Here I am with cartoonist Quentin Blake (center) and Michael Newman-Horwell of English Heritage (right). Michael and I have just received an award for our Big Draw Event at Battle Abbey near Hastings where we helped hundreds of kids recreate the Bayeaux Tapestry in cartoon form. Quentin Blake is one of my favorite cartoonists and it was a pleasure to meet him (even though you should never meet your heroes). He was as charming and delightful as his illustrations. I didn't have the nerve to tell him I had a character called Quentin in my cartoon strip as I worried I'd sound like a creepy, stalking weirdo. Don't I look enormous next to him? I also appear to have lost an arm.
It was while I was working at Battle Abbey those 2 days back in October 2006 that I received my call from King Features Syndicate saying that they were interested in my comic strip. (I still have the voicemail recording which I'll put onto this blog one day).
Quentin treated us to a live cartoon drawing display and you can see something similar if you visit The Campaign for Drawing's website.
"The Campaign for Drawing's aim is simple: to encourage everyone to draw. Its annual showpiece, The Big Draw, proves that drawing can be a public activity as well as a private passion. Every October, 1000 venues across Britain, from large national institutions to village halls, join in to offer many thousands of people of all ages the chance to discover that drawing is enjoyable, liberating and at everyone's fingertips."
1 comment:
Dang, that's great. Blake's one of my favorites, too, and I envy you the chance to meet him, much less watch him draw. And congratulations on your award!
Post a Comment