August 10, 2010 | By admin In DrawingCartoon-Articles |
Here’s a little personal story:
Some time ago I made the video “Spontaneous Cartooning” and published it on You Tube. It’s not had a great many views yet, but I’ve not been very active in promoting it. But I did post a link to my 12 year old nephew who was living in Cambodia up until a month ago… and he loved it.
In May of this year I visited my nephew and his mum(my sister) and dad in Phnom Penh and got a tour of the international school he attends. Word got around among the teachers that there was a guy visiting who draws cartoons and illustrates childrens books, and, as I live in Holland, I was duly invited to come in and give a talk and a drawing lesson for the Dutch kids in the school.
This was fun and quite a success, so I was also invite to talk to the international children, who were anyway busy with a special project on authors and illustrators – of course they couldn’t let this chance go.
So I found myself in front of a group of 90 kids, all curious about the art and career of book-illustrating and cartooning. It was a new experience for me but I seem to have pulled it off – it’s pretty easy talking for an hour or more on a subject that you’re passionate about.
At the end of my “speech” I showed them the video “Spontaneous Cartooning”, and, just like my nephew, they were all enthusiastic. Within minutes we got the whole group drawing cartoons as crazy and spontaneously as I do in the video… even the teachers joined in.
No-one had any previous idea that cartooning could be so easy and so much fun. The video let them see what’s possible, and gave them the motivation to try it themselves – and they needed that motivation, because even at their young age they were already restricted by their beliefs that if you haven’t got an inborn talent for drawing, then you can’t draw and shouldn’t draw… they were already losing their childhood freedom to just draw with abandon.
They learned that afternoon, that drawing and cartooning can be a dynamic game of free creativity, and my video had the positive affect I intended it to have… at least for a group of 90 international kids in a school in Cambodia. Now let’s see if I can get the rest of the world to join in!
And just in case you missed it… here’s the video again:
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