Excuse

Sorry, it's been ages since my last post. My illustration work (the day job) has been deathly quiet this year and then like buses two meaty jobs come in together. One of them has the most crazy, stupid, mad and totally unreasonable timings ever so I've been drawing away like a nut job to try and stay on schedule. So far I'm only a week behind and am at that "don't answer the phone when it rings" stage.

There, that's my excuse.

Ollie and Quentin Blocked

I received this from my good friend Roddy. He was blocked from accessing the Ollie and Quentin website at the school where he works for the most bizarre and flattering reason.

Mum and Dad

Meet Barbara and Nigel, 2 Pigeons living in Ollie and Quentin's attic since 1937. Barbara is, in fact my lovely mum's name and Nigel, my great dad's. He wasn't too pleased to hear I'd made fun of his sore foot but I couldn't resist it. He's gonna hate that red nose.

I've started to write strips that follow on from each other, with a punchline every day of course. In the past I might have a short story covering a couple of days but now I'm going for the full week which I'm really enjoying. This has been a natural development. In trying to write one off jokes I found myself thinking about how my characters got into that situation or what happened next. This is something I love about creating a cartoon strip. It's kinda organic. I'm just going in the direction the strip wants to take me.

Best job in the world?

Could being a syndicated cartoonist be the best job in the world?

Thursdays are my ideas days, here's what I did today:

I packed a thermos flask of coffee, some water and sandwiches and set off, notebook in hand, on a ten mile walk through the beautiful Surrey countryside beside my home. It has been one of those rare but glorious British early summer days. Clear blue skies, birds singing, bluebells in the woods, gentle breeze in the air, sunlight dancing through the trees. Just fantastic.

I had lunch at the top of St. Martha's Hill next to the church (see above) overlooking miles of beautiful English hills. You can see eight counties from this spot. The location is said to have provided the inspiration for The Hill of Difficulty in The Pilgrim's Progress, going back to the time when John Bunyan lived in nearby Shalford. Winnie-the-Pooh artist, E H Shepard, frequented the spot and one of his drawings is in the church. It was a place of worship for pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, but pagans can marvel at four Druid circles on the south face.

I came home 6 hours later with a weeks worth of ideas down in my book and a tan on my neck.

Now, if I could make syndication pay me a living wage this would be the best job in the world.