Life imitating cartoons. Part 3

"I don't think 'discrimination against lazy people' is a valid claim"

Time for another in my occasional series of cartoons that predict the future. And I think this must be the best one yet.

The evidence, above, is a cartoon from a careers textbook on the subject of job interviews from 2007. It accompanies a chapter called Equal Opportunities Issues. Ha ha, look, I made a ridiculous joke! That could never happen!

Fast forward to 2010 and we have a news story which broke this week: The word "reliable" in a Jobcentre advert was removed as it "may discriminate against the unreliable".

I'm beginning to think I should work for a think tank as a "futuroligist". Check out my previous posts in this area:

Life imitating cartoons. Part 1

Life imitating cartoons. Part 2

Reader's Digest caption contest: update

UPDATE UPDATED (1/2/10): Voting has now closed. The winner will be announced in the March issue.

The caption options for Beat the Cartoonist are now on the Reader's Digest website. As usual, they are my original caption (anonymously, of course) along with three captions submitted by readers.

The choices are:

"Nice touch."

"Hanged for putting a plastic bottle in the dustbin. See what happens when you vote in the Green Party?"

The Britain in Bloom entry lacked sensitivity.

"You should have read my file. I have hayfever!"

The last time I was in the competition, my caption was the winner, although overall the readers are very much in the lead!

Smoking cartoon: Not big or clever

Here is yet another snowman cartoon, just as the ice is melting (around here anyway.) This can be seen in the current issue of The Spectator.

Someone asked me if that's an underage smoker at the front. He does look a bit small. I think I just ran out of snow. I drew this last summer so there wasn't much around. Either that or it's conclusive proof that smoking stunts your growth.

Royston's portfolio website

Picasso cartoon at the BBC

Radio 4's PM Blog was looking for some free art, as a bit of a joke after the BBC was criticised for using licence-payers money to buy art. So I sent them some. Click the image to enlarge or go here. The cartoon was originally in Private Eye back in September.

Royston's portfolio website

Swimming cartoon: A New Year tradition

As is the case with many UK seaside towns, there is a tradition here in Broadstairs which involves brave/foolish people swimming in the sea on New Year's Day.

Needless to say, I do not take part, the English Channel in January does not appeal, but I do tend to go along to watch/laugh. This cartoon was drawn to illustrate an article on the topic which appears in the current edition of Isle, a local listings magazine.

Royston's portfolio website

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

"Apparently, it's organic."

Well, after complaining last week that we've not had any festive snow, some did finally arrive here at the weekend. And here is the snowman we made ...

My wife tells me that the carrot is organic, which makes it a case of life imitating cartoons i.e. the one above which can be seen in the current issue of Prospect.

Talking of snowmen, I was commissioned by one of the Kent papers to do a snowy weather cartoon and somehow managed to turn it into a gag about Rage Against the Machine making it to the coveted Christmas Number One spot.

The funny thing is, I already had a punk snowman, with a carrot mohawk, in my sketchbook from months ago when I was brainstorming Christmas cartoons. I liked the image but didn't know what to do with it as a cartoon. Until now. So the moral is never throw away old sketchbooks!

I'm now taking a break from blogging until January 2010. All the best of the festive season to you. Have a good one.

Royston's portfolio website

In the Reader's Digest caption competition again

One of my drawings is being used to "Beat the Cartoonist" at Reader's Digest again. Please be gentle with me ...

Can you think of a caption? The closing date is January 10, which, coincidentally, is my birthday!

Royston's portfolio website

Review of the Year type thing

As the end of the year approaches, it's time for a round-up of my cartooning highlights, as seen through this blog. Don't worry, I'm only doing 2009, not the whole decade, as most papers seem to be doing these days ...

The main highlight of the year has to be being a member of the Cartoonists team on TV's Eggheads, especially as we won!

The Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival is always a highlight of the cartooning year. As is the Big Draw.

It's always great when posts on the blog touch a chord with people. And If this isn't nice, I don't know what is and Keep Calm and Carry on Drawing, above, both got a good reaction.

It's also good to get good feedback from published cartoons, of course, and inevitably this happens most with cartoons in Private Eye. The Picasso cartoon and Granny on drugs went down well, someone emailed me to tell me they carry a copy of the latter around with them to show it to people! But the most astounding reaction was to the cartoon that appeared to show purveyors of organic food in a less than positive light ... I sold many copies to owners of organic food businesses, deli owners etc. Go figure.

"Everything here is organic, free-range, naturally produced, locally sourced, pesticide free, minimally packaged, and fairly traded – and yet, ironically, I am a complete bastard."

Contributing to the PCO's Travelling Moleskine, which was organised by the Culture Vulture was fun.

Getting a reaction to my IT Crowd-based cartoon from Graham Linehan, writer of the show, made me see there could be something to that Twitter lark.

It was amazing to find out that there was once another cartoonist called Royston who I later found out was a woman. I was sent a book featuring her work so I was able to see her brilliant Disney cartoon and other more saucy stuff.

It was nice to be one of the few cartoonists to win the Reader's Digest caption competition. And a caption contest with a difference over at the CCGB website proved to be a fun challenge.

Commission me in 2010, why dontcha?

Snowman cartoon: Who's that?

Apparently, lots of people here in the UK have snow today. People in London appear to be getting particularly excited about it on Twitter. As usual, there is none here on the tip of the Kentish coast, so I have to make do with snow cartoons instead.

This one can be found on a Christmas card in a gift shop near you (I sold the card company this and a slightly rude caption for a photo card). It can also be seen as a full-page cartoon on the back of the latest edition of Foghorn, the magazine of the Professional Cartoonists' Organisation.

You can read an archive of the Foghorn online, just click the button on the right-hand column of this blog (scroll down). To buy a print subscription to the mag, which comes out six times a year, go here.

In other news: There's an interview with me over at a US blog called David Wasting Paper. David is a self-confessed cartooning geek and has put the same questions to a whole load of cartoonists and comics artists, including Bill Griffith, Nick Downes, Dave Coverly, Chris Browne and Larry Gonick. There's lots to read there, well worth a look during the inevitable festive period down-time.

Royston's portfolio website

Office cartoon: The sick day

"Is somebody here implying that I was not really sick?"

One of the best things about being self-employed is that you never have to make that humiliating phone-call where you put on a croaky voice and call in sick.

(Having said that, I do remember loving that feeling when you hang up the phone, and you know you've now got a day of watching DVDs while sitting on the sofa under a duvet ahead of you!)

This cartoon was drawn to accompany an article about the number of working days lost to illness. Why do companies whinge on about this all the time? You're never going to get away from the fact that people get ill, and that there are some days when people just don't feel like working! I've never worked anywhere where they have "duvet days", but it sounds like a great idea.

Royston's portfolio website

Cartoon coasters: An ideal Christmas present

Sets of cartoon coasters (above, click to enlarge) featuring my gags are available for sale over at cartoonz.co.uk – the ideal Christmas present for the person in your life who likes a drink and a laugh but also likes to keep their table free of marks!

They are available as sets of four, with various designs on a drinking and socialising theme, to choose from. Steve Willis, who runs the site, gave me two sets featuring my cartoons last week and I was impressed with the quality and also how well cartoons work in this context.

My dad worked in the licensing trade when I was a kid and I remember cartoons were very popular on beermats back then, particularly gags by Larry. Coasters and beermats are a no-brainer for cartoons really, I suppose, as you've simply got a square blank canvas which is about the size of a magazine cartoon. Go buy!

Royston's portfolio website

Boardroom cartoon: A man for our times

"Our new finance director, Ebeneezer, tells me can start immediately on identifying areas where we can make cuts."

This year seems to have been characterised by cuts, redundancies and companies banging on about cutting waste. So when I was commissioned to do a festive gag in my ongoing series of boardroom cartoons, to be used as an Christmas e-card, it occurred to me to throw Ebeneezer Scrooge in there. He'd probably be seen as an asset to most companies these days.

Royston's portfolio website

More cartoons from the other Royston

"Sometimes, Phillips, I just like to sit at home and look at the four walls."

I managed to get round to scanning a few cartoons by the other Royston, the pseudonym of Victoria Cowdroy, who worked as a cartoonist in Australia in the 1940s.

I posted her excellent Disney cartoon a few weeks ago, and here are three more. Like all the cartons from the 1941 Man annual, they're full-pagers, hence the captions appear small here. Click to enlarge.

They're mostly in a "saucy" style, as above, though the one below appears to be making a comment on bankers, who were clearly held in as high esteem then as they are now.

"Eleven o'clock, an appointment with the Consul. Lunch at one with Sir Basil Binge. The Russian Ambassador at four, and report to the Parole Board at five."

This one, though is definitely in a more saucy vein. It's pretty racy stuff, as this couple have clearly been up to something naughty. The look on the face of the patient is brilliant, although, slightly disconcertingly, he does look rather a lot like Ronald Reagan.

"Well, you said to pacify him, didn't you?"

The bad crop, which turns Royston into "oyston", is the fault of the publishers, by the way, not my scanning. Thanks again to Denise Miles for sending me the book.

Click here for cartoons from the male Royston!

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.

Art cartoon: Stealing from the Masters

"All done, squire – bish, bash, Bosch."

This is one many art cartoons I've drawn over the years, in an attempt to make myself look clever. It's one of two gags by me that can be seen in the December edition of Reader's Digest.

Often with art cartoons I'll draw an approximation of the original, as I did with this Picasso cartoon and this Magritte one, but here it seemed as though using the original would work better for the joke, as the decorator character is supposed to have painted it ... and would be a lot less work!

You can see the full painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights (1503-4) by Hieronymus Bosch, in some detail here. It's almost like a bizarre cartoon itself, in all its wacky glory. I didn't put the usual "Apologies to ..." on this one as, well, it would have given the punchline away.

Royston's portfolio website

Never underestimate the power of cartoons

"I've called you in here to keep you in the loop, as we've made some very long term investments."

A business magazine I work for has run a short feature about my cartoons, alongside the editor's five favourite gags of the past three years. It is usually such a constant battle trying to convince people that cartoons can be a powerful asset for their business that it's a joy when you know someone gets it. Here's an excerpt:

"You can never underestimate the power of a cartoon to get straight to the heart of the matter and say succinctly what it can take several pages to explain. This was brought home to me when I attended an annual summit and found Royston's cartoon from issue 33 (above) as part of one CEO's presentation."

That could not be more on-message! Cartoons work. If you want to commission me, or to re-use any of my existing cartoons, email me on roystonrobertson [at] gmail.com.

For more, visit my portfolio site.

Restaurant cartoon: Watercolour challenge

"I'll have the soup of tomorrow, please."

I've been "kickin' it old school" today, breaking out the watercolours to produce some cartoons to submit for exhibition at next April's Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival.

Here's a sneak peek at one of them. The theme is Magic, Myth and Mystery so I did a new version of a cartoon published in The Spectator and The Week last year. The colours are actually brighter than they look here. I've not quite got the hang of scanning watercolours, probably because I don't do it very often. Any tips on how to make watercolours look good on screen welcome!

Royston's portfolio website

Weather cartoon: No November

I was asked to do a cartoon to accompany an article about unseasonably warm November weather, with trees in full blossom and roses in bloom in some areas. This put me in mind of the Thomas Hood poem November, because I'm such a cultured kinda guy ...

OK, I admit that I only know the poem because it was in a pop song years ago (Opus 4 by the Art of Noise). Anyway, it was a chance to do something a little different from the usual gag cartoon and I was quite pleased with the way it turned out.

Having said that, I may have made a mistake, as looking online now I'm not 100 per cent sure the poem is called November. I've also found references to it as simply "No!". That would make sense, as the word November is really a punchline. Either way, this is of course just an excerpt from the poem. You can read the full text here.

Royston's portfolio website

Art for Saatchi's sake

Having just watched School of Saatchi, a reality-TV show about wannabe artists, I think the one thing it proved is that with contemporary art it's not what you create that matters it's how you explain it.

The contestants appeared to be judged on their ability to waffle on about their work, rather than on the artworks themselves. So, in a bid to get my cartoons accepted by the Art Establishment, I thought it would be fun to take one of my old gags and give it the contemporary art treatment. Here we go ...


"Well, one of us is in the wrong cartoon" (2006)
Ink on paper, digital colour added

This piece is, at its heart, an indignant expression of the alienation of the modern condition. The Arctic, or indeed Antarctic, wasteland depicted here can be seen as a metaphor for the cold, lifeless expanse of our technological age.

A palpable air of mystery drives the work: Which of these animals, both in their way cultural icons, is out of its natural habitat, perhaps cast adrift by the vicissitudes of global warming? Penguin or bear? Or is it, in a very real sense, both? Or perhaps neither?

Or is it, in fact, us, the viewer?

What do you reckon? Can I get away with it? Anyone got Charles Saatchi's mobile number?

More art. Explanations available on request

10 pun-based jokes every cartoonist has done

"Yeah, we've been squatting here for a few months now."

This joke, from ten years ago, is clearly a "play on words" gag. I used to do a lot of puns and word-play gags back then. I do fewer of them now, though if I think of one that seems original I'll still run with it.

The problem with puns, you see, is that if you've thought of it, there's a very good chance someone else has too. So, I present ...

10 pun-based jokes every* gag cartoonist has come up with

1. Frog's porn (self explanatory)
2. An astronaut who "needs his space"
3. A wordy dinosaur said to be a Thesaurus
4. In tray / Out tray / Shake it all about tray
5. Lawrence of Suburbia (see also Suburban Fox)
6. A cyclops baby who has "got his father's eye"
7. His master's vice (Note. pun gags are often rude)
8. "This is from the artist's blue period" (See note no.7)
9. Eee-by-gum mail
10. Cavemen going clubbing

(*Well, every UK cartoonist at least. And yes, of course I include myself in all of these.)

For less common but still fairly popular jokes, see also NHS Very Direct, cats "landing on their feet", Gulliver's travellers cheques etc etc. If you've got any more, add them in Comments below.

The squatting cartoon appeared in Modern English Teacher magazine in 1999. The editor had seen it in the Journal of Silly, hence the strapline at the top. They did pay me for re-using it though, unlike JoS which was a small-press mag chock full of gags and offered only exposure. Normally such offers are best avoided but the JoS was quite widely seen and was great for those of us who were starting out at the time.

Royston's portfolio website