Off the shelf: Me 2

This one’s a bit boring, but it’s the title page so you’ll have to put up with it. Stop complaining. Click on it to see it bigger (it's just as boring).
I'll write more about the tortuous process of producing this book another day, when I feel a bit less like Rambo's armpit.

Off the shelf: Me

In my last year at college, having made the decision to be a cartoonist rather than a graphic designer, I produced a book of cartoons called ‘One Man and his Dogs.’ It was a part biography, part fantasy on the life and experiments of Ivan Pavlov, whose work with dogs led him to the discovery of Conditioned Reflexes, and a Nobel Prize. The whole thing is really one long riff on dogs, bells and food. I thought this week I’d post a few spreads from it, starting with this wraparound cover, based on the pied piper or the dance of death – take your pick. (You'll have to click on it to see it bigger).
In spite of spending lots of time feverishly sketching people in museums and galleries, my drawing skills were minimal. I was using a black Schwan Stabilo crayon, which forced me to draw large, against my usual habits, and then reducing the drawings to the required size on a photocopier (a technique that turned out to be a huge mistake as the printing was a disaster). Although the drawings are pretty ropey, there’s a looseness and ‘openness’ to them that I’ve since lost, and in some ways bad drawing is funnier than good. Oddly I seem to have lost the original drawings too, somewhere down the line. I may have thrown them away.

Reading and lighting

Sharp

This idea was my ‘logo’ for a long time, in the days when I did a lot of work for Women’s magazines. It went through umpteen redraws.
Sometimes an idea comes with a drawing attached; other times you have to struggle to find a drawing that does the idea justice. I have a file of ideas that I’ve never been able to draw up, some of them too interesting to 'waste' on a bad drawing. They’ll have to wait until I’m competent enough to draw them.
I'd rather have an idea without a drawing than a drawing without an idea.
This one is done in compacted charcoal and coloured pencils, my media of choice before I went digital. I still like the idea, but don't like the eyes. I've always had trouble with eyes (including my own).

Virgil on the ridiculous

Back to the 17-year-old. At school one of the subjects I was subjected to was Classical Civilisations. The teacher, a Mr Murray, caught me showing someone how to draw Mickey Mouse while we were supposed to be reading The Georgics by Virgil. As punishment he made me do some drawings illustrating passages from the poem. I can’t remember how many I did but this is the sole survivor, only because I hadn’t quite finished it and didn’t hand it over with the others, thus saving it from the evil clutches of Mr Murray, who either liked them or threw them in the bin. Either way I never saw them again. This traumatic event has led me to associate missing deadlines with preserving my artwork and has destroyed my career – Curse you, Mr Murray!!
I don’t remember a lot about the Georgics, except that it was very long and there was an enormous amount of stuff about bees. Thus it is that I don’t know who those people are or why that watersnake is up a tree. I may not have known at the time. Frankly I wasn't interested - I was busy showing someone how to draw Mickey Mouse, wasn't I?

Disillusionist

Sticking closely
to my chronic
illogical order,
here’s another
one from way up
my sleeve.
I don’t remember
doing this, but I
did it and here
it is.

Short pose

This, I’m afraid, is another college thing; a rough for a drawing which was exhibited and sold. It’s a joke about Pirelli calendars. There was a year when they covered their young ladies in tyre tracks, so I wondered whether, if this young lady posed in the road, she might gain some tyre tracks of her own.
I almost called it Pirelli Jelly.

Off the shelf: H M Bateman

‘The Colonel implores his daughter to be reasonable’ is one of my favourite cartoons by Henry Mayo Bateman. Described by GK Chesterton as ‘the master of wild exactitude’ (whatever that means), Bateman became very successful during the ‘20s and ‘30s mainly through his ‘The Man Who…’ series for the Tatler.
Like many cartoonists he really wanted to be a serious artist but didn’t quite make the grade – it was said of him that he ‘lacked a sense of humour.’
This drawing comes from a collection called ‘Colonels,’ published in 1925, but here is reproduced from a biography, predictably titled ‘The Man Who Was H.M. Bateman,’ from 1982.

Hit and miss

The expert
shot.

I drew this -
yesterday!

Indoor plant

To escape from the last post, here’s a jump-cut to some flower power drawn not too long after I left college, when I’d rediscovered the joys of compacted charcoal and coloured pencils. I was ‘slightly’ influenced by Magritte in those days (see here) and this one may have been ‘slightly’ influenced by ‘The Unexpected Answer’ - either that or Tom and Jerry.

Unearthed

Having got the bug for posting ancient artefacts I’ve been digging into deeper archaeological layers of mud in my cupboards. It’s amazing what you can find down there. Here’s a page of cartoon-like accretions, which I didn’t realise had survived the ravages of time and limited storage space. Who knows how old I was when I drew these - my teenage years were fairly gruesome so I’m assuming it was before then - maybe 11 or 12. The first one, Long time no sea, is a copy of a joke I'd discovered in a comic called Whizzer and Chips and was very impressed with at the time. The others are typical boy’s humour, ie. not remotely funny.

Wall

This was an idea for a screenprint which never happened so I tried out my new coloured pencils.
I was thinking alot about paradox at the time and wanted to be a Paradoctor. It seemed to me that if you took anything to it's logical conclusions you'd end up with nonsense.
In the end I wasn't intelligent enough to be a Paradoc, so I settled for a career as an Oxymoron instead.

Country music

A straightforward student pun with no bass notes, and a quavering attempt to draw some ‘countryside’ in the background. This is a scan of a photocopy as, believe it or not, I sold the original - even though it was very small due to the size of the music stave I traced it off. I can't remember how much I got for it - probably just enough for a cup of tea and a bun.

Off the shelf: Ronald Searle

It was Ronald Searle’s 89th birthday on Tuesday. This is ‘Gemini’ from his 1977 series called ‘Zoodiac’ – fantastic idea, beautifully drawn. It’s from a French anthology ’45 Ans de Dessins’ published in 1984. There’s a tribute blog by Matt Jones that’s worth a look.
Apart from the creative idea, Searle’s three requirements for success are working discipline, absolute command of the medium and constant productivity. Crikey – I thought you just had to ‘Believe!’

Bridgework

Another weird object from
back the way I came.

What’s it all about?
Who knows, but I obviously
thought it was interesting
enough to draw up – and
now I’m finding it interesting
enough to put on my blog.

Or have I just run out of
old stuff to post?

No - more old stuff
to come!

Typocritical

No comment.

Cheese

Another extraction from studentistry, this time drawn to a brief.
In the early ‘80s some sparky marketing men had the idea of bringing out a new British cheese, the first for 200 years, with the made-up name of Lymeswold, and we had to say something about it in an ‘illustration.’
This idea came disturbingly quickly and I assumed it was too obvious. It seemed to fit the brief a little too well, and I was never any good at following briefs, preferring to use them as starting points to wander off on some tangent of my own.
The cheese was taken off the market after less than ten years - because it was shit.

Off the wall: Spike Milligan

Spike Milligan, ‘a hero with coward’s legs’, was something of a hero to me growing up. Comedy writer and performer, poet, jazz musician, playwright and campaigner, he suffered from manic-depression (bipolar disorder), thought to have resulted from shellshock in the WW2, which made him a part-time genius. Known as the Comedian’s Comedian, he wrote and performed in over 250 episodes of The Goon Show for BBC radio in the ‘50s, then did the ‘Q’ series on television from 1969-82. Both shows had a huge influence on British comedy, including Monty Python. His comedic style mixed surreal situations with a kind of dogged literal-mindedness, subverting both logic and language itself.
"My Father had a profound influence on me, he was a lunatic."
"Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use earplugs?"
"A sure cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree."
This drawing ‘I am afraid of the dark’ is another one on the wall close to my workspace. It comes from a book of poetry called ‘Small Dreams of a Scorpion’ published in 1972.

Waterlogged pitch

Another
youthful
idea from
yesteryear.

I'll get
round
to doing
some
youthless
ones soon.

Not yet.

Shipping disaster

This shipwreck in a bottle was done on my Art Foundation course when I was about 18 or 19. It’s a disaster in almost every way. The catalogue of design flaws include a ship that’s too big to fit in the bottle, a bottle that is green(!) and the wrong shape, ‘water’ made of Das modelling clay that cracked straight away on a base made out of a thin polystyrene tile. I was going to paint the water and the base but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Even the photograph is terrible (note the direct sunlight, bad angle, and the sticking plaster holding the chair together in the background).
My 3D modelling career was over.

Off the wall: R Crumb

For a change here’s a drawing by Robert Crumb that I cut out of a magazine called 'City Limits' while at college and have had on the wall, close to where I work, ever since. It’s the final panel from a strip, the rest of which I’ve never found. It still makes me laugh whenever I catch sight of it.
Crumb is a mixture of brilliance and bad taste. His best work, for me, is the mid to late '60s stuff, like 'Fritz the Cat', done in a looser, more linear style, and 'Mr Natural'.
You can find out most about him (not necessarily the facts) by watching the 1987 Arena documentary ‘The Confessions of Robert Crumb’ which he wrote himself, and is more satisfying than Zwigoff's ‘Crumb’ in my opinion. It’s only an hour – go and watch it.

Thought for the day

This moral message is another item of student madness, conscientiously hand-traced on a machine called a Grant projector, before the days of computer graphics.
I probably thought it was hilarious at the time - no-one else did.

Troppo fortissimo

Yet another
opus studenticus.

I must have
thought the
TWANG!!
was a good
idea.

Delinquent type

Another college
collage from the
archives.

Note the hand-
rendered wood
effect and actual
use of paint.

A very studenty
idea though.

Card luck

This rather
grubby effort
is from the
same era.

It speaks
for itself.

The race

Fast-forward four or five years and graphic design training has turned me into a rapidograph-wielding minimalist. This drawing was in my portfolio when I applied for a post-graduate degree course – I’d just discovered a new way of looking at things and didn’t know how to develop it. Another three years later and I was none the wiser and ended up as a cartoonist. After seven years of Art college I then had to start learning to draw...

Young and Freudian

Another weird artifact from the dark caves of youth. I feel I ought to say something about it but can’t think of anything. I don’t even know if it’s the right way up.

Abstract Urt

Out of sheer laziness I thought I’d post something else from when I was ‘about 17’. This glorified doodle made it into a school exhibition, believe it or not. It will probably tell you what my teenage years were like. The artroom was my sanctuary.