Magazine cartoons: Odd parenting

Here's a cartoon from the new issue of The Oldie. Hi-vis jackets is one of those topics I seem to go back to again and again. And here's another one about odd parenting from the last issue of Private Eye.

"You can over-encourage kids, you know."

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Greetings cards

Here are two new greetings cards available from Country Cards. Both are previously published magazine gags that get a second outing in card form. Which is nice.

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Cartoons about Lego

"I hope there's no product placement in this."

This cartoon about The Lego Movie can be seen in the current Private Eye. And here are a couple of older Lego cartoons. 

"I must say I'm not convinced by Lego Jenga."

I heard the Lego Jenga line on QI on BBC Two the other day, but I can assure you I didn't steal it from there. I stole it from my son. And talking of stealing, the one below never sold, which is a shame as I thought it was a nice visual gag.

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Cartoon advent calendar:Day 13. Play for today

"No, we did not book online."

Ah, the school nativity. I'm looking forward to one next week in which my son is King Herod. Everyone knows the bad guy roles are the best.

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Cartoon advent calendarDay 9: A bit flaky

I think you can be cynical in Christmas cartoons, but you can't be downright misanthropic, which is probably why nobody went for this slightly odd cartoon.

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Money cartoons: A kipper and a banker

This cartoon is about Kippers – that's Kids In Parents' Pockets, Eroding Retirement Savings. No, really. It was a new one on me, too. These cartoons were drawn for the Money pages of Reader's Digest and can be seen in the June issue.

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Cartoon advent calendar: Day 23. Making a list

Today's advent cartoon is another from the Christmas Private Eye.

I did one similar to this a few years ago, which didn't sell, where he had three lists: Nice, Naughty and Misunderstood. But it seemed right to rework it this year in the light of the riots across England, after which people were searching for reasons for young people going on the rampage.

"Alienated" and "disaffected" were words used by Tony Blair in a post-riots speech.

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Cartoon advent calendar:Day 12. The nativity

"If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this drama ..."

Here's today's advent cartoon. This was a Private Eye Christmas card cartoon last year.

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Strike cartoon: The home front

The kids are off school today because of the public sector strike, which makes this cartoon, which I drew today for a local paper, somewhat autobiographical.

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

"If you've been affected by any of the issues raised in this drama ..."

Here's the Christmas card I drew for Private Eye this year. Click the image to enlarge.

I very nearly didn't send them this one because the caption, which you will surely have heard at the end of many a gritty TV drama, has been used in other contexts in cartoons. But I hadn't seen it applied to the story of Jesus, and as that concerns teen pregnancy, homelessness and child murder, it seemed appropriate.

I'm taking a blogging break until January, so all the very best of the festive season to you.

Still hanging around: Volcanic ash cartoon

OK, enough politics* already, there's another story in the news that doesn't seem to be going away.

I thought this cartoon on the volcanic ash cloud, which I drew for a local paper a few weeks ago, would have a limited shelf life, but the infamous plume appears to still be with us. So I thought I'd give it another airing here.

And it seems there is still life in the "smokers' huddle" cartoon too, one of the great contemporary clichés of UK cartooning!

(*I spent Election Night with a group of other cartoonists at the Groucho Club in London. You can read a short report on this at the Bloghorn)

CCTV cartoon: A new spin on an old idea

"It followed me home, can we keep it?"

This cartoon appears in this week's edition of The Spectator. "He followed me home, can we keep him?" is, of course, an old line which has appeared in many forms in gag and strip cartoons over the years. It's usually a dog or some other creature. This was an attempt to put a modern spin on the line.

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The Travelling Moleskine

I recently took part in a Travelling Moleskine project, as part of this year's Big Draw event. The Moleskine notebook is doing the rounds of members of the Professional Cartoonists' Organisation and idea is that each person makes his or her mark then passes it on, via the post, to the next volunteer.

The theme for the drawings is "naughtiness" and I gave them something old and something new. The old was this re-drawn version of a gag which featured in Prospect magazine in 2005.


"I don't need to check anything with 'the boys in forensics', I know it was you."

I traced this from a copy of the original and pasted into the Moleskine book. Cheating a little bit, I know, so I drew direct the following oddity directly onto the notebook page.


They were the naughty children we were warned about: Leaned back too far on his chair; The wind changed; Swallowed apple pips; Went blind doing "that"

It was a chance to do something different to the usual gags. It came out OK, I think, though I found it a tricky surface to work on as the paper is quite dark, plus it seems to absorb the ink very quickly, leaving a line considerably more dull than the deep black lines I'm used to.

Around 30 Moleskines have been sent out by the Culture Vulture, the organisation acting on behalf of the Campaign for Drawing, which stages the Big Draw every autumn. More details on the Moleskines can be found at theculturevulture.co.uk and you can see some of the works so far at this Flickr group

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Restaurant cartoon: A second helping

Here's a cartoon that was in The Spectator last week and makes a re-appearance this week in the media digest magazine The Week.

I tend to find that, broadly speaking, my cartoons fall into two categories: there are the ones that are based on observations of life, they're usually topical (in the sense that they are about the times we live in, rather than about this week's news) and, at the risk of sounding a little pretentious, there's a kind of "truth" to them. Then there are the ones that are just a bit silly, a throwaway line, sometimes a pun, a play on words, or a visual pun. "Soup of tomorrow" falls into the latter category!

To elaborate further, here's an example of one from the "observation of life" category ...

And here's one from the "throwaway line" category ...


I suppose, on balance, I find it more rewarding when I come up with cartoons in the first category. But I try not to take myself too seriously (a good idea if you're a cartoonist!) so it's always fun to do the "boom-boom" gags too.

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Reader's Digest cartoon: The family way

I find my best cartoons are the ones inspired by real-life events. I recently met a married couple who had a young child plus a boy and a girl who were from each of their previous marriages. I was finding it hard to remember which kid was the offspring of which parent when it occurred to me ... what if the parents couldn't keep track? Hey, cartoon idea! This gag is in the August issue of Reader's Digest. By the way, no comment is intended on what the media has taken to calling "blended" families. It's just a joke.