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.

Madness

I'm in a screw-the-world mood today, which is always the case when I work particularly hard on something and then the blog traffic dries up. Sometimes I wonder if I could deliberately create anything that could prove less popular. I doubt if I could.

Other than write and record the podcast, I spent yesterday turning my attention to things other than politics and current affairs. I drew three cartoons, two of which go straight into the folder labelled 'things only I find funny'. It was a strange day in that respect. I'd fired up my Gag Machine for the first time in a few weeks and the ideas began to flow like they've not flowed in a while. I wrote until I had a full page of cartoon ideas and thereby proved to myself that sometimes the imagination does indeed run flat and needs time away to recharge.

Of course, I look at the list today and wonder what the hell I was thinking. A few of the ideas towards the bottom are indistinguishable from madness. As I write the ideas, I always sort them according to their strength. Some are fully fleshed out ideas and others are just strange phrases that I like to keep in the chance that on a future day I'll look again and see the cartoon that was previous only peeping out.

I then start drawing them, working my way down the list, hoping that by the time I reach those at the bottom, I'll have sat down and written a new list, which I incorporate into the old. Over weeks, the list will reach hundreds of ideas, the best of them drawn and the remainder undrawable. When the undrawables gets too long, I usually abandon the list and start again. Yesterday was one of those new starts.

Today I intend to spend drawing more cartoons for myself. I've missed them. There's something to be said about trying to draw standard 'mainstream' cartoons on topical affairs but it can get wearying. I started to cartoon all those years ago because I like to draw the sort of surreal cartoons that I find funny but I so rarely see published anywhere. When I say cartons for myself, I mean that my absolute favourite cartoons lie in a very hard to define region between the lucid and insane. I mean this sort of thing:




The fact I have so few of this kind of cartoons over the past few months is a bad sign. I've been chasing the kinds of non-surreal cartoon ideas I see elsewhere which I don't find quite as funny but stand a reasonable chance of getting published.

That's one of my chief frustrations. My favourite cartoons would never get published. They appeal to such a very small minority of people who share my sense of humour and 'get' them. It means I end up trying to restrict my natural instincts towards the 'crazy' and draw ideas like 'Issac Newton under tree. Apple logo falls on his head'. That was on my list yesterday and I thought it so weak that I even uttered an 'urgh!' as I wrote it down. I also knew it must have been done before, not only once but a thousand times. And frankly, I wouldn't find it funny if I saw it. So I changed it and had 'Isaac Newton under tree. Apple Mac falls on his head'. Now that's a bit funnier but I also guessed it would have been done and so it has.

That is the kind of cartooning I hate. It probably explains why I don't get published and get so dejected when my best work is rejected. The market forces you towards the mainstream and to copy the cartoons you see getting published. You end up worn out by the struggle to be derivative and 'middle class'. I'm going to see if I can hold that back for a while and try to just enjoy cartooning for a few days.

For that reason, I'm glad that politics will now ease off. The politicians are now heading deep into 'screw you' territory where it becomes dispiriting to follow.

Tom Watson is a fine MP and, despite my earlier reservations about him, I think he's worked tirelessly around the business of Westminster pedophiles and other forms of systemic corruption. He's now running for deputy leader but I had a jaw-crushing-my-toes moment when I saw how he's trying to crowd-fund his campaign and will probably succeed.

I clearly go about things the wrong way. I can't raise enough money to buy myself a new pair of boots and after a few hours Watson is already two grand up towards his £25,000 target to fund his campaign. Scratch that. In the time it's taken me to write all of the above, it's gone up another £1000.

Twenty five thousand pounds! And that's only to become deputy leader. It seems such an odd thing to do only days after winning your seat and another five years on a Christ-only-knows-but-I-can-only-dream-about salary. The donations are already in crazy donation territory. Plenty of people throwing £50 at him but also many over £100. If politics engages people that much, how come the things I've done with a political slant have the lowest traffic? It baffles me. In ten years of blogging, my biggest donation remains less that £10.

I should start offering to sell my original inked cartoons for a stinking fortune. I should stop writing a blog which actually costs me money to give away the entire creative output of my brain. It's madness. I need to learn from these socialists about how to make money. I've been going about it the wrong way. I'll never afford boots that don't leak water at toes at this rate.

A cartoon about Texas

This weekend I tried new software and a slightly different workflow. This is the result. Looks slightly different but I'm happier with the new system. Hopefully the cartoons will begin to improve. Click the image to reveal all the terrible technique

Calm

Okay. I've had a cup of coffee and my mind has settled. I don't feel quite as dog drawn out bad as I felt yesterday.

It's been a strange business, dealing with my now no-longer missing Guardian Witness cartoon. Years ago, when I was first writing my first Spine blog, I'd post daily Photoshops. This was before Photoshopping images became known as 'mash ups' or became so prevalent that everybody and their whiskery-soaked aunt began doing them. My blog was nominated as one of Yahoo UK's 'Finds of the Year'. I had a few other minor whoopee moments. My work appeared occasionally on the big political blogs and in a few newspapers.

About that time, I became friendly with a journalist who worked for The Guardian. He asked his editor if they'd accept any of my Photoshops. The message that came back was that they'd love to but they were deeply concerned about image rights. Since my Photoshops were made up of other images, they couldn't publish my work for fear of breaking some third party's copyright. Around this time, one of my photos appeared on 'Have I Got News For You' and I spent a crazy afternoon sourcing the images for the people at Hattrick Productions. The people whose photos I'd used were paid well for their photos. I didn't receive a bloody thing.

It was that which made up my mind. I made a vow that I'd never again be at the mercy of third parties. I would diligently uphold the copyright laws and I wouldn't borrow a single thing to do my work.

It's meant losing out on a lot of the exposure you get when Photoshopping. I saw other people getting huge followings on Twitter with pretty poor quality Photoshops but I gritted my teeth. I wanted to do something better. I wanted to do something more worthwhile. And, thus far, I've been fairly loyal to my principals. Most of what I did from that point on was my own work, with perhaps the main exception being a photo of Richard Madeley which I used for my Stan Madeley project. Yet even that was probably sourced and paid for.

All of which makes it so bloody ironic that the Guardian withheld my cartoon because they thought I'd nicked it!

It's more ironic when you consider that the majority of photos on those Witness pages obviously use borrowed images. There's one there that largely contains a screen grab from the John Carpenter film 'They Live'. I don't know if Universal Pictures really care about lightweight 'borrowing' from their movies but this is the problem with the copyright laws as they stand. just how transformative does something have to be before it becomes transformative?

The other side of the problem is that the Photoshop culture is slowly killing the market for real cartoons. Photoshops have a veracity that you never get with ink. To appreciate a cartoon, you have to be a fan of cartoons and that requires imagination, an aesthetic sense, and perhaps even a certain refinement. To appreciate a Photoshop, you merely have to eyes to see. Photoshops are an easy laugh. Even bad Photoshops still have the power to impress because they hint towards a twisted version of reality.

The final problem is, of course, money. I shouldn't have sent my cartoon. I know that. It's to demean the art of cartooning. If somebody like me is willing to give his work away for nothing, I'm contributing to a culture where people are expected to work for nothing. Yet I want the exposure. I want my cartoons seen by people.

Sigh... I really do have a book I want to finish writing. I want to finish it before the year ends. I should go and write some proper words. And maybe later today, I might draw another cartoon.

Friday Notes

Posting my 'daily cartoon' the next day is the worst part of drawing them. Firstly, it's a mark that you're finished with one and that you have to start another. Secondly, you hope for feedback saying it's the best cartoon you've ever drawn when the reality is that it's barely looked at and, even when it is looked at, it's often passed over with a shrug of the shoulders. This feels particularly bad when you do happen to think that it is the best cartoon you've ever drawn...

Last night's was one of those rare cartoons when I thought I'd ticked my personal boxes. Perhaps I'm just pleased because my cross hatching worked out and that the cartoon tried to say something. I don't know if I can judge. The left side could do with more work and I'm not satisfied with colour. It looked good in black and white but colour, for me, distracts. Yet colour is expected so I needed to add some...

I've been providing some cartoons for Tim Marshall's new venture over at The What and the Why. Because the focus is on international affairs, I've been trying to spot cartoons with a world theme. It's not always easy but it's helpful to me because it forces me to draw things and people I wouldn't normally be drawn to satirise or even think about. Today's cartoon was different. A vain president jailing cartoonists would always draw my attention. Apparently Turkey's Erdogan doesn't like to be ridiculed (explanatory BBC news report in the link), which seems like an eminently good reason to ridicule him. My first attempt was probably a stretch too far. I started drawing jowls and, naturally, I thought I'd see how far I could take them. By 11pm last night, I realised I'd probably taken them too far so I tried again.



 

 

As I redrew the majority of the cartoon, I watched the challenger's debate from earlier in the evening, followed by hours of analysis. Some of it made sense. Much of it didn't. The parties were engaged in their typical spin operations and sometimes even the strongest will struggles to avoid following their bad logic down the rabbit hole of political bias.

I thought the biggest loser of the evening was (surprisingly) David Cameron. I hadn't expected the Prime Minister's absence to hurt him so bad. Yet listening to him claiming credit for the debate earlier in the day was simply nauseating. He spoke of unblocking the logjam when he'd been the cause of the logjam in the beginning. It made the resulting debate feel like justice in that it was an hour and a half of solid government bashing. No having somebody on the stage to defend their record might well be one of the biggest miscalculations of the election. It was bruising stuff.

Of the participants, my verdict was as follows.

Ed Miliband

Miliband didn't need to do much and just stay clear of trouble. He'd won the evening by simply turning up. What followed was, to use a cricket metaphor, a display of playing every ball with straight bat. He never looked like edging a ball to slip but, then, his opponents were hardly steaming in with their fastest deliveries. He ensured his victory at the end by challenging Cameron to a debate. It was a win-win move. If Cameron refuses, he looks week and undemocratic. If he accepts, Miliband gets to debate with Cameron who seems singularly uninterested into entering into any democratic process. From Cameron's point of view, he can't win either way but I think he stands more of a chance by debating.

Natalie Bennett

I can't explain why I have a soft spot for Bennett. Everything should go against her: that accent, those policies, a few woeful performances in various media spotlights. Yet each time she stands up to speak, I find myself surprised by how much I both like her and how much I agree with her. She was the only person to speak up for people who are too sick to be considered 'hardworking'. That, for me, spoke volumes. I know the Green manifesto is filled with risible nonsense. Andew Neil has done enough this election to prove that. However, Bennett has a knack of speaking about things which the other parties don't address. Not sure any of that makes sense but I'm not sure I can explain why Bennett keeps impressing me.

Leanne Wood

Wood attempted to relive her success of the opening leader's debate and she probably suffered for that. She seemed eager to lay into Farage, no doubt knowing it was the thing that she was praised for the last time they met. Beyond that, she spoke to her audience in Wales and about that I'm not really qualified to comment. She doesn't have that connection to English voters that Sturgeon has oddly seemed to have fashioned.

Nichola Sturgeon

People have constantly praised her performance throughout the campaign's debates but last night was the first time I sat up and thought she was something special. She repeatedly had the best answers on the night, though perhaps too few hard questions were directed her way. I can see why she appeals to so many. She has become the face of the election and has replaced Farage as the fashionable outsider that non-voters would like to vote for if they're in England and will vote for if they're north of the border.

Nigel 'Nige' Farage

Not so much a one-trick pony as  a pony who has learned a few good tricks which he performs every time he's trotted out onto the national stage. Last night was more of the same from Nige. His tactic is clear. He wants to lose the studio but win the living room. Turning on the audience was probably a masterstroke. He obviously needed the boos to make his point. He wanted to portray himself as the man who speaks for the common folk who never get their opinions aired on TV. He summed it up with his line about 'I say what many of you are probably thinking'. He effectively acknowledged that ninety percent of the people in the room would dislike him and never vote UKIP. He took that fact and turned it to his advantage, reaching out to his core voters to remind them why UKIP is different to the rest.

 

Turkish President Erdogan (Cartoon)

The Weasel and the Woodpecker

So far this week, I've drawn about three cartoons and written a Windows program to record all my cartoon submissions. Not that I've submitted many this week -- four or five went to The Spectator yesterday -- but the program is central to my vow to take my cartooning more seriously. My problem is that I've never been much of a 'submitter' and, as they say, you have to play the game to stand a chance of winning a prize.

When the program is completely finished, I might upload it here for free for anybody who might want to use it but even as I type that I have my monetary angel is banging his head against my right shoulder as if to tell me to stop being so damn generous. But, frankly, I don't think there are enough cartoonists or writers in the world who would want to buy it or even would find a need for it. The main reason I've written it is to also help archive my cartoons. I lose too many to computer glitches that I'm trying to make more use of online storage. So, every time I finish a cartoon, I add it to the database which archives a copy to Dropbox. With all my cartoons listed, I can (for the moment 'in theory') simply click a button and generate an email based on the publisher details I've already entered and with the cartoons embedded into the email.

When it's finished, I might give it away, might keep it for myself or I'll ask a few dollars for a copy and stick it over on The Digital Nib. Unlike my previous program, The Gag Machine, this isn't a long term project. It's more of a useful tool I needed and realised I could program in a day. And I did program its basic functionality inside a day. I was writing it when my laptop died on Sunday.

The loss of the laptop has be surprisingly hard. The faded/yellowed/'cooked' label on the back would say I've had the laptop about four years but for about three of those years, I've not switched it on for fear that it would burn out. However, since my writing my 'review' and claiming that I'd never use it again, I'd started to use a thermal cooler beneath the laptop. It didn't do a great deal but it did make it usable for short periods. With a slightly cooler lap, I'd started to use the laptop at least once a day and I'd got it just how I wanted it. I was programming more. Writing more. And then, within about two weeks, it has died with an inevitable smell of burnt solder. It died exactly how it died the first time it blew its video card. I now hate Dell with a passion. That laptop cost me so much to buy, thinking that buying from the XPS range would make it a long term laptop, only to have it now burn out twice. Only this time I've not asked for a repair. I'm not investing another penny into that machine or that company. The XPS 1340 was a horrible machine that should never have gone to market.

I should really get a new (non-Dell) laptop but they're so damn pricey and my attempts to monetise the blog have come to naught. I started my new drive to earn from blogging on the 4th February. It's now the 3rd of March and in one month I've managed to raise a whopping £1.06. That's £1.06 reward for 12 cartoons, 2 Photoshops and 21,000 words. Okay, that's not one of my most productive months but it's surely worth more than £1.06.

I'm not pleading poverty here (though, perhaps, I guess I am) but this is a example of the new internet economy in which the big guys make millions while the rest of us scramble around to earn pennies. The reality is probably that I should really blog less and devote my time to selling my cartoons or my software. It's galling that I think that but even more galling that my past efforts have come to naught. Take this morning's cartoon as an example. If I type 'George Galloway cartoon' into Google, one of mine appears at the top of the search results. That's even before you go into Google image search.

That's really weird and yet deeply satisfying.

The three other cartoons are by heroes of mine: Peter Brookes and Martin Rowson. My cartoon (below top) was drawn years ago when I was first starting out. I don't think it's anywhere as good as today's (below bottom) Galloway cartoon which, I hope, is not as good as the next one I draw.

Yet the cartoon is there. Multiply all those years of effort and count up the many hundreds of cartoons I've drawn, hundreds of thousands of words (I once calculated millions for all the blogs I've written), all of which is still online: and all I have to show for that this month is £1.06.

Forgive me if I sound cynical about the internet. The truth, for me at least, is that I draw a cartoon which hardly anybody looks at whilst Twitter is today dominated by a picture of a woodpecker carrying a weasel on its back. And if a woodpecker carrying a weasel isn't a metaphor for the great democratization of media production then I don't know what is.

An Extremely Erotic Cartoon

The Joke Machine Perhaps

Worked on a cartoon last night but fell asleep before I could finish it. It means that I'm a bit light on material to post today and I've a dozen things to do so I haven't time to write a long essay on the newly discovered Michelangelo bronzes or 50 Shades of Grey or Stephen Fry and God or any of the things currently in the news. Shortly I'll have to nip out to Tesco to see if my nemesis is on the till. Before then, I have code to write.

Over the weekend, The Gag Machine underwent a little update. Unlike a lot of software which is written by people who don't use it for people who need it, The Gag Machine is written by the person who needs it and offered to people who might want it. It's why I'm happy to leave it as a quiet backwater of the internet. I've not yet mastered it enough myself that I'd want *every* cartoonist buying it and using it. The key seems to be finding the magic number of words to combine in an idea. It can work with up to seven fields but two seems to be the best for quick ideas when I'm really tired. Early in the day, three and four can work really well.

I'm just finishing the new update which has added a full screen function, which means I have more screen real estate to deal with and extra functions to write. I'm eager to spend some time using it this afternoon but an American friend suggests I change the name since he thought gag had something to do with strangulation. I have to rethink websites and logos. The Joke machine might have been a better title but I don't know if I can be bothered changing it now. Not when I have so much to do and one pair of hands is about four hands too few.

The Gag Machine 1.01R

Too exhausted to talk much about this tonight but I'm (hopefully) finished preparing the new website and software project. From now on, it's dealing with anything that crops up and, in the coming weeks, improving it as I hopefully get feedback from users.

What is 'The Gag Machine'? It's the Windows-based development/improvement of the app I wrote for Android last year. I never shared it with the world but I've found enormously helpful. I wrote it to help with my cartooning and it genuinely helps me come up with new gag ideas. However, I've now made it flexible enough that anybody can import sets of data (it reads simple .txt files, one item per line) which it then randomly displays. You can control which fields change as well as the ordering and a whole bunch of other things. You can export files containing many thousands of variations... I'm really not doing a great job of marketing this but I'm absolutely exhausted. I'm asking what I hope is a fair price, especially for the packs which contain the data I use myself and which are the key ingredient. If you're a cartoonist/creative and you can't afford it, then I'm also willing to give it away for free if you genuinely can't afford it. How do people convince me that they can't afford it? I haven't yet decided. I guess it's not my job to do the persuading.

So, please, if you're interested in, head over there and downloads the trial. And please be gentle if there are any small problems I've not yet spotted. Even thought it's a simple project, working on my own means that this has been both a labour of love but sometimes a bit overwhelming. One other point: It does require the .NET 4.5 framework, so depending on which version of Windows you're running, there might be an additional download from Microsoft.

I guess this is what's called a 'soft launch' if, by 'soft launch', we mean I'm now going to hide in a dark corner for about a week...

Before I do that: here's a video I did about two weeks ago when I previously thought I was finished. The performance/looks/functionality of the software has improved but (as you can see) I put too much effort into drawing the cartoon ideas that emerged from this session not to use this video.

Tweaks

Saturday has been about my exhaustion. I'm just knackered. A long week has finally caught up with me.

I've also given up attempting to say when I'm going to launch my software. I want to say 'next week, definitely' but I fear putting a jinx on it. The past week has been a hectic one but I'm now at the point where I could launch it right now. Everything is done. Everything seems to work. However, showing it to a couple of people has resulted in my adding a few new tweakable options. I'm trying to make more features available to registered users, albeit they're largely cosmetic features such as custom colour schemes and (late last night) an option to have your own skinned background.

It's probably/definitely gilding the lily, if what I have here is in any sense a lily. It does what it does and people will either want it or reject based on how well it fulfills that. The rest is simply my indulgence.

One unexpected result of this tweaking has been my discovering a weakness of using Windows Forms, which I now realise take an age to update. A little research has explained why and now I discover that whilst Forms are relatively easy to program, the future of Windows development is something called 'WPF' or 'Windows Presentation Foundation'. Luckily, the 8 in 1 book on C# I bought for £1 yesterday has an entire book devoted to WPF, which I tried to read this afternoon but my brain shut down and I fell asleep.

But this is vague rambling. I still need to find one cartoonist who'd be willing to try this software for me and to see if they find it useful. A little input would boost my confidence and might actually make me commit to this little bugger.

I Have My Very Own Arch Enemy

Shivering on a cold Saturday. I love the winter but sometimes even I find the really bitter cold a little too much.

My Friday was a disaster from noon to night. Not a single person wanted to beta test my new Windows software (recommended retail price $25). Cartoonists mustn't read this blog or perhaps cartoonists only ever read my 'Guide to Unblocking a Rotring' and, once their pens are fixed, they don't come back. Such a shame. I tidied the application's interface yesterday, adding a few little switches, fixed a few tiny bugs. Today I was going to make it available for download. I think I'll wait a little longer.

Traffic is at an all time low and emails coming into the blog have dried up apart from SPAM which is worse than ever. 22 emails waiting for me this morning. 22 new ways to 'improve kidney function', cheap medicines, and Chinese handbags.

So many single hits on the site it's depressing. I find myself living for the moments when a visitor reads 30 or 40 pages. The only solace I have is the number of times that happens from somebody reading at a university. I used to have a regular reader from London University, which was always a point of pride. The other day somebody from Manchester University seemed to enjoy the site. Call it intellectual snobbery or simple delight in finding a reader (and one not so far away) but I felt like I'd connected with a real human being. I find that's such a rare thing these days.

Speaking of connecting with somebody: yesterday I also saw my favourite checkout girl at Tesco. I say she's my favourite but it's a rare kind of favouritism based on total enmity. Do you ever meet a person and know they're you're natural enemy? Simply saying hello creates an immediate friction and you know that you've just met your exact opposite. They're the anti-matter to your matter and certain to cause the explosion of the universe should you ever touch. I'd like to think she's the Moriarty to my Holmes but it might well be that I'm the guy in black and she smokes a pipe. Every time I use her till, I'm aware of this great hatred that exists between us. She very clearly hates me and I dislike her intensely. She's a funny shade of orange and extremely talkative. I make jokes and she'll look back at me with dead eyes and say 'sorry... I don't get it'. She says things like 'you look fed up' but not in a concerned way. More like a challenge. If I say 'black', she'll says 'white'. She has strange half-closed eyes, as though she's doped up on something. 'Ya what?' she'll say. 'Nothing,' I reply, grimly packing my bag. 'Can't hear you,' she replies. 'You want to speak up.' That only makes me grumble deeper into my rucksack.

She seems to embody 90% of the world. If the rest of the world is like the girl at the Tesco checkout, then no wonder I'm having trouble. No wonder the world is in trouble.

I continually feel at odds with the internet and the world. Yesterday I learned of the existence of a website called TubeCrush. (http://tubecrush.net/, I'm not giving them the Google kudos by actually linking.) Even if it's legal, I'm pretty damn sure it's not moral. Had I launched a website where you could post pictures of attractive women you've covertly photographed on the Tube, there'd be a national scandal. I'd be a public enemy, hounded on Twitter, and given the Evan Davis thumbscrews on Newsnight. The fact the website is for women to post their photographs of men means it's not a talking point. The media don't seem that interested in taking it down. It's just 'a good laugh'. I just don't understand the world.

I also suspect I've gone on Google's bad books but it's hard to tell why. Sometimes you do things to promote your blog which Google likes. Sometimes you do things they hate. I added some new Ping services to inform various websites when I update my blog. I wonder if I'm now pinging too much and the dip in traffic is related.

Lots of reasons for feeling uninspired today. Last night I lost the best cartoon I'd ever drawn and it felt like a boot into a sensitive region. I've always suspected that Artflow couldn't really handle multi-layer 4k canvases but I thought problems would be more evident as I went along. Today I intend to redraw the cartoon, simply so it won't beat me. If I paint it, I'll paint it on the PC.

I also took the rare step of replying to a web marketer who wrote to me asking if they could write content for my blog. I wrote a long Stan-like email and told them they can have the site for a year if they give me enough money to buy a Surface Pro. I did it as a joke but it got me wondering how much this site is worth. Siteprice.org tells me that this website is work $6,748. Not sure how the hell they calculate that or how I could actually turn it into that kind of money. Anybody out there want to buy this blog for $6, 748?

I see websites on sale for crazy amounts of money that don't have any content or their content is no more enlightening that a picture of some Japanese guy wearing diapers. I know I would sell up if I could. I like the Spine name but it's never been a name I've particularly loved. I once owned the domain name www.apenguin.com but I had no use for it. I now see it's on sale for $2000. Some domain speculator has clearly picked it up. Wish I'd kept it. I've always been more penguin than bone. Maybe I should just sell the website and start again as a Japanese guy in diapers. Perhaps the world would then come rushing my way to take pictures and post them on Tubecrush.

How Nigel Farage's Penis Ruined My Day

Damn it. Bollocks. Shit.

I'm swearing because I can. I'm also swearing because Google think this blog might be unsuitable for a family audience. Well, too bloody right. It's not family friendly now and never will be again. Arse. Nuts. Engorged flanges.

You might have noticed a yellow block at the top of the blog yesterday and this morning. I had big plans for that block. I'd hoped it was going to be filled with blonde women advertising bra sales and canoe weekends. I was hoping that advertisers might interest you in their knitted vests and you would click to buy yourself enough woolens for winter and that I would receive a nice commission on that sale. In other words: I'd finally relented and added Google ads to the site. I thought it would generate a little bit of revenue and every penny counts in these hard days in our frigid economy.

Only, I stupidly requested Google Ads on the one day that I'd drawn a penis on the blog and they have now rejected my application on the grounds that this isn't a 'family friendly' site.

I don't think I've ever drawn a penis on this blog in the nine years I've been writing it. I might never draw Nigel Farage's penis again, though, as soon as I type those words, I realise that will now have to draw Nigel Farage's penis again. In fact, I might as well make this blog about nothing other than Nigel Farage's penis. Hell, I might give its own comic strip.

The irony is that wherever I travel on the world worst web, I see many things more disturbing than a tiny drawing of Nigel Farage's penis. Football websites often have Google Ads alongside women fondling their breasts, which I don't take to be a 'bad thing' but certainly not 'family friendly'. However, I have run foul of the Google censors and now I can't even earn a few pence to make this blog feel like a viable concern.

So, like I said... Damn it. Bollocks. And shit.

 ***

If that wasn't bad enough, Nigel Farage's penis is also behind the second reason why I'm having a bad day.

A friend emailed last night to say that he thought I was desperate for popularity and I replied that I doubted if that's true. Beyond managing to sustain myself, my real ambition for writing and cartooning isn't popularity but simply to be read by a certain intelligent crowd who are cynical, sceptical, but good natured and broadly humanist. I'd like to know that there are a few loyal people who enjoy the things I do. I'd much rather be cult than mainstream. I'd rather have a few people enjoying most of what I do, rather than everybody enjoying just one thing.

However, some days, things like this happen to me.

It was hubris, I know, to post that cartoon but I'd thought it quite good. I didn't think it would be the best thing on the site but I definitely didn't think it worthy of being in (almost) last place.



Not to disparage another person's efforts but I have to really rethink things if my cartoons are getting ranked lower than this effort.



My friend is probably right. He's one of life's immensely wise and intelligent beings. Perhaps these dumb little 'Recommends' mean more to me than they should and I should shout, 'Screw them! Screw them all!' I should let people come here looking for me than searching for an audience whose idea of satire is something like that.

Needless to say: I now regret drawing Nigel Farage's penis but I know I'll now have to draw it again. I'll have to draw it again and again just so the bastards don't think they've won.

The Gods of the Internet Don't like Cartoons.

The gods of the internet don't like cartoons. This is something I've noticed in the approximately two months I've been back, trying to write or draw something new for the blog every single day. If I write a blog post, the gods will generally look my way. They send their minions to scurry around the article, rip out the keywords, and then transmit these to the other minions that start to send traffic my way.

However, if I draw a cartoon, the gods aren't happy and their minions don't do their work. They don't have easy keywords to manipulate, so they don't then trigger the other minions to send people over here. The whole thing is strange and without logic. It's also extremely unfair to anybody who puts effort into drawing a cartoon.

Last night's doodle took me, perhaps, the best part of four or five hours to draw and is therefore probably no longer a doodle. It started around 7.30pm. I was feeling tired and just wanting to play around with the proportions of Nigel Farage's head. His head is something I want to master drawing and this wasn't meant to be a finished cartoon. However, around 9pm I saw that the story of Farage's meetings with Desmond and the head quickly became a body. I wanted to draw it in the spirit of those horrible porn mags that were once passed around the schoolyard as though they were the high watermark of erotica; the kind of thing that had ugly women hanging their sagging boobs out of the back of a Ford Cortina. However, try as I might, I couldn't get Nigel to look quite that tawdry as that so I just reduced him to an ugly set of genitals. Looking back, I should have left his socks on.

About midnight, I was still tired but still in the mood to draw so I quickly drew Richard Desmond. It didn't take me long because I guess few people could say what he looks like and I don't know his face well enough to have a sense of my capturing any recognisable features. Finally, I added a few shadows, which I borrowed/lifted/stole straight from the great Gerald Scarfe who uses shadows particularly well as a framing device.

Not that Google's gods would have been interested in any of this when I posted the cartoon. However, now I've put all this into words, perhaps they'll have something to chew on.

***

This afternoon I have to head out but, once home, I hope to finally put the finishing touches to version 1.1 of Shuffleboard King. The problem is that I've changed so many things, I fear that I'll have to give it a thorough testing before I can upload it to the Play store. The ad revenue is coming in but very slowly. I'd intended the next version to be the paid-for version I'd actually earn a little from but I'll probably end up giving it away. Google have now introduced a policy that all developers selling products on the Play Store must provide their home address which will be visible on the store. It's something that nearly the entire development community is angry about and has already seen many small developers quit Android development in favour of Apple. It's typical, however, that the one way I might have earned a little from the months of work on this game is now blocked off to me.

Isn't it always the way? The small guy always gets screwed.  Amazon wants us to sell our books for pennies and now Google want us to give our home addresses away to anybody who fancies sending me crap for all the crap I've done in the past. I really don't want to spend the next few years, tearing up UKIP newsletters because some clever sod thought it would be funny to send them my name and address.

I'm so desperate that I woke up with the idea of publishing a book on Amazon that I've had written/illustrated for months but will now never see the light of day. I might as well publish it before it becomes completely outdated. Earning pennies is surely better than earning nothing. Or is that how all saps think? I don't know. The whole thing is so damn confusing. Yesterday, I was visited by an engineer who came to install a new modem. His life seemed to much easier. He just spends his day installing modems and fixes TV installations and he earns what is euphemistically called a 'shit load'. At night, I guess, he drinks a lot. Everything about him said: heavy drinker. I guess I should have got into that game a long time ago. Then I might not now be looking at a life that I've utterly ruined by trying to be different. Some days if feels like I can do so much and have so many skills yet I know that as soon as I walk into a job centre they'd reduce me down to a big fat zero. They say all artists suffer for their art and that's great except I don't think of myself as an artist. Artists are those cool guys and girls with talent. I'm just me, creating the stuff that makes me extremely happy to create. At the time and moment I write this, it feels like the rest of the world looks my way and mutters 'what a complete shmuck'.

A Theresa May Cartoon

Two cartoon posts in a day! I won't be able to keep this up, even on the dehydrated monkey glands and tiger spleen. After my Ed Miliband cartoon, here's my cartoon and video about Teresa May and the European Arrest Warrant. I might draw more today but I have code to write.

Cartooning Hell: Even A Rejection Would Be Nice

Plenty of outgoing emails this morning and, so far, only one automated response suggesting that I’d managed to hit the nerve feeding raw photographs from field reporters straight into a newspaper’s command centre. My cartoon will clearly find the wrong person. I need to try again another day with another cartoon. Meanwhile, I'll have to throw last night’s effort away now that its moment has passed.

One of the biggest struggles I seem to face is simply finding the right person to talk to. Newspapers don’t list the contact details of the cartoon editor and newspapers increasingly don’t publish any email addresses of their staff. It’s an interesting phenomenon I’ve noticed as the separation of them and us gets ever larger. It’s as if news operates at a level above that of your common man; a conviction that grows stronger every day as the people who make news always seem to know the people who report the news.

The paradox is, of course, that the media continually tell us that they’re listening. They go to great lengths to throw up their Twitter handles and to tell us to get in touch, but that’s one of the problems I realised about Twitter a long time ago. Behind this supposed utopia where everybody is equal is a great publicity machine working against our ultimate emancipation. Because social media feeds the media with free content (‘Hey! Send us your photos of the storm [whispers] but don’t expect to be paid’) it allows them to stop listening, stop seeking professional services, and to keep the controls inside a very tight circle in the heart of London.

I come from a family of news obsessives and once 24 hour news started, we rarely watched anything in the day followed by the BBC News at 6pm, 9pm and Newsnight on BBC2. Sky News used to be the best news channel but they reduced their service to a rolling 15 minute cycle of perhaps 3 news items and the BBC has become our regular source of information. It’s a shame. Sky News used to be something compelling and really special; as special, in fact, as Sky’s sports coverage or their 3D service, which I’ve had chance to glimpse a few times and is amazing at its best. They also had some of the best young journalists and come the day that the BBC retires the great John Simpson, Sky News have his ideal replacement in the even greater (in my opinion) Tim Marshall.

But I digress. Sending cartoons, articles, and books away in the hope that somebody will be willing to take a moment and look at them can be a shocking business for your self-esteem. I’d always been prepared for rejection. I’ve had enough in my time and I welcome rejection when somebody actually tells me what I'm doing wrong. However, nothing ever prepared me for the reality of the silence.

To break into the news circle as either a cartoonist of writer is extraordinarily frustrating. I end up sending work to vague sounding inboxes such as ‘the news’ or ‘tellusabout’ or simply ‘contact’, which probably aren’t read by anybody .

I thought writing books hard work but nothing was like the hard work of trying to get somebody read the damn things. It’s the same with writing essays and drawing cartoons. Selling them is the horrible side of the business when it should really be the easiest. I started last night cartoon’s about 5pm, worked on it at a relaxed (dare I saw blissfully happy) pace through the night and started to apply colour about 9pm. I was finished about 2am. It sounds like a long time and result isn’t going to set the world alight but then, I’m still learning and the time I take is time I put aside to learn this craft. Last night I also discovered that I can do a couple of things with my technology that I previously thought impossible. I wish my craft could make two breakthroughs a night. I should do some night school course on how to draw, though the thought of having to sketch some local hobo in his posing pouch doesn’t fill me with excitement given that very few of our local hobos look are as sexy as Kate Upton. But then again, neither are many cartoonists… It’s a cruel world.

From Steve Bell to My @MartinRowson Moment and then Nixon’s The One

I drew a cartoon for today but I liked it so much that in a moment of deluded arrogance I sent it off to The Guardian’s Comment is Free hoping the catch the attention of the cartoon editor. Had I the email address of the cartoon editor, I might feel I had a slim chance of a reply but, as it is, I launch into this adventure with blind optimism. I was inspired to do so by today’s cartoon by Steve Bell, which used a similar ‘Cnut’ joke I used yesterday. They say that great minds think alike and all that or perhaps it’s just vulgar minds that think alike.

Speaking of truly great but vulgar minds, the wonderfully vulgar Martin Rowson followed me on Twitter yesterday. It might not seem like a big thing to you but when you’re stuck here in the north, far from the epicentre of world events and you’re struggling to keep your brain from going into sleep-mode whilst you edit a ten minute video of still photographs of a Nigerian housing estate, the fact that you’re followed by one of your favourite cartoonists just keeps the dark thoughts from the door.

I’ve written many times about Rowson and how his panels on display at the Cartoon Museum would have been the highlight of the day had that same day not included the chance to meet Ralph Steadman. Meeting Steadman was amazing but it was my trip to London that made me a true Rowson fan. I loved his Tristram Shandy and Gulliver’s Travels (though I preferred the pages where he used ink rather than paint) and I have some of my favourite panels scanned and hanging from my walls. One of my favourite TV shows of recent months was on Sky One when Rowson was in a particular savage but eloquent mood during his In Confidence interview with Laurie Taylor.

Anyway, my day will be more mindless video editing but checking my inbox every two minutes to see if The Guardian have replied. If they’ve not replied by late afternoon, I’ll post the cartoon here and you can appreciate the crazy level of optimism I had during the moments I sent it and just seconds before the self-doubt began to creep in.

Finally, a reminder to myself as much as anybody to watch Sky Arts 1 at 9pm tonight. It’s the second part of Nixon’s The One. The first part was simply the best thing I’ve seen on TV in a very long time.

Okay, I have an inbox to check…

The Most Contradictory Rejection Slip Ever?

Well, I’m having a lousy Saturday. I woke up to the sound of a hail storm and landed downstairs to find some of my proverbial chickens had come home to roost amid the morning mail.

To explain as well as I can without going into too much detail: I do various work freelance but for so little money that I feel that I shouldn’t be working every hour or, indeed, all that many hours each month for other people. Somebody left a comment on this blog a few weeks ago suggesting that I should charge £66 an hour, which made me laugh and sob at the same time. Yet despite my not charging £66 an hour for my services, today I was told that I’m not ‘there’ enough, meaning I’m not ‘here’ enough when people need me. That might or might not be true (I’m always reachable via email but not via other methods which I find intrusive) but the only reason for my taking this work was to allow me the time to do other things that are far more important to my mental wellbeing, such as writing and drawing the odd cartoon. Except lately it’s not been working like that at all... I’m thrown increasingly complicated amounts of work for which I would expect to be paid more handsomely than I am being paid, leading me to question that if I’m not getting the time to write or cartoon, then why the hell aren’t I working full time and getting a wage consummate with the hours?

The answer is that I don’t want to rock the boat. I just want to retain a degree of separation from the work. I do it quickly and to the highest quality I can manage in the often short timescales. I don’t quibble (much) when others come along and tinker with my work to the detriment of what I was trying to achieve. I like to think I produce the results with minimum of fuss but apparently that’s not enough… Nothing I do is ever enough.

This was all brought into focus by the arrival of a handwritten A4 envelope this morning with a London postmark. I was intrigued as I opened it, deflated when I recognised my own signature inside. My letter and four cartoons had come back from The Spectator’s cartoon competition with a rejection note attached. Or at least I think it’s a rejection note. The two sides of the card are a bit contradictory...



 

Guess that's an ironic 'yes.' Anyway, here (below) are the four rejected cartoons. To say that these four cartoons represented the end of my cartooning career might be to overstate the situation. I took a month to come up with these monstrosities based on the damn difficult concept of ‘man in motion’. However, since I finished these, I’ve felt a serious shift in confidence and I guess I’m still trying to recover by drawing the recent caricatures (surely the weakest form of gag cartooning). To get these back today was about the worst time for me to get them. Apparently I’m a lousy employee and a lousy cartoonist. And this self-obsessed moaning blog post proves that I’m a lousy blogger too. Oh, bugger. I’m going to get drunk… Except, when I type ‘drunk’ I mean ‘spend my Saturday afternoon trying to be part of a team, be communicative, and do the work with a smile on my face’...



 

So I Saw The Back of Tony Husband's Head...

I don’t as a rule travel into any city or town on a Saturday evening because I have a rough idea about what goes on there once the shops close. However, I didn’t expect that nightlife to be as evident on the 4.20pm train into Manchester.

A group of girls arrived at the station. They were in their mid-teens but their clothes would make anybody hope it was the legal side of mid-teens. Their dresses were barely covering their buttocks; their short thick legs brutal, muscular and a strange shade of brown like those of some East European marathon runner caught short in their quest for Olympic gold. Their legs matched faces that were callous and calculated with the eyes of desperate maneaters. I recognised the type. In nine months those strong legs would be pushing flimsy prams, passed on down generations of single mothers.

Arriving in Manchester, I quickly realised that the city was already full of their kind. I walked through the gathering crowds of revelers and the last of the normal shoppers. The women were brazenly sexual, devoid of anything that I could find attractive beyond a pre-programmed admiration for breast or leg. They were trying to appeal to men who were similarly outlandish in their choice of clothes for a cold October night this far north. Gangs of four, five, six or seven were roaming making loud noises and drunken humour and wearing thin t-shirts over grotesquely inflated pectorals. There were arguments, posturing, playful fighting, and some of it was good-natured. A guy stopped in front of a beggar in St Anne's Square. He gave her a hat shaped like a bear and joked that he'd come back later and check that she was wearing it. Yet such generosity was rare. As darkness fell, the rowdiness increased. I felt jaded by witnessing such sad lives lived out publically and after a coffee in the main branch of Waterstones, I got out of the city centre and made my way to the art gallery behind the Arndale.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="230"] Richard Goodall Gallery[/caption]

I arrived not knowing what to expect but finding the doors locked, a sign ‘private showing’ posted in the window. A woman working the button that opened the door didn’t seem keen on letting me in but when she did I explained that I’d been invited, which was embarrassing since the person inviting me had just passed me as he nipped out for a cigarette. I hadn’t recognised Bill Stott since we'd only spoken on email. I went after him, chatted briefly with Bill who was clearly on edge. The guest of honour was late and the evening couldn’t really go ahead without Bill Tidy. We went back inside and I left Bill to his worrying and began to wander around the gallery.

My impressions were so mixed. I was fascinated by the cartoons but the place didn't feel hospitable. Going to the Cartoon Museum in London had been so different. There I found people to talk to. Perhaps it was because they were genuine cartoonists or fans of cartoons. This was a different crowd, perhaps Manchester's cultural elite. I don't know... Here I felt daggers in my back. I felt so out of place and utterly unwelcome. Perhaps it was just my usual working class neurosis at play. I'd try to catch a person’s eye, start a conversation but the only responses were polite but cool smiles. Eventually, I gave up trying.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="412"] Those closest I got to Tony Husband (his back to camera)[/caption]

I recognised Tony Husband immediately and then Bill Tidy arrived. I didn’t get anywhere close to speaking to either and felt so foolish to think that I’d taken my copy of Tony Husband’s book 'I Nearly Died Laughing' in the vague hope that I’d get him to sign it. There was no chance. They were soon trapped in respective corners by people seeking audiences. Yet it left plenty of room to study their cartoons diligently, which I did, doing circuit upon circuit of the room, finding the only pleasure of the evening in looking at some great gag cartooning. Bill Stott's were the most familiar to me but it was good to see so many in once place. Tidy's cartoons were surprisingly delicate for a man who made his reputation drawing broad stokes on a whiteboard. Yet Tony Husband's were the standout for me. It's too easy to dismiss them as being roughly drawn. They are but, looking at the originals, I found myself really appreciating the technique. This alone made the night worth it and might even encourage me to try a second visit, if they let me in...

As I studied the cartoons, behind me the audience seemed familiar to itself. I stood there speaking to nobody as a world moved around me, kisses exchanged between familiar cheeks, old friendships renewed, gossip, gossip, gossip. I drifted between these groups, feeling like I didn’t belong and thinking each moment that I would escape.

It reminded me so much of days at university when I’d stand in a room of middle-class southerners so familiar in each other’s company that they knew the rules of being social. Around the edges of the room would be the rest of us from working class backgrounds and places like Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and (as in my case) the wilds in between. These were be the friends I made and kept over the subsequent years. As a postgrad my friends would be from Ireland and America. Class seemed important then. It felt important now. There was never much mixing and same felt true here. I didn’t belong.



I waited until Bill Stott, Tony Husband, and then Bill Tidy had finished their live cartooning and I joined the rest singing 'Happy Birthday' as a cake was presented to Bill Tidy but then I was gone. I made a dash for my train through crowds that already stank of stale beer.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="384"] Manchester[/caption]

I was delayed a minute by a group of pink middle-aged angels blocking the pavement with a rubber sex doll. I missed my train by a minute, took refuge in the Nero near Manchester Victoria. Coffee and hot food helped and I started to draw on my Note hoping to pass the hour there waiting for my train. Except a couple moved next to me so he could charge his iPhone beneath my seat. They hadn’t bought food or drink so they started to kiss, passionately, and so close to me that I was technically part of a threesome. I quickly got out of there, exchanging my hot coffee for a thirty minute wait as I stood shivering on a cold platform until the train arrived with more drunks but eventually I was home and swearing never again…

Talking Cartoons

My Monday was very busy so I’m afraid I didn’t have time to write anything more polished or shorter than the video I’m posting here. This another over-the-shoulder view of my drawing a cartoon on the Samsung Note 10.1 and I’ve again provided some commentary. None of this is scripted, so I’ll have to ask you to excuse my stuttering, some terrible phrasing, and general ignorance and mispronunciations. However, I try to talk about cartoonists I enjoy and explain why I love the work of Robert Crumb, Ralph Steadman, Gerald Scarfe, Martin Rowson, Peter Brookes, Nicholas Bentley, Alex Gregory, Thomas Nast, Bruce Eric Kaplan and well as some of the old Punch cartoonists of the 1930. Even if watching me draw isn’t that interesting, I hope I at least say something to hold your attention.

It was also probably a good idea to record this whilst I can still speak. This post was timed to appear at exactly 9.10am, which was exactly the moment I’m due to sit in the dentist’s chair and have my finances probed. After that, I doubt I’ll be in the mood to blog. In fact, I’m considering getting out of town as soon as I’m out of the surgery. Manchester will be my small reward for actually going through with the appointment. I’m just hoping that I’ll need less than a dozen fillings and praying there’s no need for anything more involved that might mean putting my Samsung Note up for sale...