Drawing a Brexit cartoon

Quick update before I sit down to do my day's writing. I've two new articles over at TW&TW. The first is a piece about Chris Christie's hit job on Marco Rubio. The second is a review of the Martin Rowson workshop/lecture from last Thursday.

I also have finished a new cartoon using the tricks I learned at the workshop. Not sure the result is much different to how it would have looked if I'd drawn this last Wednesday but getting to the finish was a lot quicker. With the exception of Cameron, who I drew the normal way but with the new improved thicker neck, I drew these with more emphasis on picking three key features. Gove: jowls, eyes, mouth; Osborne: nose, mouth, eyebrows; May: nose, mouth, eyes. Normally, I'd tinker around for hours. By concentrating on just three features, I got to the finished result in *far* less time. Started this about 5pm last night. The drawing was done in about an hour, added IDS whilst watching a movie last night, but then painted it all in about an hour or two from 11pm to 1am. Probably three or four hours. Does it look too digital? That's my only thought...

I say it might not look different to my style pre-Thursday but that's obviously a lie. The other thing I learned was to see if I can stretch for more than one joke. Here there are countless. That's another of tricks I picked up from Rowson's lecture. I guess it comes from Hogarth but Rowson does it himself. Not many cartoonists seem to pick it up but I like the fact that the more you look, the more laughs you find. Of I hope you do.

I also decided to try to be more complete in my finished cartoons. I need to start putting more work into good backgrounds. Here it's just a wash of colours but I want to move away from just drawing figures with an empty background.

Cartoon: The Porn Tories

I'm both ashamed and pleased with today's cartoon. I don't really care if people like it or find it disgusting. Last night, I think I finally accepted that blogging is a game for celebrities. Unless you're one of the very lucky people to strike gold, hard work amounts to nothing. I might as well give up. Today I feel more dejected than ever. If four blog posts from a TV news editor (albeit the best one there is) can get 3,500 page views after two days of blogging, then what chance do I have? Even if I work another 10 years, blogging every single day, I'll never hit those figures. So, sod it. Perhaps this is my swan song and it's a fitting one if that's what it is.

For what it's worth: the genesis of the idea was an interview given by the 'Honourable' Jacob Rees Mogg to Conservativehome. In his words:

“We talk about being progressive. We’re not progressive. We’re conservative. We don’t believe in changing things that don’t need to be changed. And so I think language is very, very important, and that we have thought the language of the Left is cuddly, and that therefore people will like it. Actually what’s happened is it’s made it very difficult to explain why we’ve done the good things we’ve done. Which are actually much more cuddly than what the Left does, because they actually improve people’s lives.

The first part is true. Conservatives are reactionary and, in that sense, I guess I'm a conservative at heart. I don't like change. I don't like radical governments. However, that's precisely why I dislike the current government. They're radical and delight in being radical. They take such a masochistic delight in austerity that it sounds almost pornographic. It is, of course, that same old 'New Toryism' which has never been called 'New Toryism' and is usually called Thatcherism. Had her governments been called the 'New Tories', the newness might have died by now. As it is, it was called Thatcherism  and Thatcherism was as ideological and radical as anything that's has come from the political left in the past half a century. Mogg's words could have easily been spat out by the High Priest of Thatcherism, Lord Tebbit. It's constantly about 'improving people's lives' and yet the society it has created (and would like to further create) is one in which we pay through the nose for everything or we do without. Competition in everything means a rush for cheapness with the greatest profit at the end. I think it's been to the ruination of our country. We've exchanged a nation of great libraries for a nation of Premiership footballers.

It got me thinking about the Tories and the personalities involved. A criticism that can be levelled at Tony Blair and (for that matter) David Cameron is that they are both bandwagon politicians. They respond to headlines and seek to be liked. In that sense, I don't see Cameron as a traditional Tory or even a Thatcherite. I don't believe he's really much of conviction politician. It's why he's not in this cartoon. Few in the Tory Party share his need to be liked. He is the personable figurehead of a party that seems to take a perverse delight in being perceived as the 'bastards in blue'. Some ham it up for the cameras or for their electorate who seem to take pride in electing hardliners who'll personally spend their mornings hammering matchsticks up prisoner's toenails. Other appear to believe in their self-created monster. It's a strange kind of machismo; a warped version of Margaret Thatcher's already twisted personality. She tried to out-man the men and now, I think, politicians that have been inspired by her, share a strange compulsion to a hyper-masculinity. Drawing this cartoon, I was inspired by a particularly grotesque image of Thatcher by Gerald Scarfe. He gave her a raging erection. I think most modern Tories are desperate to have the same. It's up to you to decide how they measure up.

Another Michael Gove Cartoon

Monday. I’m not sure what the hell I’m doing. I didn’t intend to draw another of these ‘Great Figures of State’ cartoons, though I liked the idea of doing a series of them and I thought it would give me chance to learn new skills. I’m trying to teach myself to be less kind in my drawing. I finished this Gove cartoon last night, thought it was done, and then immediately realised this morning that I'd been too kind to the man. I've tried to rectify that as much as I can but the result still makes him look too attractive

A New Michael Gove Cartoon

Too much? Maybe it is but Gove rubs me up the wrong way. The notion that pupils should be in school more goes against everything I think about education. There is a need for progressive reform but there's nothing progressive about what Gove proposes. I could write a thousand words on this but I'm tired, it's nearly 3am and I'm sitting here waiting to finish installing Windows 7 on a laptop. It's taken me about ten hours today to clear Windows 8 from this damn machine, some of which I used drawing as various things installed, rebooted, and generally took their time. I despise Windows 8 but I have discovered that the one thing worse than keeping Windows 8 on your PC is trying to bloody delete it from your PC... However, I think it's done. I prey it's done. God help me if it isn't...

The Holiday Snatcher Cartoon

I was talking yesterday about privilege and how people both with it probably view the world differently. Today’s news that Michael Gove will change the rules allowing schools to to get rid of the six week school holiday is perhaps one example of that.

Of course, I have no love of the six week school holiday now that I’m adult. Behind the house, there’s an area that somebody has turned into a communal play area. For nearly two months, it will be filled with the noisy little buggers screaming constantly for morning to night. Writing to that is like trying to tap-dance whilst somebody’s drilling a hole in your foot.

Yet as a kid, the holidays were the only time I was happy. I despised school and only started to do well once I left and began to teach myself. I feel the same way now. It comes down to the degree to which all that (points out of the window at the world in general) demands control of my life. I suppose deep down I have anarchist leanings, though I’ve always liked Orwell’s description of Swift (and probably himself) as being an Anarchic Tory. What I mean by that is that whilst I value order, culture, and civilisation, I also want to be left alone and believe that we all have the right to some kind of strong independent life beyond those horrible exhausted hours that you’re usually left to enjoy after being twisted rotten working your eight hour shift.

The concept of the working week is fascinating and probably deserves a good book writing about it, if it’s not already been done and I’m too lazy to check. I know the eight hour day is a relatively modern invention, being one of those great innovations the Victorians were so damn proud about. The premise was that we work for eight hours, relax for eight hours, and sleep for eight hours. Of course, it rarely happens that way. In my last job, I’d get up at 7am, out of the house for half past, on the train for ten to eight. In the office for eight thirty, half an hour for lunch, leave around four thirty, train at ten to five, home for five thirty. The eight hour day was, in reality, a ten hour day, leaving me six hours to do with as I would. After eight hours proof-reading woefully written leisure industry reports full of horrible management-speak, I was usually so tired I’d usually fall asleep in front of the TV, waking up in time to go to bed. I was lucky. My friend is a teacher and she rarely finishes work before 8 or 9pm. The holidays are the only time she can live a normal life.

All of which makes me dubious about Michael Gove’s plans. Not only does it feel like another opportunity to hit the teachers and turn them into social workers whose primary job it is to keep youth off the streets, it’s another way to establish a drone mentality in the workforce. Force those patterns of obsequious compliance that authoritarians believe should be hammered into the underclass. The older I get, the more I feel that Aldous Huxley had everything correct in ‘Brave New World’. Establish the patterns of behaviour early enough and you govern the future. Private schools will continue to operate with the best interests of students and parents in mind. Comprehensives, I know, will be overworked, stretched, and crammed full of students who will have even less time to think, to learn, and to discover who they are and what they want from life.

The Michael Gove Cartoon Strip

A Cheap Michael Gove Gag

I thought I’d warm things up this morning with a cheap Michael Gove gag, which is needed when our politics have the subtlety of poison mists and cattle prods.

Gove validates the myth that extra-terrestrials have been splicing our genes for years. What is he? Part man? Part platypus? A hint of sea lion? There has to be some fish DNA mixed in there too. Any fool can recognise that he’s the by-product of anal probing and cow mutilation. Reform of the GCSEs is obviously the prelude to a full scale ground invasion by the Mole People of Mars. They’ve put their people into key positions: Osborne at the Treasury, May in the Home Office. So, this is it... Man the barricades. Send an EMP pulse into the exosphere because things are about to turn ugly. And just remember: if he bites, you must chop off the limb before you begin to have leadership ambitions of your own.

Tories Back Their Leader

[singlepic id=181 w=640 h=500 float=center]