MARK
DAVID
Mark David brings more than 20
years experience in cartooning, newspaper and book illustration
to his workshops. During the ’80s and ’90s his work
appeared in almost 100 books, including Rachel to the
Rescue, Fantastic Plastic and Minimal
Farm. He illustrated The Case of the Graveyard
Ghost and Other Mysteries,
written by Duncan Ball, which was published
in 2005 and the follow-up book, The Case of the Vampire's
Wire and Other Mysteries
was released in 2006.
His
most recent publication is Crazy Cars, a
book of bizarre, detailed drawings and humorous text aimed
specifically at Primary School
age boys.
  
He was
a political cartoonist for The Financial Review and The
Bulletin, a regular cartoonist in The Sydney Morning
Herald for ten years, and now works for The Australian as
a graphic artist. He's won major awards in cartooning and has
also been a judge in national and international cartooning
competitions. Contracted with The New York Times Syndicate,
his cartoons now appear sporadically in Europe, North and South
America and Asia, and are translated into several languages.
 
Mark uses
a method of teaching cartooning which he has developed specifically
for achieving stunning results with even the most reluctant illustrators.
Students are shown foolproof tricks in cartoon drawing in the
first few minutes of the demonstration. This raises the students’ level
of confidence and within a few more minutes they’re achieving
excellent results drawing up to 25 different facial expressions.
It sounds hard. In fact it sounds impossible, but it works. The
method he uses has been explained in his self-published book, The
Easiest Way to Learn Cartooning. Aspects of cartooning
taught include things like drawing faces and expressions, animals,
and the illusion of movement and perspective. Older students
are shown simple, yet powerful methods for generating cartoon
ideas.
 
A major part
of the talk for all age groups is an explanation of some of the
aspects of the business of cartooning for books and newspapers,
book illustration and the preparation of roughs. Students are
shown actual colour roughs and artwork from published books and
are given the chance to see for themselves the different stages
of an illustrator’s work in the world of publishing.
Mark does not pretend that his success in cartooning was ‘handed to him
on a plate.’ He stresses, in a lively and entertaining fashion, the benefits
of a bit of perseverance and describes some of the times when things were not
going very well. He is happy talking to students from Kindergarten to year
12.
More information
about Mark can be found at his website.
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