Cartoon advent calendar:Day 21. Silent night

"We're having a quiet Christmas this year ..."

There are loads of festive gags in the Christmas issue of Private Eye, which is out now, including this one.

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Family cartoon: Saving energy

"Don't disturb your father when he's in stand-by mode."

I drew the cartoons for the Money pages of the new issue of Reader's Digest. Here's one of them, which illustrated an article on energy-saving devices.

This doubles as a word of advice to my own children, who often see me on stand-by when we watch kids' films at the cinema, especially ones involving lots of CGI animals. I can feel my eyelids going heavy just talking about it.

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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.

Family cartoon: Back to school

"You don't have to look quite so happy every time you see that sign..."

As the summer holidays draw to a close, here's a "back to school" cartoon, drawn for a local newspaper. I'd be lying if I said this was in no way autobiographical. Sorry, kids!

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New cartoon business card

I decided it was time for a new business card, as my existing one has an old email address on it and I'm fed-up of crossing it out.

So I've just knocked this together, with a cartoon that appeared in Private Eye in the summer. Its shape allowed me to design the card in a vertical shape rather than the more traditional horizontal layout. This means I can get a lot more information in, so this card includes the address for this blog as well as my portfolio site.

Once they're back from the printers I will no doubt thrust one into your hand, reader, should we meet. If you can't wait until then, feel free to print this off and attach it to some card from a cornflakes packet.

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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Drugs cartoon: Keeping it simple

"Mother, are you sure your marijuana use is purely medicinal?"

This cartoon appears in the current Private Eye. Often, with gag cartoons, when you first come up with the idea you want to throw everything including the kitchen sink into the joke, and then you find you have to simplify it.

With this one, the old lady was originally going to be holding a Bob Marley LP, and I even considered putting her in a "Legalise it" T-shirt, complete with cannabis leaf logo! In the end the Rasta hat and slightly stoned expression seemed to be enough.

There was a time, I think, when I think a cartoon like this would have been considered racist, as it plays on black stereotypes. Thankfully, we've moved on. The fact is that a lot of humour, particularly cartoons, plays on clichés and stereotypes, and as long as they're not used to incite hatred, I don't think it's a problem. This TV sketch, for example, may not have been aired a few year ago. But it's not racist, it's just funny.



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Family cartoon: Life imitates art

When this Reader's Digest cartoon was published last summer, I showed it to my son as it had been inspired by playing Hangman with him. After I explained the joke (he is only six, after all) he suggested that we play a game of Whole Life Tariff! So we did.

I mention this now as earlier in the week I found the game on a piece of paper, while sorting through a pile of receipts. Here it is:


My son – who is not called Josh, by the way! – did not get the answer (below, upside-down of course) so the prisoner spends his life in jail. Humane, but not quite as much fun as Hangman.

Answer:
(ɥɔɐǝq ǝɥʇ ʇɐ ǝɹǝʍ ǝʍ) ɹıɐɥɔ ʞɔǝp

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Cartoon from Reader's Digest humour issue

This cartoon is in the September issue of Reader's Digest which is billed as a "special humour issue" and features a bumper crop of cartoons.

Yet again, this is one that came to me while on a train, this time while playing Hangman with my son. Yes, I know I should switch off from work more often, but cartoonists rarely do, particularly as so many jokes are gleaned from everyday life.

Like my son and I, the pair in the cartoon are playing the game with film and TV titles. No prizes for guessing the film here. It's one that has inspired several cartoons by me over the years.

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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.