It’s difficult to have favourites with these workshops because they all offer up fresh delights, but I reckon this day at Glenorchy LINC was one of the most fun for me these holidays. The morning session was just 3 kids (!), but all 3 had booked in for the whole day, so I didnt want to disappoint them. One of them (Alex) has been coming to my cartoon workshops regularly for over a year now, and he has a particularly colourful imagination – the first idea he threw at me was a Gangster Goldfish, and we were off and running (his version above, my interpretation below).
Every once in a while a student throws me a request that genuinely makes me stop & think hard about how to make it work. I really love being challenged technically, but also as a teacher, because not only do I have to visualise the drawing, I have to also work out how to best draw it in a way that the students can understand. For some ideas I’d much rather have the luxury of roughing it out a few times in pencil, to get it “right”. But I also think it’s great for the kids to see that I can be challenged too, and that drawing is always a creative experiment that doesn’t always succeed. So Byron’s next request was fascinating, and we all had to chew on it together: an invisible character wearing a jetpack & a sombrero! The accessories weren’t a problem, but the question of how to draw invisibility opened up a lot of discussion. Byron decided on “transparent” instead, as we could at least indicate an outline of the figure….anyway, here’s my & Byron’s end results:
These two drawings actually consumed a lot of time in the session (well, we did get a little wayward in our conversations as well….), but we finished the session looking at superhero-style anatomy techniques.
After lunch, more students arrived for the afternoon session & the room was a-buzz with ideas, jokes and quippery. We kicked off with a combo of evil butterfly / tuxedo / lettering FX, with delicious results:
Well, maybe not delicious, but cool! Now for some reason everyone’s been requesting unicorns this week, so that was on the list again, but then Alexz (the girl who suggested the Ice King at the Bridgewater workshop & was so inspired she came to Glenorchy too!) asked if we could draw a Loner, which was such a refreshing request I couldnt resist, so we ended up with a kind of emo Lonelicorn (note droopy horn!). I’ve included all the kids’ drawings because I just think they all look so fantastic together!
And last of all, we squeezed in a pretty bizarre combo of mutant / vampire rabbit / broken robot! Unfortunately I didnt get pics of the kids’ versions before their parents scooped them up, so here’s mine:
Thanks again guys for all the fantastic ideas, and thank you to Robyn Murfett at Glenorchy LINC for supporting these workshops!