Travels With My Art & Facebook notes

My School ID photo from just one of this month's many visits, no problem recognising me.

It's been such a busy month of travels, with Comic Art Masterclasses and Socks shows, that I find my blog and my Facebook & Twitter have been quite thin on material. I've had nothing much to say, few observations to make. It's almost like I've been spending half my life driving, and the other half either colouring comic book covers by kids or rewriting the Socks script. So, a quick speed through the last month's travels, let's see if I did anything remarkable.

I did classes at the Royal Academy in May. Hev tells me I should put things like that on my website, and perhaps I should. For me the outstanding memory is that I called Tim Marlow Quentin Wilson. I'm sure he's forgotten it too.

I've done three trips to Ireland in the past six weeks, of various profitability. Kennedy College in New Ross cost £89 in flights, £45 car hire, £35 parking, and £45 for hotel (£225 costs); Strule Arts in Omagh cost £203 in flights (including hold bag for the Socks, which wasn't used), £59 car hire, £60 hotel, and an infuriating £64 parking (cos I forgot to prebook), making a fruitless £386 in costs. Think of my trips to Ireland as paid holidays, not profitable parts of my business. (Ardhowen in Enniskillen fell somewhere between the two).

Imogen and Ben's wedding was in May, a very pleasant affair. I caricatured as part of our present. Here's just one of the many photos we took.

In all, through May and June, my travels have taken me to Newcastle, Horris Hill, Royal Academy, New Ross, Henley In Arden, Enniskillen, Manchester, Halifax, Vauxhall, Brighton, King's Heath, Redhill, Neath, Manchester, Backwell, Swindon, Uley in Gloucestershire, Hendon, Grassington in North Yorkshire, Omagh and home (with Hertfordshire, Leeds and Neath to come this week).

Random Facebook jottings:

Who knew what Ochlocracy was?

Thanks to Brain of Britain I know a new word. Quite appropriate, given that it means a nation ruled by the mob. #Brexit

June 5: Just watched 3 hours of 63 Up/ 7 Up and half an hour of Mum. No you've got no blooming tear ducts left.

Captain Clevedon Schoolkids Special - calling all schools.

I've already had some promising response to my idea of kids making a Captain Clevedon comic. If you're interested in helping this happen, read on...

What I do regularly is go into schools and give my Comic Art Masterclasses, at the end of which every class has produced an A5 photocopied comic containing a strip by every one of them, and I’ve done their individual caricatures. This week alone I’ve done them in Backwell, Manchester, Neath and Swindon, and next week I’ll be doing them in North Yorkshire.

Recently, as a development of my classes, I’ve worked with various organisations putting together fully printed colour comics by school kids, which they’ve been able to give away locally. The most recent is Hounslow Histories wherein the kids had interviewed some local old folk, then we turned their stories into the finished A4 8 page magazine. You can see the whole thing here.

The idea came up on Twitter of reviving Captain Clevedon, the local superhero who I last make a comic about back in 2011, and making a new comic of his adventures, co-written with and drawn by local school kids.

I have an idea for a story in which the kids get to invent villains and monsters, however crazy, and have them trying to attack bits of Clevedon. A good excuse to get them drawing some local geography and architecture as well as making up their usual unpredictable nonsense. I’d then knit this together into a coherent comic.

How we’d get this printed is the bigger question, and one I’m happy to look into. I have a notion for selling ad space which would fund it as a free comic.

To produce the basic components, I’d propose coming into school to give my classes - I can do two in a day with up to 30 pupils in each class - and do this at my normal school rate.

It wouldn’t take many kids for us to end up with a comic’s worth of stuff under my guidance. The Hounslow Histories comic came from just two classes, in one day. Though previous comics (Magna Carta in Barking and Lincoln, and Migration in Milton Keynes) were the fruit of three or four days of classes.

If you are part of a school that might be interested in participating in the Captain Clevedon Schoolkids Comic, then email me at kevf.sutherland@gmail.com and we'll compare diaries.

If you’d just like my regular Comic Art Masterclass, it comes to the same thing, I’d love to come and share my expertise, in my role as The Man From The Beano Who Also Worked For Marvel.

June 16: And today's good news, Talking Pictures TV is about to start showing Get Some In. I loved this at the time, and it's written by Esmonde & Larbey of Good Life fame. Starting next month TalkingPictures TV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Some_In!

June 21: No need to boycott the BBC, as Sun readers are saying they'll do today. I haven't watched it since this morning, and apart from Killing Eve, Mum, Years And Years, Ghosts, The Unexplainers, Trust Me, The Victim, Alan Partridge, Back To Life, Have I Got News, Only Connect, University Challenge, Top Of The Pops 1987 and 1988, Gentleman Jack, Les Miserables, Fleabag, Line Of Duty, Baptiste, Eastenders, Pose, The Eurovision Song Contest and BBC Breakfast, I've hardly watched it in the last 6 months.

(And apart from John Finniemore, The News Quiz, Radcliffe & Maconie, Popmaster, Brain Of Britain, The Media Show, The Film Programme, Word Of Mouth, The Now Show, Pick Of The Pops, Counterpoint, More Or Less, The Today Programme, reruns of Hancock, Clare In The Community, Cabin Pressure, The TED Talk, The Moth Radio Hour, The Archive Hour, and those three hour long compilations they do every Saturday morning on 4 Extra, I've hardly listened to BBC Radio either)

June 21: Just watched a really frustrating documentary: Yacht Rock. It's half an hour of doc, squeezed into 60 minutes, with spurious theories and not enough detail. And then it ends abruptly. I had to go online to find that that was only part one, and it continues next week. What a dreadful bit of editing, and all the more annoying cos I'm interested in the subject.