Win things

'Sigh'-this sunny weather we've had over the past few days has been wasted on me- i've been stuck indoors revising computer techie stuff in advance of some job interviews next week. Anyway, enough of that. I was cheered up to see that Reader's Digest has used one of my cartoons for their Beat the Cartoonist competition (no, you don't get the chance to beat me with a stick). It's at this webpage: http://www.readersdigest.co.uk/caption_contest.php

What you do is think of a caption for the cartoon below- the three best get posted online, along with my original one- it's all anonymous so you don't know which is mine- then people vote for their favourite. If yours is the caption chosen you win stuff- it's all explained at the website.

So- good luck if you choose to have a go- I'm heading back to the world of LANs n WANs... (edit-please note- I just previewed this post and it looked like this was the caption- it isn't- that would be too surreal even for a Larson cartoon)

Changes

I still think my cartoon style is evolving, and I thought it would be interesting to compare two cartoons drawn 1 year apart. This first one was drawn last year, and was published in The Oldie. (n.b. thinking that it would be extra clever I initially wanted the caption to read ‘Sick dog’- but that would require the reader to understand that the kids use ‘Sick’ to mean ‘cool’. Well, they used to- no doubt that particular bit of urban slang is out of date now).

This next cartoon was drawn last month, and is in the current Spectator. I still don’t consider myself a natural drawer, and can spend ages on what seems to be a simple design- e.g. the feet took me almost half a day to get right- it was driving me mental achieving the correct foreshortening. I could have hidden them in the folds of the robes, but I was determined not to give up.

Incidentally, I originally had the caption as ‘Don’t blame yourself- it was Caesar’s own fault for being soft on knife crime’. I sent it to Private Eye and they quite rightly rejected it. Knife crime is a bit of a cliché for cartoons now I think. So, I thought I’d try a subtler caption, with a political spin on it, and sent it to The Spectator- thankfully they liked it.

Triplets

Suddenly I’m not so fed up with drawing cartoons. This might have something to do with the fact that Private Eye magazine contains 3 of my cartoons this week.

I was trying to keep this blog from having too many postings along the lines of-“Look! Look! I’m in this magazine this week!”, but I guess I’m not that modest.

So…Look! Look! I’m in Private Eye magazine!
(OK I’ll make a half-hearted attempt at modesty by only reproducing two out of the three)

This was actually accepted back in May- so I’m glad it didn’t get lost in the filing cabinet.

This next one demands a bit of the viewer- you need to know how to pronounce ‘Ennui’, and of course, what it means (I had to look it up before I got the joke myself…).

Wasted Youth

This post is probably only going to be appreciated by myself and 3 others- so feel free to ignore the following.
Many years ago I began a career in IT Support- way back when computers did not have a mouse, and the screen was a green on black dumb terminal. For 10 years or so I worked in the basement of a small local authority, somewhere in the Home Counties. Hidden behind a nuclear blast door was the IT department- and tucked away at the back was the Mainframe Operations section- here you would find four sad men hermetically sealed in a paper storeroom, known as the Ops Room. The job of the Ops mostly involved pressing the ‘return’ key to acknowledge prompts, in-between printing council tax bills
One day management supplied a new gizmo- a PC running the mighty powerful Windows 3.1! With a colour screen and a mouse and everything! I forget why we were given it- probably meant to write reports and pie charts. We used it for playing Tetris.
It also had another use- drawing stuff. Myself and fellow Computer Operator Mark would take turns in creating little pieces of bitmap madness using MS Paint and a creaky old mouse.
Eventually, the council saw sense, and got rid of our jobs. Mark had the foresight to preserve the results of our creativity-the following pics are the result of too much time and borderline insanity. So, to Jim, Ken and Mark- happy memories.

Me, Jim, Mark- at the Ops desk.

Actually, there wasn't that much adventure

"Does anyone know where Ken is today?" was a popular refrain

Mark was under the illusion that he did what little work there was to do

There are loads of these mini masterpieces- I might post some more at a later date.

It's a scream

OK- In case the unclothed lady in the post below is causing stress if you happen to look at it at work, here's a new Safe for Work cartoon which should move her safely down the page, and out of view.

It neatly ties together the three main things I've been involved in- computers, art history and cartoons. Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' has been used countless times in cartoons, so it's about time I had a go- The Spectator magazine liked it and printed it in their current issue.

I'll leave it up to your imagination as to what's on the screen...

Rejection selection

A decent drawing can't save an unfunny gag, whereas a funny gag can get away with having a poor drawing. With the following cartoon I really liked the drawing, but it didn't sell. Looking at it now I see that the caption is a bit clunky- too long- not that funny either I guess. I still like the drawing- but hey, you know what they say- self-praise is no praise!

It's my own fault for messing with the memory of the artistic genius of E.H. Shepard- he was responsible for the original drawings for Winnie the Pooh. That's the style I was trying (not very successfully) to evoke here, rather than the flaming awful Disney version.

Every winter I go to the Illustrators exhibition at the Chris Beetles gallery in St James's, London. Should you have deep pockets you can pick up original artwork by cartoonists and illustrators- be warned though, an original pencil sketch of the Bear with Very Little Brain by Shepard might set you back 20-30000 quid or so...(my version I could let you have for a bit less than that)