Fun Cartoon Workshop for Year 9 Students

We were delighted to welcome renowned cartoonist and illustrator Harry Venning to Charters School this week, where he delivered an inspiring and highly entertaining 90-minute workshop to a group of lucky Year 9 students.

Harry is best known as the creator of the long-running Guardian comic strip Clare in the Community, and he captivated students from the outset by explaining that “a cartoon is the essence of storytelling, distilled into its purest form.”

The workshop began with a deceptively simple focus on the eyes. Using just a pair of circles and eyebrows drawn at different angles, Harry demonstrated how the smallest changes to a single line can convey a huge range of emotions. Students were soon laughing as they tried this technique for themselves, producing some wonderfully expressive – and often hilarious – results.

From there, eyes were incorporated into full faces, first human and then animal, before Harry revealed another creative twist: eyes don’t have to belong to people or animals at all. By adding them to everyday, inanimate objects, students discovered how even the most ordinary items can be transformed into playful characters.

With their confidence growing, students moved on to creating their own comic strips. Harry explained the importance of narrative structure – an introduction, complication, resolution and conclusion – sharing some laugh-out-loud examples of his own work along the way. As students worked, he circulated the room, offering encouragement, thoughtful feedback and practical suggestions to help refine their ideas.

The workshop was a wonderful way to engage students creatively, building both their artistic skills and their understanding of visual storytelling. We are extremely grateful to Alison Watson and The Ascot Art Society for kindly funding this opportunity, and to Harry Venning for delivering such an engaging, inspiring and memorable experience for our students.