The afternoon session was completely sold out with over 20 children in the room aged between 8 and 12. We spent the first hour looking at techniques and ways to cartoon, with the emphasis on that really, there wasn’t a right or wrong way, just that you approach your drawing with confidence. We had a brief visit to the Burgerman exhibition upstairs and then it was back to the room and out with the boards. Each board is a little over A3 in size, so that’s a lot of space to cover, but because cartoon doodling is all about spontaneity it’s by no means impossible. We had a good mix of age and abilities in the room, with some more relaxed about letting go and drawing than others, but there wasn’t anybody who wailed about being unable to do it - everyone had a good go at it. I can’t fit every piece of work in here, so I asked my daughter - who falls in to this age group - to choose a few to share.

A lot of work gone into this one

Spent a long but rewarding day yesterday at the Winchester Discovery Centre helping children to cartoon doodle to tie in to WDC’s Jon Burgerman’s Brain Drain exhibition (if you’re not familiar with Burgerman, click here).

My aim was to share some cartooning skills and encourage some spontaneous drawing to result not in a specific finished scene but a sea of inter-weaving characters and objects. None of it is planned, you just start in one corner and get drawing - and see what appears.

The morning session was aimed at younger children (5-7) while the afternoon session for older kids (8-12). I’ll post some examples from each session in second, but meanwhile, here’s one I did prior to the day to show the attendees what I had in mind.

My big doodle ready for the sessions at Winchester Discovery Centre