The Bean Men - bumper bundle of comics by kids

Ee I've been busy this past week teaching kids how to draw comics, mostly in Yorkshire. Check this lot out (click to enlarge)...



These comics, above and below, are the product of the pupils in my Comic Art Masterclasses in schools in Woodbury Salterton Devon, Doncaster, Knaresborough, Chortlton-Cum-Hardy and Ripon. By the end of each session they each go away with a comic containing a strip by every single one of them, plus a caricature by me. When I play the "steps on a worm" comic strip demonstration game as part of the class, I ask them to name a real-live-living famous celebrity. Who did this lot variously name? You can see below the next selection...



The celebrities these twelve classes named (in every case whittled down from a choice of four names) were: Selena Gomez (twice), Simon Cowell (three times), Ke$ha, The Queen, Michael Jackson, Rowan Atkinson, Lady Gaga, and most original suggestions of the week Rolf Harris and Slash out of Guns & Roses.

If you're developing a taste for this kind of thing, there's a whole archive of Comic Art Masterclass comics on my website, including these choice examples and many more...

Aquatic Owls vs The Moon - Dec 2012
The Hairy Bottom - July 2012
Kid Afro Spaghetti - June 2012
Fartimouse Owl - May 2012
I ❤ Gingers - May 2012
Help I'm A Superhero Get Me Out Of Here - April 2012

If anyone wants me to come and show their kids how to do what I've been doing for a living for the last two decades in my patent Comic Art Masterclasses, drop me a line, a comment, a Twitter, smoke signals, the usual methods. Click below to see more, including video and contact details.

Travels with my art (in Yorkshire)

It was International Womens Day so, before today's Comic Art Masterclass in Ripon, I drew this flipchart page.



It's been quite the busy week for me and my Comic Art Masterclasses, before each day of which I try to decorate a flipchart page like this if I can (though this had an unusual length of time to work on, with me getting a free half hour before my class started). Because Thursday was World Book Day, a number of schools were arranging special events for their pupils and, having been invited by Ripon Grammar School in Yorkshire to work there for two days, teaching kids how to do what I've been doing for a living since 1989, word spread and I found myself spending Monday to Friday with my friends in the north.

There was a fair bit of travel involved. Monday morning I left the house in Clevedon at 5.30am to drive to Doncaster, arriving in time to start teaching at 9.00. The next day's school was in Knaresborough so, in order to stay within budget, I stayed overnight in Leeds, but the next overnight stop proved more problematic. As a result of a small sporting event in Manchester on Tuesday (Man Utd v Real Madrid at Old Trafford) my quest to find an affordable hotel within an hour of my next school in Chortlton Cum Hardy was harder than usual. I ended up staying in Huddersfield.

Wednesday, wake up in Huddersfield, drive right the way across Manchester in rush hour traffic and arrive at school in Chorlton half an hour late, then after a fine day of classes I head for my next hotel, which is in Wakefield, the nearest affordable hotel I could get within an hour of Ripon. As ever I am unstinting in my praise for the website booking.com which helps me to find places to stay and keeps we well informed about what to expect. I knew Wednesday night's hotel in Wakefield was to be unusual, but by golly was it cheap. Twenty five quid for an en suite room with free wifi, parking and breakfast was too good to be true surely? As it happens it was slightly too good, as the breakfast turned out not be available until half an hour after I left for work, but who's complaining? And my biggest thanks go to Sally & Neil, librarian and family from my last school who put me up in their lovely Yorkshire country cottage for the final night of my travels.

I shudder to think how many miles that was, but it was certainly great fun to work with 10 groups of school pupils, producing 10 brand new comics containing approximately 260 comics strips and caricatures by the kids in the classes, the evidence of which will be coming up on this blog soon. In the meantime, enjoy me grinning cheesily in front of that flipchart.





If anyone wants me to come and show their kids how to do what I've been doing for a living for the last two decades in my patent Comic Art Masterclasses, drop me a line, a comment, a Twitter, smoke signals, the usual methods. Click below to see more, including video and contact details.

Star Trek art now on eBay

In addition to the two Doctor Strange pages that I've put up on eBay, there's now a page of my Classic Star Trek up there (click to see)...



Classic in more ways than one as this is drawn by myself (inks) and Tom Morgan (pencils) and comes from Marvel comics' Star Trek Unlimited. from back in 1997. Bidding starts at £1.99, so get in there quick, you might be lucky.

Also, get them while they're hot, Dr Strange issue 88 and Dr Strange issue 89, original artwork therefrom.

Dr Strange art now on eBay

You might want to get your bids in early for this one, a page of Doctor Strange original art by Mark Buckingham and myself on eBay


It's from Doctor Strange Sorcer Supreme Issue 89 page 7, and is pegged at a Buy It Now price of just 50 quid which, given that his work sells at 150 dollars a page usually, is an unbelievable bargain. Don't say you weren't told.

And you wait years for a page of art to come on eBay, now suddenly there' s two up there. This page, also by Mark and myself, starts bidding at 99p. Have a punt, you could be in luck:

My strip in this week's Radio Times

I've got some artwork in this week's Radio Times (2-8 March, buy it quick!). Obviously I can't show you the final published artwork, you have to buy the Radio Times to see that, but here's an exclusive sneak peek at the original pencil art. Can you spot the differences? (click to enlarge)



When you see the printed colour version you'll see quite a few changes, not the least of which being Barry Cryer, in the title box, has become a much more cartoony version, and it's him appearing in the actual joke, not some random bald bloke. You can look out also for a change in hairstyle for the farmer's wife, and for the subtle inclusion of my name, though I also get a printed credit too.

Thanks Radio Times for a fun job, though they've put such a brilliant faded-paper treatment over the top that I'd imagine most readers will assume the cartoon is actually from the 1950s. And remember folks, I'm always available for commissions.

March in the Socks calendar

This is how we celebrate March on the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre's 2013 calendar, with the Socks take on Planet Of The Apes (click to enlarge)...

It's an orange. It's very clearly supposed to be an orange. Shut up. You can still buy the calendar with its 12 unique brand new specially drawn cartoons by Kev F formerly of The Beano. It's good for another 10 months and is a collector's item joy to treasure. Click on the image to see more of the calendar and the link to the shop, or if you can't wait, buy it here.

What's that you say? You'd like a song and a video specially produced by the Socks telling you all about it? Go on then...

The Kids Comics, what's so difficult?

I have a week-long spree of Comic Art Masterclasses coming up at schools in Yorkshire, in each of which I'll teach kids how to write and draw comics and, by a morning or afternoon, they'll go away with a comic a bit like these (click to enlarge)...



Producing these mini-gems has become very much my trademark and I'm a dab hand at rattling them off on the photocopier. As long as I'm let loose on an average school copier, one with a sheet-feeder on the top and the usual functions, I can produce a copy of the comic for everyone in the class in about ten minutes.

However every now and again I'll find a school whose reprographics or office person won't allow anyone to touch their photocopiers and insists on doing everything themselves, despite my protests that it'll be so much easier if they let me do it. How hard can it be, they ask? And it's a good question.

Because all I need to do, having got every child in the class to produce their comic strip in pencil and ink on an A4 sheet of paper, is take their artwork, along with the A4 caricatures I've done of all of their faces and the A3 front cover artwork, the title of which they've come up with together and then I've designed it and they've added a drawing to it, and then assemble them on the copier.

To do this I first reduce the A3 cover to A4, then use the multiple-up setting (which an astonishing number of secretaries and reprographics people don't know exists) to reduce the faces down to 8-to-a-page then down again so I have 16 faces to an A4 sheet (as long as the class stays within my maximum size of 30 pupils, this means I end up with two pages of caricatures, even including the teachers. If, however, we've gone over the 30-pupil mark, this will involve some further re-calculation).

Then I do the same with the pupils comic strip pages, reducing those to 8 to each A4 landscape spread, using their individual drawings of characters to fill up remaining space if the class is under a certain size, and reducing those down smaller and squeezing in whichever will fit if the class is over a certain size. Then I use one page of caricatures as the back page, one as the inside back, and a montage of leftover work as the inside front page, and collect those up into A4 spreads which I copy back to back, using the duplex setting, giving as an A5 folded comic comprising 3 sheets or 12 pages, whichever way you look at it. One of those for each of the pupils, and one for the teacher, and one for me, bish bash bosh. A fast enough copier and that's ten minutes work.

Mysteriously, no-one else in the office has ever managed to do it themselves. In one school they took all the components away and returned an hour later defeated and confused (they hadn't found the multiple-up button in all that time, bless their cotton socks), eventually let me do it myself and, of course, it took 10 minutes as per. For future reference, trust me everyone, I've done this before.

There's a whole archive of my kids' Comic Art Masterclass comics on my website, including these choice examples and many more...

Bazinga! - Feb 2013
Aquatic Owls vs The Moon - Dec 2012
The Hairy Bottom - July 2012
Kid Afro Spaghetti - June 2012
Fartimouse Owl - May 2012
I ❤ Gingers - May 2012
Help I'm A Superhero Get Me Out Of Here - April 2012

If anyone wants me to come and show their kids how to do what I've been doing for a living for the last two decades in my patent Comic Art Masterclasses, drop me a line, a comment, a Twitter, smoke signals, the usual methods. Click below to see more, including video and contact details.