Weather cartoon: Line and washout

Traders in the seaside towns here in East Kent are being hit hard by this summer's terrible weather. Recently I was asked to do a cartoon to accompany a newspaper article on that subject, above.

Another rain cartoon of mine (I seem to do a lot this days!) was lifted by Time magazine for this blog post. This shows that it's not just small sites that use cartoons without asking. Obviously I'm glad that they have credited me and written about the cartoon, but I prefer it if people ask first before reusing cartoons, as clearly stated under Cartoons for You in the right-hand column, as there may in some cases be a fee involved.

Animal cartoon: Crazy times

"Your honour, this was simply a mutually agreed fish pedicure that went tragically wrong."

I drew this cartoon last year, when fish pedicures were all the rage, among people who go for that kind of thing anyway. Are they still popular? I've no idea. It's probably become a retro thing already. Anyway, this can be seen in the current Saga magazine.

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Law cartoon: Don't fence me in

This cartoon was commissioned to accompany a law magazine article about boundary disputes. Taking things to a ridiculous degree is always a good way to get a joke out of something.

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Cartoon on canvas

This week I painted a small canvas (20cm by 20cm) for a charity auction taking place later in the year.

It is in aid of the Willow Foundation, which works with seriously ill 16 to 40-year-olds. The charity arranges special days and experiences to allow for a break from the difficulties of diagnosis and treatment. A similar auction was held by the Willow Foundation a couple of years ago.

It was fun to break out the acrylic paints to add the colour, though as usual I miss the comfort of the Photoshop "undo" button! This is a simplified version, to allow for the square shape, of a cartoon that originally appeared in Reader's Digest.

Art cartoon: A matter of taste

I loved the recent Channel 4 TV series All in the Best Possible Taste, in which the artist Grayson Perry looked at questions of taste with regard to art, decor, fashion etc.

The by-product was that the programme was also a look at the British class system and one of the best, most non-judgemental takes on that subject that I've ever seen.

And as if that's not enough, there was some knockout artwork in it by the very amiable Perry. You can catch up via 4OD here.

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Animal cartoon: Do not adjust your monitor

"If you could have any super power, what would it be?"

An upside-down cartoon from the current issue of Saga.

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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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Not Yet Sold: At the cinema

Time for another in my occasional series of rejected cartoons. (Not that my cartoons are only occasionally rejected, you understand ...)

This was inspired by my six-year-old daughter who, largely to wind me up I think, likes to scoop up popcorn off the floor at the end of a film and shove it into her mouth, while saying, in a Homer Simpson-style voice, "Mmm ... floor popcorn."

You can see more Not Yet Sold cartoons here.

Humorous illustration: On the road

This falls into the category of humorous illustration, rather than gag cartoon, and was used to accompany a magazine article about driving laws. See more examples of humorous illustration here.

Diamond Jubilee cartoon: A lot of reign

I'm no weather forecaster, but when asked to draw a cartoon for an article on this summer's Diamond Jubilee celebrations, this was the image I came up with. It looks likely, after all.

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Royston Cartoons on Facebook

Last week I set up a Facebook page that is just about cartoons, so that anyone interested in seeing my work on that platform doesn't have to look at all the other stuff (dimly remembered nights in the pub, embarrassing childhood photos etc).

The address, logically enough is facebook.com/roystoncartoons and it's a public site, so you don't need to be my "friend" to view it. So in the needy way that Facebook makes us behave, I'll say please visit and LIKE it!

Click here to visit facebook.com/roystoncartoons

Technology cartoon: In another world

"Look at him, with his head in the Cloud."

More technology cartoons.

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Noted illustrator?

While doing spot of self-Googling (hey, c'mon, we've all done it ...) I found this on eBay: the first issue of DoodleBug comic from the summer of 1987.

It sold for £8, OK it's not quite in the Action Comics #1 league, but hey, it was only 25p at the time! What really tickled me about this though, was the following ...

Noted illustrator? Ha, that's going on my business cards!

Also of interest is the fact that the comic was kept in "temperature-controlled storage" for five years before it came out (!) And I'm heartened to find that one rusty staple is the only imperfection, I'd have thought some of the jokes fall into that category.

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Cartoon tribute to H.M. Bateman

The man who bought a sofa that was not in a sale

I can heartily recommend the exhibition H.M. Bateman: The Man Who Went Mad on Paper which is currently at the Cartoon Museum in London. For sheer draughtsmanship it's one of the best shows I've seen there.

Bateman was famous for his "The man who ..." cartoons, depicting social gaffes of the day. The cartoon above, which appeared in Prospect last year, is an attempt to use the Bateman template in a modern scenario. Quite a few contemporary cartoonists have done this.

It was fun to draw, mixing my own style with elements of Bateman's. I used The girl who ordered a glass of milk at the Café Royal, below, as inspiration.

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Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival 2012 flies by

"Take over, Number Two, I'm updating my Facebook status."

The Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival was held last weekend and was as great a success as ever, despite the presence of rain this year (we've been lucky in the past).

Above is a cartoon of mine from the Flights of Fancy exhibition, which can be seen at the Visual Arts Network gallery in the town's Market Hall until the end of the month (the exhibition then goes on to other venues, details here). I've got three others in the show, all original drawings (this is a signed print of a cartoon drawn for a PR company a few years ago, on the theme of "social not-working" in the workplace).

"Insert funny caption here ..."

This cartoon was used on the Reader's Digest stall at the festival, as one of the drawings for the Beat the Cartoonist caption contest on the Friday. They'd packed up for the day before I made it to the stall, so I've no idea what the public came up with, and the cartoon has not yet been published, so I'm not going to tell you the original caption.

I was not an official participating cartoonist this year, so I was able to get around and see more than usual, without having to worry about getting a Big Board painted. So this year I managed to get to the Reader's Digest talk by Steve Way, the cartoon editor, and Martin Colyer, the design director.

Cartoonists work in isolation and part of the fun of Shrewsbury, for us, is meeting the public and getting feedback for our work, which is hard to find. You don't usually get to hear anyone actually laugh at your gags. The Digest talk gave me that as they showed all the cartoons from the past year and I had 11 gags in those 12 issues. Martin put a few questions to me and, as readers of this blog will know, I'm always happy to yak on about cartoons ...

I'll spare you the pics of drunken, singing cartoonists this year, but here's one of Matt Buck and I (thanks to Nicolette Petersen) at the Humurals, where cartoonists do on-the-spot drawings to create an instant exhibition. Here's one I came up with, on the festival theme of Flying.

Lots of us involved in the festival, and others, were tweeting about #shrews12 throughout the weekend and posting pictures. You can see a round-up of lots of that here, and we've put lots more words and pictures at the Procartoonists.org blog. I'm already looking forward to next year's festival which, amazingly, will be the tenth.

Marathon v Cartoon Festival. Tough choice

It's the London Marathon this weekend, so I drew this cartoon for a newspaper preview of the event.

Sadly I cannot take part, ahem, because as usual it clashes with the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival. I'm off up to Shrewsbury tomorrow. Expect a blog post on that next week. In the meantime, here's a cartoon drawn for the "Humurals" at last year's festival, which had a sporting theme.

"Remember the plan: on the final stretch, you go down."

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Cinema cartoon: Film fun

"Wow! That's probably the best Kyrgyzstani neo-realist horror-comedy crossover I've seen so far this year."

The job of a cartoonist is to poke fun, and that can apply even when the subject is something you actually like.

This accompanies an article in Isle magazine about two local film clubs. I'm a fully paid-up member of one, the Thanet Film Society, and regularly attend its screenings at the Palace cinema here in Broadstairs.

They actually did show a Kyrgyzstani film recently. It wasn't a horror-comedy crossover though. I'm eternally grateful to them for bringing films that barely get shown anywhere to our corner of Kent, and I hope they'll forgive this spot of piss-taking. Just doin' my job.

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More family drawing talent

I've already blogged here about my son's love on drawing, but my 19-year-old nephew is a keen scribbler too.

Oscar is studying graphic design at university, but when he's not doing that he's drawing and putting stuff on his Wordpress blog, which you can at oscarianrobertson.wordpress.com

It's pretty crazy stuff, a clear influence being the drawings of Vic Reeves, with a touch of David Shrigley. Take a look. Warning: contains wrestlers. Lots of wrestlers.

Greetings card cartoon: Here we row again

This cartoon, which was in an exhibition at last year's Henley Regatta, is now available as a greetings card. It will be sold in the shop at Henley this year.

It costs £2.50, with proceeds going to the Stewards' Charitable Trust, which works with schools across the country, encouraging young people to learn to row. Even Trenton Oldfield can't complain about that.

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Topical cartoon: April fuel

OK, I know "Keep Calm" poster spoofs have been done to death, but it seemed appropriate for this cartoon about the UK's fuel "crisis" (read "panic") which appears in a local Kent newspaper this week.

I tried the gag first at Private Eye last week but they passed on it -- probably because they'd planned this Keep Calm cover spoof. You can't keep a good meme down.