Lost and found

After last week's fun and games, a quieter week on the Westmorland Gazette cartoon desk. 

Despite the howling gales, wind and rain, ubiquitous TV presenter Davina McCall swept into South Lakeland to undertake a sponsored swim of Windermere. South Lakes is set to spend £1,000,000 on CCTV throughout the area. Two lost Patterdale pups turn up after weeks lost on the fells. And two homeless guys are reported to be living in a mobile library.

These were the week's stories. Below are the cartoons. Which, dear reader, do you think should have been on the front page of this week's blowaway Westmorland Gazette?

Vote in the comments box below and then flutter over to my website to see if you picked the same on as my steamed editor.

A well rounded view

This week’s super, soaraway Westmorland Gazette ran a story which has been heavily featured in the national press. A report has named Cumbria the fattest county in the UK. Research has thrown up that 68.3% of people in Cumbria are overweight or obese, topping the UK’s tubby table. (Most of the national newspapers couldn’t be arsed to link to the original research but you can find it here and here.) 

Clearly, this report is of immense concern. More to the point, it is an ideal target for the front page cartoon. And given the subject, one that is hard to miss.

A few other stories passed across the cartoon desk - Bownessie has been seen again (yawn), there’s a Big Chill Swim due at the weekend, a wind farm has gained approval (hurrah) - but it was the chubby Cumbrians who attracted my interest, as if by some strange force. 

You can see my initial sketches below. I submitted the first four, feeling rather smug that the last one managed to combine three stories. 

But finer sensitivities struck. The newsroom thought I was too being cruel to the corpulent. The cartoon might upset rotund readers over their breakfast fry up. My steamed editor advised to keep clear of the topic.

This prompted a cartoon retaliation (see number 5). Whilst I avoid political incorrectness for the sake of it (mostly), satire is a valuable tool. It prods people to rise off their blubbery backsides and do something about the world. I suppose if I offended anyone there was the minor risk of an obesewa but I figured I could outrun most of them.

So, still grumbling, I drew another couple of ideas before turning to the wind farm story. In the event, this cartoon turned out OK and is the one that made it to the front page. 

I’m not too disappointed with the outcome and rejection is part of the game. I’m big enough to take it.

Neck and neck

A new social media has hit Lakeland, all the way from Australia. It's called necking.

To play, you 'neck and nominate' a contact on social media,; first you down an entire drink (a pint of beer, pint of vodka, meths, domestos, your choice of tipple), then you undertake whatever you have been challenged to do by the last person who contacted you to do this.

It's a sort of chain mail for the modern age. And the brain dead. So far, local kids have been seen jumping off high bridges dressed as Batman, diving into icy rivers. One young optimist even issued a 'neck and nominate' to local MP and LibDem president Tim Farron.

Local health experts have issued warnings against this new craze but of course, that will only make it cooler to do. Let's hope none of the kids make the Darwin Awards.

Below are the ideas I pitched to my steamed editor. One was deemed unlikely to get past legal (I wonder if you can spot which). One made the front page of The Westmorland Gazette.

Post your vote in the comments for which you would have liked to see on the front of this week's newspaper. Then dive over to my website to see if you were right.

How to Draw a Reindeer

This post was inspired by author David Hewson. On Twitter this morning, he commented: "Fine. So I can't draw a reindeer. Will go to work then."

Now, I don't want to distract him from writing any of his splendid novels but here is a simple way to amaze your friends with your own, hand-drawn reindeer.

Almost any animal* can be drawn from a combination of these three basic shapes.

(* possibly not an amoeba)

So start off with a squished circle for the reindeer head.

Add a rectangle for the neck.

Another oval for the body.

Some lines and triangles for what one of my students memorably called 'thread legs' (thereby avoiding the trickly problem of knees).

Three more slightly pointy squished circles for ears and tails (don't let the technical language put you off).

You'll notice that so far all the lines have been drawn in blue. I use a Derwent Studio 33 pencil - it's easy to ink over without rubbing out pencil lines. Now we can ink in the lines and add some color. And a few squiggly lines for the antlers …

… some yellow lines for mane and quiff, couple of dots for the eyes and a couple more legs for added realism. Whilst we're at it, let's change the color of the hooves. Finally, a big red circle for the nose with a splotch of white to make it shiny …

… and we're done. Now draw it on card and post to your loved ones, who will treasure it forever.

(More tips and tricks on how to cheat and draw almost anything are available in my book, which is an ideal present at ANY time of year.)

A-Fracking we will go …

Christmas is upon us so this week’s cartoon for the super, soaraway Westmorland Gazette had to have a festive air. But which story to choose? There were two main candidates:

Hawkshead GP Surgery is under threat of closure. It’s in a rural area, falls below some arbitrary limit for the number of patients and is going to have a support grant withdrawn. It’s also top of an NHS survey into patient satisfaction.

A good story but one I’ve covered before. I had a solitary go at it and you can see the result below. Difficult to see how I could shoehorn Rudolf into that one.

The front page lead was more alluring. Fracking comes to South Lakes. Specifically, Milnthorpe, Levens and Kirkby Lonsdale. Given that the threat of windfarms caused a deafening rustle of Barbour jackets in Kirkby Lonsdale, I can’t see fracking being popular.

I had several punts at this story, including one which I knew wouldn’t get in but which would ensure my steamed editor was paying attention.

I also ran foul of the censors with use of the word ‘fracking’. Some potty-minds in the newsroom thought I was being rude. As if.

Below are the cartoon candidates. Feel free to vote for your favorite by appending a comment (preferably to the blog rather than on the moon or Facebook). Then whoosh to my website to see the editor’s choice in high-definition, 3D technicolor.

Clumsy Charley - a blog about a book

This book sneaked up on me. Jane Binnion, a social media trainer, sought me out after a business networking event to ask about book publishing. I directed her to the inestimable (but now sadly defunct) Writer’s Handbook. Off she went and I thought no more about it.

Skip forward a year and she had written her book, found a publisher, the seriously hip Funky Gerbil Press … 

… and they wanted to know if I’d like to illustrate it.

It was an unusual idea (the book, not me illustrating one - I’ve done over 200). It was about a boy with dyspraxia, a little known condition which is often misunderstood, particularly by schools, carers and parents. The book is designed to tell a story, engage the reader and help those with the condition to feel good about themselves. I was in.

The process of illustrating a book always has ups and downs. Whatever they tell you, all authors secretly hate their illustrators. Illustrators secretly hate authors. As I am an illustrator and an author I secretly hate myself. 

Once the character designs were fixed, no one interfered with the drawings (a rare and wondorous thing). 

There were a few tweaks from the publisher (all publishers like to tweak things to justify their lavish lifestyle) but they redeemed themselves by doing a splendid job on the design. And off it went to print.

This being the brave new digital age, it went to print on demand, first at Amazon and then at Bertrams. The Amazon version appeared on their website yesterday evening.

And here it is. What are you waiting for? Go and buy it NOW!

Mapping a Legacy

I have drawn a few maps, including the world-renowned Lap Maps. Usually they are a cartoon take on geography, occasionally the map is more idiosyncratic.

Earlier this year I was contacted by Emily Brewer of Legacy Storybooks. Emily is based in the USA and has just started a rather unusual business. She works with clients to assemble a story about their lives which can be produced for her clients' children, friends and local community.

Emily is writer, designer and history enthusiast who has found a way to launch an exciting new business by drawing the additional talent she requires from around the globe.

Her first book is Howard the Boy and it required a map of Pennsylvania which had a storybook look to it. Emily found me via my website and got in touch with a very detailed brief.

The project was great fun to work on. I know some of the area being covered and working with US clients is always a delight for a number of reasons: They're unfailingly enthusiastic, I get 5 hours extra on the daily deadline and they spell color sensibly (go away UK spell-checker).

This is the result (click the map for a larger image):

You can find Emily's website here.

And a few more of my maps on my site here.