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.

Reasons to Be Cheerful: I'm on Cartoonstock

I'm not very good at selling my own work and tend to leave it to others (e.g. King Features and Amazon). But I've been asked about availability of some of the personal work I've been putting up on Gocomics.com as my Doodle Diary. Eventually, I hope to turn Reasons to Be Cheerful and New Zealand Diary into books, but that is waaaaay down the track at the moment.

In the meantime, Cartoonstock have offered me a way to sell my cartoons, so I'll give it a try. Clicking some of my images should take you to Cartoonstock and they'll take care of the sale of the work. We'll see how it goes. Click on the following images if you want to find out how it works (I do!).

Cheers!

Click the image if you wish to use it

Stand Up Paddle Boarding to Quail Island

We are having beautiful autumn weather here in New Zealand. I went out on the paddleboard yesterday because the forecast was for very light winds. It started out that way and I got to the island in about 25 minutes. But by that time I had paddled around the island the wind had changed and Lyttleton harbour became choppy. It was a good 35 minutes of paddling to get back to Magazine Bay. I was knackered but it was totally worth it.

Bullying is Still a Big Problem in NZ Schools

I was bullied at school and I remember it vividly. It was one of the reasons I wrote FAB (Friends Against Bullying) Club. .

The Press in Christchurch (now calling itself Stuff, unfortunately) is doing a series this week about bullying and it makes disturbing reading. There are ways to prevent bullying, but it seems those methods are not being implemented across New Zealand schools.

“One in four Kiwi kids are bullied at school – a rate that’s barely improved in the last 15 years and is more than double the OECD average. ”

And:

“New Zealand has the second worst rate of school bullying in the developed world after Latvia – and more than double the OECD average, according to a 2015 survey by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Depending on the global studies consulted, between 20 and 50 per cent of Kiwi schoolchildren are bullied.

Government data suggests rates of bullying have only decreased 3 per cent since 2013, and a 30-year study indicates bullied children are four times more likely to contemplate suicide as adults. Bullies are twice as likely.”

I hope this spurs more action, but I feel newspapers aren't as influential as they once were.