Zoom’s intricate and witty artwork is currently on sale in Christie’s “it’s our world” online auction, the culmination of a two-year campaign to encourage 30,000 children to create art about their environment.
The GCSE student, who goes to JCoss school in Barnet, has been writing his own award-winning comic The Zoom! since he was eight and his character Skanky Pigeon features monthly in the Beano.
Zoom has recently been focusing his considerable energy into capturing the buildings around where he lives, including the Crouch End Clock Tower and The Queens pub.
“I like drawing my area,” Zoom said. “I literally draw every brick. I have drawn so many of the buildings where I live, it feels like I’m walking in a comic book. It’s a strange feeling.”
Zoom walks around the area, takes photos, sketches the scene with pencil and ink and then scans it into his computer, where he adds the colour using a digital drawing board.
“I have some pictures of Crouch End from years ago and a lot of it looks the same,” he said. “Old buildings have more details and I like to put detail into my drawings.”
Zoom has never studied perspective, but he believes his slight quirks add character and realism to his drawings.
“A cartoonist once taught me there is no such thing as a straight line in real life,” Zoom said.
He likes capturing the contrast between old and new, such as the modern Dixy Chicken shop near the Broadway, with the building still displaying its original construction date, 1825.
The young entrepreneur hopes to sell some of his comic merchandise during the Crouch End Festival in June.
In the future, he wants to develop his comic business, continue experimenting with animation and start learning more about writing, directing and even advertising.
His style has developed, but his sense of humour has stayed the same.
“I think it’s British humour,” he said. “It probably comes from reading the Beano so much when I was younger. I used to read Beano comics that were pre-2000 and watch British sit coms like Father Ted and Blackadder.”
The charity auction is now live and will run until March 24: onlineonly.christies.com/s/its-our-world-the-online-auction/lots/229?pid=ecom_hp_ROW2_P2
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