Cartooning for a Cause

Allisa is the daughter of a friend of mine. She's in second grade, and unfortunately is struggling with brain cancer. She's responding well to treatment, but it is expensive.

So there was a huge fund-raising event - people around here are awesome, everyone was willing to help - where people could donate things for others to bid on to raise money. My offering was a cartooning class.

One of her fellow second-graders was very excited about getting to do cartooning, and convinced her mother to bid on it and win. She got to invite friends with her as well, and, since it was such a nice day, we got to hold the class outdoors:

Is there such a thing as Plein Air cartooning?

After teaching them how to create their own characters, I also wanted to show them how to draw those characters in action. They all voted to see super-hero action, naturally:

Apparently, I gesture dramatically when I draw dramatic things. As one should.

I liked this one too - along with superheroes, they wanted to make their characters spies. So I had to show them how to draw one scaling a building, to break in and do spy-stuff:

The mask was their idea. A creative bunch!

One of the best things about the class was that I was just giving examples here. They didn't all copy my hippo character, they made their own - dogs, penguins, tigers, monsters. Their creativity made it a great class to teach.

Also, if anyone out there wants to help Allisa, you can go to the donation site here. Thank you!