We all have our cross-hatchings to bear ...

This great pic comes courtesy of The Surreal McCoy, who did it as a birthday card for me last year (I was 28 at the time) and the furtive-looking figure in it is me!!!

I know this for a fact because there is another version of this where I'm nowhere to be seen ...

Actually, I don't just do cross-hatching, as the cartoon with the anthropomorphosed bread in it also features a bit of stippling and filling in with potatoshop.

Illustration Friday - Satellite

You need to be careful with these things ...

I've received this wonderful postcard from Chichi Parish ...

Here it is:

You can see more of Chichi's work here.

"Been Away?"

This is another CCGB Caption Competition entry; they really do concentrate the mind wonderfully.

In the meantime, I had a great idea which was to do a book of cartoons but with very long captions which tell a story if you string them all together - clever, eh? Then I realised that this would mean it was a picture book and I've been doing those for years. Never mind. I may have another idea tomorrow, or some time next week even.

Dear Agony Auntie,

I thought I might try a bit of online dating and checked out the available men in my age range (95 - 102). Unfortunately I already know most of them (and a right bunch of wasters they are too), and I'm related to the rest. I want to play it cool and not look too desperate. What should I do?

Yours,

Emmeline Bagpuss xxx

It came second in the Pira-lympics!

Yes, the cartoon below came second in the weekly CCGB Cartoon Contest. As Steven Smith said when his came second, that's great and you don't have the responsibility of coming up with the caption/theme for next week's jobbie!

You can see more details of the competition and the other entries here.

Here's another CCGB Entry

This week, it's a captionless cartoon on the theme of, erm, pirates. I hope you'd noticed that already.

This is a Football-free Zone

That's the only mention of the word you'll get round here.

I found this when I was cleaning out the car...

but luckily I remembered why it was in there in the first place. A while ago I gave Alex Hughes a lift back from Dr Sketchy; someone (presumably Guru Joshi, or one of his followers) had put it through Alex's letter box, and he passed it on to me. It had been in my car, nestling snugly amongst the maps, magazines and general detritus. I'm just passing on the details in case any of you find it useful:

Cross hatching Part II; yes I know there are white bits in it as well.

This is my entry to the CCGB weekly cartoon competition. Details can be found here, as can other entries when others have entered!

Cross hatching

I've been doing a lot of this today, but I'm not going to put the results up here until tomorrow because it's all on my one-and-only-entry to the Cartoon Competition on the Cartoon Club of Great Britain's forum. You put yer stuff up there between 12.00 on Saturday and 12.00 on Sunday, and it seemed somehow improper to reveal all those marks to the public before the official unveiling time.

A strangely addictive, compulsive sort of an activity, it has an illustrious past - as shown here by Bill Stott:


and

At any rate, expect loads of it tomorrow.

Oh, and I've got some camera batteries now.

Last night I shared a hotel room with ...

a Corby Trouser Press:


I really like these items, even though I've never used one, and I always experience one of those 'All's right with the World' moments when I enter a hotel room and meet one. Actually, the term 'press' is very apt; even in the illustration those trousers look SO very very two dimensional. And so do the legs wearing them.

There were some other good bits in that hotel room. You know the way that in James Thurber's cartoons, half the fun is in imagining what led up to the scene in the gag? Like the courtroom scene where someone's waving a large kangaroo and shouting 'Maybe THIS will refresh your memory!'? Well that's how I felt when I read the Non-Smoking Policy, which stated:

'We are asking you to respect our neighbourhood by keeping the NOISE LEVEL down and above all NOT THROWING anything out of the window.'

And, to cap it all, there was a piece of something-or-other, absorbent something-or-other declaring that it was my own personal bath/shower mat, but not to use it IN the bath/shower.

I just loved it. I'd certainly stay there again!

Dear Agony Auntie,

Every time I go out for a swim, I get pursued by an irritating bunch of fellas in a boat. They just won't leave it alone. I've tried chomping the leg off one of them, but even that didn't put the blighter off. They seem half cracked, too, and have started nailing their small change to the mast, for some odd reason.

When will they start to get the message and just leave me be?

Yours,

Moe B Dick (no relation to Spotty Dick or Philip K Dick)
xxx

Fur

This is a bit of some fake fur that I went and got from the Rag Market in Brummagem earlier on today. It is so that I can construct a costume approximating to Barry the Shrew, who is the creation of Roger Penwill, and does sterling service in publicising the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival every year. Here he is:


There was a stall selling all types of fur fabric; there were three colours which would have fitted the bill, but I'd forgotten to bring a printout with me, for colour matching purposes. So I then had to find an internet cafe so that I could double check his hirsuit hues; I didn't have my glasses with me and was unable to read the code you have to type in to log on to the computer. However, there was a nice girl who wanted to borrow a pen, so she typed the arcane series of letters and numbers into the apparatus while I delved into the inner depths of my handbag to find a writing implement. Result!