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2020vision Merchants Connected ArchivesYear 5s MARVEL at illustrator Tim Quinn - a report by Archie Briggs
Year 5 were lucky enough to have a session with Marvel Comic (and old friend of the Junior School) Tim Quinn. Archie Briggs takes up the story...
On Friday 20th January 2012, Year 5 had an art lesson with Tim Quinn who is an illustrator for Marvel comics.
First he told us his earliest memory which was that when he was two nearly three they moved to a big Victorian house and his mum gave him some charcoal and told him he could draw on the walls because she was going to paint them later anyway. So the little Tim said, "What shall I draw?" and his mum said "what do you like?" and Tim said " I like eggs." So he drew an egg on the wall and his dog came in to the room and Tim liked dog's noses so he drew a nose on the egg. He didn't want a nose without eyes so he drew an eye looking backwards. Then his 5 years older brother came in and took the charcoal off him to do his own drawings. Tim got really angry and started demanding for the charcoal back. Then his brother gave it back and Tim said, ‘I don't want it you've ruined my picture now". Then he went downstairs and scribbled along the top of his egg. Then his brother said ‘ooh, it's a hedgehog. It needs a name, a mouth and some legs.' So Tim drew a smiley mouth, gave it four legs and then wrote the only name he knew how to spell, which was Tim, so he made Tim the hedgehog.
Tim taught us how you can make a comic character out of any object. He told us that when he worked for the Beano, the editor told him they needed a new idea for a comic book and the person next to Tim said, "maybe you could write a story about a house brick." The other man drew a house brick with arms, legs and a face then put a brief case in the house brick's hand. They made stories about the house brick and everybody loved it.
Then he told us to draw a banana in 6 seconds. He told us, we could put anything we wanted on the banana like a cape or a mask. We could put anything in his hand like a flower or an umbrella. And then we had to make up a character for a story.
The next thing he told us to do was draw a poster for a Jack and the bean stalk play and to draw our favourite bit of the story on there. I drew Jack climbing to the top and seeing the castle.
The next thing he taught us was that when you draw somebody, you should always draw them in stick version first then start to add details. At the end of the lesson he told us to draw the outline of a yacht then start putting in the details. He showed us pictures that artists had drawn and showed us how they had done it in the pictures. He taught us that we should bend the arms and legs of a person in the picture. Then the lesson was over and he gave out drawings from comics on our way out.
I learned a lot from him and enjoyed the lesson.