Art cartoon: Express yourself

Sometimes I find I come up with ideas for cartoons but have to let them simmer gently for a while.

I must have jotted this one down but was unsure about it, as I didn't draw it up. Then I came across it a few months later and found myself laughing. So I drew it up, and it sold to the first magazine I sent it to.

It's one of two in the current issue of Reader's Digest. Both feature spot colour, rather than full colour, which is effective/lazy, depending on your point of view.

Here are some more art cartoons.

Social-networking cartoon: Don't tweet and drive

Here's a cartoon drawn to illustrate a newspaper article about tweeting and driving. A very real problem, apparently, along with texting and Facebooking while driving.

It amazes me that anyone would use a mobile phone while driving. I sometimes find I can't even listen to the radio and concentrate on the road at the same time!

The first draft of this was slightly more graphic. I lifted this drawing from an earlier, unsold (probably not surprising) cartoon about using phones while driving.

Ouch! That's gotta hurt. The paper didn't go for it, of course.

While on the subject, you can follow me on Twitter, provided you are not driving, of course.

One from the archives: Chicken fun

"You don't think you allow them a little too much free range?"

I keep hearing about the above named book, because it is now out in paperback. This cartoon appeared in Prospect magazine in May last year (along with this one) when the book came out in hardback.

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Cartoon for the Great Wall of Ramsgate

Here's a very big cartoon ...

Cartoon: 8ft by 4ft. Cartoonist: 5ft 8ins (and a half)

This went up on a public art project called the Great Wall of Ramsgate today. I was approached to do this last year. What impressed me about the original flyer looking for contributors is the fact that it included a call for cartoonists, see below, which is rare with this kind of thing.

I don't live in Ramsgate, I live just up the road in Broadstairs, but I'm a regular visitor and was happy to help out. The idea is that the artworks create a mural that will brighten up a rather unsightly 1,000ft-long wall that has been built around the old Pleasurama site on the seafront and is going to be in place for several years. It's looking good so far ...

Rather nice photo, taken from this flickr page

I'm not sure mine fits the brief of "Ramsgate past, present and future" or that it tells "Ramsgate's story". It is a new version of a Reader's Digest cartoon from 2006. But it's a Ramsgate-type scene, with sunburt folk on the beach and a guy with a metal detector. I hope the local council don't get too upset about all the litter under the sand ... or indeed the skeleton.

Here's one of those annoying animated GIF things that shows the process of drawing and painting the board:


Make gif animation

I have drawn cartoons on big boards at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, in 2007 and 2008, but this is the first time I've done a full colour one, and the first time I've done something that will be seen for more than two days. It was outside my comfort zone, but I really enjoyed doing it.

I found working with acrylic paints a great medium for cartoons, far less fussy than watercolours. You can go back and change things when you make mistakes, just like Photoshop!

Here are a few more selections from the wall: Phil Baker's view of the new Thanet wind farm, Ramsgate as seen by Mike Samson, and a painting of nearby Richborough Power Station by Peter Buckey.

And here's one from the people who were kind enough to supply the paints ...

Although the materials were provided, this was not a paying job, as there was no public funding. It's just about people trying to do something for their local environment.

So I now know just how big David Cameron's so-called "Big Society" is: it's 8ft by 4ft.

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Not Yet Sold: Cat and dog cartoon

"I couldn't imagine life without my little getaway in the country."

This cartoon has it all: a dopey looking dog, a sly cat, and the satirising of contemporary middle-class mores. Yet cartoon editors failed to see its charms, so I present it here in my occasional series on rejected cartoons: Not Yet Sold.

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Cycling cartoon: An Olympian effort

Here's a sneak peek at one of the cartoons I have submitted for exhibition at the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival 2011, which takes place in April.

The theme is Olympian Sports, and this is a new version of a cartoon I drew for the Kent Messenger when the Tour de France came through the county in 2007. This version is coloured using Faber-Castell Pitt brush pens, for those that care about that sort of thing.

It was a bit of an Olympian effort coming up with four cartoons on a sporting theme, as it's not a subject I turn to a lot, to say the least. This year I'll also be drawing a Big Board cartoon in Shrewsbury market square, so I need to think of another gag too. That one won't have bicycles in it though. I hate drawing bicycles.

The theme may appear to be a year early, as the London Olympics are in 2012, but it is in fact a tie-in with the Shropshire Olympian Festival, which takes place in June, and the Wenlock Olympian Games, also in Shropshire, in July.

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Pantomime cartoon: Nothing like a dame

As the Christmas pantomime season draws to an end, here's a cartoon on that subject, which can be seen in the January issue of Prospect magazine. Oh, yes it can! etc etc.

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Eskimo cartoon: A question of interpretation

This cartoon appears in the current issue of The Spectator. It's a bit of an odd one. I drew it and first sent it out last February. I can't really remember where the idea came from. I think I just liked the image of igloo skyscrapers.

But as there is no caption, I could claim that it is about the unremitting global spread of western capitalism, and submit it for a European cartoon contest. It would probably be in with a chance.

Interpretation is ultimately down to the reader. As the cartoon appears in a magazine dated January 1, it also looks like it's about returning to work after Christmas, though it was never intended as such.

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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.

Review of the Year type thing

It must be time for what reality-TV presenters call my "best bits", a round-up of the highlights of my cartooning year, as seen through this blog (mostly).

Yes, I know it's basically a round robin, but at least I didn't print it out with dodgy festive clip art around the edge and I'm not boring you about my kids' achievements or any challenging health issues, so cut me some slack.




Presenting a talk and slideshow about my cartoons for the first time was certainly a high point of the year for me. I wrote about that experience here. It was a buzz getting an audience reaction to my cartoons.

The Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, the fifth I've attended, below, was great as usual, and I'm now in the process of trying to think up cartoons on an Olympics theme for next April's festival. More live cartooning took place at the Big Draw, where I fought valiantly in the Battle of the Cartoonists – didn't win though.

It was great to be in an exhibition at the Cartoon Museum for the first time. Ink and the Bottle is entirely cartoons about drinking. Here's another from the exhibition, and a festive one too ...

"Oh no, look who's in..."
Another first for me was spending the General Election night at the Groucho Club. We drew lots of cartoons and people supplied us with lots of free booze as a result. That was a better outcome than the election. Here's a cartoon about the fallout from that ...

"Remember, it's not the winning that's important, it's the not losing ..."

More drunkenness ... this year the Cartoonist's Club of Great Britain celebrated its 50th, so we had a party and we even kicked it old school with a convention at Butlins.

"Life's a beach."
I usually include a couple of cartoons that went down well in this round-up. This cloudspotters' cartoon, which I thought was too odd to sell, generated a lot of good feedback.


"Ha ha, that cloud looks just like Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, 1929-1931."

A personal favourite was my Bayeux Tapestry cartoon. That also got a lot of reaction, though quite a bit was of the "I don't get it" variety. Scoring a hat-trick in the Reader's Digest caption competition caused me to do a lap of honour around the room.

I should mention all the great cartoons by other people I've seen this year in exhibitions, many of which I wrote about for the PCO's Bloghorn: Ray Lowry, Fougasse, Toy Tales, Modern Toss, Rude Britannia, and Roland Searle.

And finally, it's great to know that I can head into 2011 knowing that I am officially as funny as Matt!

If you've enjoyed my cartoons this year, why not commission me to draw some for you in 2011!

Carol singers cartoon: A Christmas classic

"I do love the traditional Christmas songs."
This cartoon is one of two I've got in the Private Eye Christmas Special and it refers, as I'm sure most of you know, to Fairytale of New York, by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl.

I love the song (I still have a battered 7in single of it somewhere) but I do find it funny that it has become such a Christmas favourite despite those lyrics.

You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap, lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last

Like the best Christmas songs, it has an edge of cynicism and melancholy, the latter made worse by the tragically early death of Kirsty MacColl. I was a big fan both of her solo stuff and the contributions she made to records by some of my favourite acts, such as the Smiths and Billy Bragg. She was one of a kind.




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Christmas cartoon caption contest craziness

Can I really post two Santa Claus cartoons in a row? Well, it is [almost] Christmas. (Hang on, there's a pattern developing here ...)

Readers of the Daily Mail have been let loose on this cartoon, as it appears on their financial website This is Money, as the Austerity Christmas caption competition.

Click the link if you want to take part, apparently there's a suitably austere prize on offer.

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A few of my favourite things

"What happened to the old 'Naughty' and 'Nice' lists?"

If you're not completely fed-up with "Best of the Year" lists already, you may like to know that I (among many others) was asked to do one for the Forbidden Planet International blog.

It's a list of favourite comics/cartoons, films, TV and books from 2010 and can be read here: Best of the Year: 2010

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Deconstructing the snowman cartoon

Can I really post two snowmen cartoons in a row? Well, it is [almost] Christmas. Snowmen gags are great to do, as you can take the joke in so many different directions, as Bill "Calvin and Hobbes" Watterson demonstrates in these strips ...



My cartoon above came about as I was trying to think up Christmas cartoons and decided to break the "classic" snowman image into its constituent parts: two lumps of coal, a carrot, two sticks etc. The joke more or less instantly came out of that process. This is one of two I've got in the current Reader's Digest.

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Cartoon about woman who dialled 999 over snowman theft

You may have heard or read about the woman who called the emergency services over the theft of a snowman. It has provoked quite a few chuckles on Twitter and Facebook.

It happened here in Kent – in Chatham, innit? – so one of the newspapers for the area asked me to do a cartoon. As a subject for humour, it was a bit of a gift.

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Cat cartoon: There's an app for that

"Lame. Haven't you got an iPad?"

Because everyone likes a cat cartoon, right?

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Evolution cartoon: The job interview

"So ... where do you see yourself in four million years?"

Sometimes it pays to do a bit of picture research. I could've gone for the standard ape-like caveman look with this cartoon, but I decided to do a Google image search for artists' impressions of early man. It paid off I think. I might put him in some other cartoons ...

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Skiing cartoon: Downhill from here

"Fancy a swift one?"

While we're on the subject of alcohol-themed jokes, anyone fancy another? This is a "what happens next" visual joke, not something I do a lot of, and took a while to get right.

I have never been skiing, and have no plans to take it up. I'm more interested in the other leisure pursuit shown here, so I also spent quite a bit of time making the pub look cosy, like the kind of place I like to be in on a cold winter's day.

This cartoon is one of two of mine in the Christmas issue of Reader's Digest. It was taken in the early part of this year but they saved it until the weather got cold again. It's appropriate now as much of the UK is covered in snow, though not here on the Kent coast, as usual, to the disappointment of my kids.

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Cartoons in 'Ink and the Bottle' exhibition

I've got a couple of cartoons in the above exhibition at the Cartoon Museum in London. Neither are quite as colourful as the Donald McGill cartoon above, because they're the original ink drawings that were later scanned and coloured, using Photoshop, for Reader's Digest.

Here's one of them, a spin on a well-worn theme ...

"Bloody students."

As you've probably gathered, all the cartoons in the show are on a drinking theme. I saw it last night and it's very well put together, covering the good and bad points of Britain's favourite leisure activity.

The exhibition is not chronological, instead cartoons are linked by different aspects of the theme. It's fun to see how many similarities there are, despite the different times, between Ally Sloper, Andy Capp, and Viz. Go see.

UPDATE: The Radio 4 discussion on the Ink and the Bottle exhibition is online: Listen here

More HMV dog cartoons (scroll down).

Desert island cartoon: Out of office

"I'm worried we might have exceeded our annual leave entitlement."

Yes, there is still life in the old desert island scenario. This cartoon can be seen in the December issue of Prospect magazine, which once compiled a list of new takes on old themes.

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