Not packed yet but thinking about it!

I have my tickets, I'm looking forward to taking a little trip- now I can't really offer a prize to anyone who guesses correctly where I'm going, because anyone who has read my blog will know- but here's a nice pic of me wandering through the Old Town back in 2005. Sunny and warm!!

SchoolDays

When you've got a cartooning eye and a cartooning mind, you see cartooning possibilities everywhere. Even when you should be doing something else. When I was doing 'Othello' for English A levels, we went over to the Majestic Cinema on London road to see the infamous movie version with Larry Olivier and Frank Finlay. To help us recall plot points and main scenes, I eschewed the regular Lotts Revision notes booklet and hurridly made my own, in cartoon form! Here's the cover. You may be interested to know I passed! I hope no former english teacher of mine sees this!

Comments

Really sorry if your comments were accidentally lost, folks! You're not to blame and neither am I! We had a little local difficulty two weeks ago and I managed to restore the posts, but not your lovely comments! So, put it all down to computer glitches and such, and please feel free to comment again when (or if) I post something worth commenting on.




In the meantime, here's a nice picture of a recent Robert Harrop model based on a design I did for them.

Vote Vote Vote

Time to vote for the Beano, in this poll for the most important cover of the Twentieth Century! The Professional publishers association is celebrating it's 100th anniversary, and would like you to help celebrate by choosing your preferred magazine cover from the Top Ten they've selected.
http://www.ppa.co.uk/ppa100/vote/#beano

This Beano cover, drawn by David Parkins, certainly was unique- since I first linked to it on Twitter last month, many friends and acquaintances of mine that I didn't know when it was published in 1999 have replied saying how it grabbed their attention in the shop like no other comic had before. Some were youngsters who had outgrown comics, some were mature folk who had no interest in comics (there are such people- most of the people I know, in fact), but every one of them bought one or sometimes more copies that week. So the cover had the desired effect. The Beano one was a radical shift from 'good design' or 'great drawing' or 'cool colours' or 'great image' into brand new territory- huge, billboard advertising style WOW factor. It's not even clear it's a face at first glance. The day it was published I bought 6 copies (OK, I not only had an interest but I had a page in it!) against my normal 1. No wonder it topped the sales chart that year, vindicating editor Euan Kerr who took a big chance with it. Vote for The Beano! and vote DAILY!!

Another Winter's Tale

Back in 2010, we had a real cold winter- and one day in March, I'd arranged to meet up with several colleagues for a slap-up tea in Birmingham. Well, on the day, only four hardy souls made it, such was the wintry, wet, icy weather! But those four had a nice feast- me, Hunt Emerson, acting as our wine waiter, Lew Stringer and, taking the photo, Laura Howell. End of story.

Golden Jubilee!

My post a few weeks ago about my drawings back when I was a child reminded me  of this photo, taken by our Dad, of my sister (on the left) and me (er, on the right...) on this day, March 5th, 1963- 50 years ago. It was the coldest winter ever- well, in living memory, anyway! The snow started to fall on Boxing Day, and it finally thawed on March 6th- this was the first day I'd been allowed out in weeks! Deprived of running about in the outside, I turned to sitting by the fire indoors with a piece of paper and a pencil! You can see the snow is falling- it fell several times over the months of hard, cold, deep ice- and I do look a little chilly. Look, I'm even wearing TWO hats! Better get back indoors and get drawing again!

Last Word From Sir Paul

Got this missive a little while ago, thought I'd share some of it with you:

 

Dear Dandy People,

 

It was a great surprise and delight that I received (...) the last issue of the Dandy. (...) I really felt like a star being in the last issue. A few people who had seen it were more impressed by this than anything else I’ve done! (...)

All the best,

Paul

 

There's more, but this is what I'm publishing!

Dandy Days

I first drew for The Dandy in 1983- that's thirty years ago (yikes!)- and the man who gave me the job was Ian Gray (far left) who I've written about here. But in 1985, while on a three day trip to Dundee, I made a bit of a breakthrough, thanks to Ian again, and also the self-proclaimed Comics' Genius, Jimmy MacKenzie (centre) who took it upon himself to give me sage advice and some blunt words of encouragement. Between the two of us, on a pub crawl in Dundee, we came up with a script which, despite the copious amounts of alcohol consumed, I managed to draw up the following morning before going into the DC Thomson office for 9am. Ro, (front), is the famous DCT touch-up artist and colourist, etc, the only permanent member of the team during the entire time I worked for The Dandy. I don't know why I wasn't invited to her Leaving Do last year. Must have been an oversight. On the right is Morris Heggie, who became editor in 1987 and, a scant 11 years later (!) offered me the Owen Goal strip, which really established me there, once and for all. He's now in charge of archives and special projects. Here's one for the archives, eh, Mo?! I don't know how Steve Bright got you all to pose for a photo in a pub, though. What are the chances?