Herne Bay Cartoon Festival 2018

Last weekend was the Herne Bay cartoon festival. I think this may be the sixth time it has run and it's a great little event. It is organised by local residents Sue Austen and Steve Coombes as well as cartoonists like Royston Robertson and a lot of volunteers. Only about 30 cartoonists attend and the festival uses lots of little venues. It was great to go back to where I used to live as a student. Not much has changed apart from the type of people who live there. I think they will ultimately change this threadbare Kent seaside resort for the better. They have to contend with a lot of postwar ropey building stock and a pebbly beach that is strewn with litter, but with people like the cartoon festival organisers working on it anything is possible.

I ran a cartooning workshop at Beach Creative on Saturday and there were a lot of creative kids there. Toast cafe next door do fabulous lunches.

There were a lot of great exhibitions on around the town, Including the funny women exhibition at the seaside museum. Unfortunately no one knows who drew my favourite cartoon of that exhibition but I was happy to see Tove Jansson Moomin originals.

Some of us spent a blisteringly hot Sunday morning baking on the pier. We were painting and drawing big cartoon boards. I had one of the holey boards which was great fun to watch when I was finished and had got back from throwing myself in the sea. After a restorative ice cream we had a cartoonists carousel ride before I dashed for the bus to head to Canterbury and another trip down memory lane.

More photos of the event here: https://procartoonists.org/feeling-the-heat-at-yet-another-sunny-herne-bay-cartoon-festival

Heading to the Herne Bay Cartoon Festival

Taking the train down to the Kent coast today, Taking part in the Herne Bay cartoon festival. It should be a nice trip down memory lane as I used to live in Herne Bay when I was at Kent University in Canterbury.

I'll be running a cartooning workshop and swimming in a lot in the sea. England is actually having a hot summer for a change.

Comic Strip Cartooning Workshop for Kids at Lyttelton Library

I ran the second of my cartooning workshops for kids at the Lyttelton library last week. This one was about comic panels and strips. One of the exercises was to fit as many characters as possible into a panel. I made the rash decision to offer a signed copy of Fab Club to whoever could fit the most in,  though this did result in some creative panels.

Some of the work the children did is below (my favourite is the plastic bag character) - thank you to Lindsey Melchers for taking the pictures (and helping out with the workshop).

(Note that the kids don't get to use rulers!)

Cartooning Workshop for Older Kids

I ran a second cartooning workshop in Lyttelton this week. This time it was at the recreation centre, where there is a youth club. The age range of the kids skewed older and it was interesting how that (and having other kids and activities around) changed the group dynamic.

We started with about a dozen kids, but as they became more and more distracted the numbers dropped off. After an hour, there were four kids and they were all the younger ones. They were the only ones able to focus and produce a comic strip at the end of the workshop. I wonder if I would have stuck out a cartooning class at the age of 14. I think so.

Cartooning Workshop in Lyttelton Library for 7-12 Year Olds

I ran my first cartooning workshop in Lyttelton today (the last ones I did were in Spain). It was focussed on character design and the kids were super to work with. They were engaged, paid attention and developed some really great characters.

Lindsey the librarian was an enthusiastic supporter of the workshop

Working on character design using old school picture reference - books!

Some of the children already had their own styles

Hopefully, there will be more workshops to come, but for now I'm relieved to get back to work. Running workshops is a lot more demanding than cartooning!