Four years ago, the Friends School (Secondary Campus) in Hobart approached me about running my Creative Communication cartoon workshops with their Year 7s, as part of their Connections program. Over three days I worked with all the Year 7 home groups, a different group each day, and about 50 students in each group. What was especially wonderful was that I was given a WHOLE DAY with each group – sheer luxury! This meant there was plenty of time to run a very comprehensive program, covering facial expressions & body language, as well as many extension exercises such as applying the techniques to comic strips and a simple animation.
Since that first mini-residency, Friends have invited me back each year to work with the Yr 7s, and this year was my fourth visit. I have always been very impressed with the students here, they have always seemed very switched on, engaged & responsive, and often very confident in their thinking, but nothing prepared me for the amazing response from this year’s group.
The majority of the students were highly creative & skilled in their interpretations of the cartoons I drew with them, spontaneously adapting the ideas to their own characters, and embellishing their drawings with colour and all kinds of fantastic details. I was stunned at how creative this whole group were, and it was incredibly inspiring! I’ll let the drawings speak for themselves – I just love how distinct the styles are. Thanks once again to Friends for inviting me back, and to the teachers for their fantastic support.
FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
COMIC STRIP
BODY LANGUAGE – THE WHISPERING SCENARIO
BODY LANGUAGE – THE LAUGHING SCENARIO
And we even had time for some random requests as a bit of fun to finish the day – depressed pandas, sad elephants, creepy fat guys, goofy unicorns, just the usual…….(!)
