Comic Art Masterclass with Kev F Sutherland

In celebration of World Book Day, the Doncaster Book Award committee organised some workshops focusing on the illustrations in books and comics.

On 2nd March two workshops for secondary pupils were held at Doncaster South CLC. These classes were led by Kev F Sutherland, a comedian, writer, producer and comic artist whose comic strips appear in The Beano. He is also possibly the world’s fastest caricaturist as he proved later in the day!

In the morning pupils from Hayfield, Hungerhill and Ridgewood schools joined together to be inspired by Kev’s imagination and enthusiasm. He talked about the publications he draws for and how comic illustrators produce their work.

Kev showed us how to let our imaginations run riot to create characters and storylines, demonstrating with quick sketches as he talked. Pupils were fascinated and delighted by the way he took their basic ideas and turned them into something magical.

After a quick break, pupils worked on inventing their own characters and then their own storylines, while Kev created a brilliant front cover for their group magazine. Then pupils illustrated their own comic strips, using their characters, while Kev drew quick caricatures of EVERYONE to be included in the finished product!

Finally, Kev took all the artwork and put together the front cover, characters, comic strip stories and caricatures, photocopying them so that every pupil had their own A5 copy of a unique comic to take home. All the pupils were inspired by Kev and maybe some will go on to be illustrators themselves.

In the afternoon, the workshop was repeated with pupils from Don Valley, Danum, Armthorpe and Hall Cross schools.

Will from The Hayfield School commented, "It was a brilliant morning and I enjoyed it very much. The sketches of the kids involved were funny. I really liked the combined comic with everyone’s drawings." Shannon added, "It was great. Kev was really enthusiastic and really funny and supportive of people’s artwork and comic sketches."

Pupils’ artwork from the comic masterclasses will be on display at The Point Arts Centre in Doncaster from 1st April.

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