchester Literary Festival in Oxfordshire every other year since 2011 and it's lovely to be invited back. The classes take place in a gorgeous vaulted hall, the old Priory I think, which dates back a few years (though I got great mileage teasing the kids with fact that the only date shown on its walls is the date of restoration. They now think all buildings from 1994 look like this). Check it out:

The celebrities these seven groups chose for my demonstration strip were Peter Kay, Donald Trump (twice), Benedict Cumberbatch, David Walliams, Michael Jackson, and Emma Watson.

Comic Art Masterclasses coming up in 2017:

Jun 4 - Martlets Hall Burgess Hill 

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.