Whale Meat Again...

This is my entry for this week's caption competition. Now then, when the caption was first announced my mind went into white noise mode. Nothing coming through. No, still nothing. Nope, not a sausage. Wait! Wait a minute! The clouds are parting! I see shadowy forms. Fish! I see fish. A mackerel dressing up as a shark and... what a crap idea.
Come Sunday morning I thought this is going nowhere, then quite unbidden that footage of the killer whale taking a seal off the beach came to mind. You know, that footage. From that David Attenborough programme. The one with the killer whale on the beach. Yeah, that one. Well that came to mind and I rushed to grab my Bamboo pad. Everything, from start to finish was done on the pad. No preliminary pencils, just two books on the polar regions for reference and away I went. The result was that two people gave me their top marks and you can't say fairer than that now can you? Especially with your mouth full! Whatever happened to table etiqette?

Back Again, At Last!

A couple of months ago my hard drive kicked away its zimmer frame and gave up the ghost. Then, armed with a brand spanking new hard drive I had a few problems reloading my Bamboo and Photoshop. All the foregoing hastened my growing baldness due to me grabbing huge hanks of hair in my raging fists and yanking it out. Okay, that is not strictly true. In actual fact I scratched my head a little bit where the hair grows more sparsely than other areas, but the point is my idleness was enforced. The cartoon up in the top left-hand corner is the result of my fully functioning software (at last) allowing me to get back in the saddle. A bit of a wobbly posture on the leather to be sure, but the creative juices have started to flow again. HUZZAH! say I. You may not, but I don't care. Ner nerdy ner ner. This was my entry for this week's Cartoon Competition and there are some absolute crackers to enjoy, so please do take a look.
If you click on the above image... well, I'm not exactly sure what will happen. Time was the blog would open up a larger version, but that doesn't seem to happen anymore. I dunno, nothing stays the same, the centre cannot hold, as me old mucker, Billy Butler Yeats would say.

Dinosaurs in High Dudgeon

Would you Adam and Eve it (heh heh)? This is my entry for the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain's Weekly caption competition. Now then, on first perusing the caption Adam and Eve immediately popped into my aged and befuddled brain and it was Eve talking to Adam with that serpentine satan looking evil yet cool in the background. Not funny, just weird and vaguely disturbing. Then I thought, what if the first humings weren't even God's first choice? Hmmm, getting there. Who or what would have been His first choice? Big lizards! Pissed off looking big lizards with their arms folded. Well, it works for me.
A couple of sort of technical points ought to be laid out here. First up; God's right hand. As I drew it, it really worked. I think it is the best hand that I have ever drawn in my life. Now compare it to his left. Arrrgh! My only excuse is that I have always found that left hands are sinister. Ahem, yes - well, moving on. Adam and Eve's hands look ridiculous in comparison to God's. There is a very good reason for this. I am a bit thick. When I draw cartoons on the graphics pad for the competition I size it at 72dpi. When I zoom in to work on fine details everything turns into a Cubist experiment and I get a bit lost. There is undoubtedly a solution to combat this. I just haven't found it yet.
Onwards and , er, onwards.

It's Ella Fitzgerald, Dammit!

Okay, pay attention. This is going to take a lot of explanation. The cartoon competition was on a theme of America. The gentlemen in hats are 17th century Dutch settlers. The gentlemen in feathers are not. The lady on the right is Ella Fitzgerald. The caption is a line from Rodger and Hart's song, Manhattan. The Dutch settlers are buying Manhattan from the owners for a few trinkets. Ummm. That's it.
Procrastination is the thief of humour. Ella was a last minute insertion in order to indicate that the caption is a song lyric. It just doesn't work does it? Shame really, because somewhere, deep within the enfolding obfuscation, is the vague crumb of a good idea. Well, there is in my head, anyway (a confusing place at the best of times).
Not the best drawn effort on my part. Too much last minute rushing. What about the pencils? What indeed? To be honest, they aren't much better, but at least they don't include a badly drawn Ella Fitzgerald. Sorry, Ella. You deserve better than that. By way of recompense here are Ella and Louis singing Stars Fell on Alabama. It's the very least I could do.

A Rather Cavalier Attitude

I had completely forgotten about this one! It was just a quick sketch on the ole graphics pad, hence the VERY loose appearance of the drawing. I have been trying to loosen up my drawing style for some time now, but this is probably just a little too loose (as in Lautrec. Geddit? Too loose Lautrec. oh, suit yourselves!). Still, I like the facial expressions and, believe it or not, I remember doing some costume research for this. All for nothing and nothing for one! Did I get it right, Monsieur Dumas?

Trombone Envy

I had two of my heroes in mind when I created this little opus; Ronald Searle and Gerard Hoffnung. The Searle influence is the uncompromising use of black and expecting the viewer to know exactly where the limbs are. I also used a Searlian angle on the elbow. It is pretty much the angle Searle used on noses, elbows, legs ooh, all sorts. I did lose my nerve when it came to the legs, though, where I used some discreet white just to let you know where the legs are and what they are doing.
The Hoffnung influence is more obvious; musicians and their instruments. My introduction to Hoffnung was courtesy of the BBC showing Halas and Batchelor animations inspired by his drawings. The sequence that most readily springs to mind is that of a choirboy singing O For the Wings of a Dove. He sprouts the wings of a dove and takes off. The Cartoon Museum's Millennium exhibition had a delightful Hoffnung of a lady playing a trombone with    an extension. The cartoon was in a wooden frame and the frame itself was extended to accommodate the trombone arm. The entire item was a joy to behold.
 I think Hoffnung was more subtly influential than people realise. There is even an obscure reference to him in Annie Proulx's Accordion Crimes wherein she mentions a concert involving a duet for two vacuum cleaners. Guess who organised that little entertainment?

Read All Abaht It!

This, ladies and gentle pongs, is part of the logo heading for my super-duper new website which is all rather spiffing and topping and is part of the road to supplementing the income of this international playboy millionaire cartoonist.
Do take a look and tell me what you think. Favourable responses only, please. Do I have to remind you that I have a considerable amount of house-bricks and I know where your windows are?