Duck-y

Just remembered this rather duck-y illustration I did for the Art Book cover competition (rejected, but I quite like the ducks so I thought I'd share it)

I've not had a very good run on winning competitions of any form - I won an 'Anti Religious' cartooning competition under 18s section when I was 12, (prize - £20 book token) a short story competition when I was 13 (prize - paperback copy of '1984') & I got my picture into the 1983 Judge Dredd annual (prize £10) but it's all been a bit barren since then - maybe peaked too early?

Guardian All Ears

Creepy Shining twins survey the traffic flora & fauna...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/feb/27/michael-holdens-all-ears
(Article by Michael Holden)
Three kids-two girls of around five and boy who might have been seven-were sat on the front upstairs seats of a bus. The girls were sitting together and the boy was next to a man with headphones on, who looked too young and disinterested to be their father, and he wasn’t. When their dad did finally tell them to be quiet he did so from the comparative sonic safety of a seat several rows behind them. Those of us sat in between though were subject to full force of his children’s shrill enquiries.
Girl 1 (loudly) “How does hair grow?”
Boy (with complete confidence)“Hair is like magic.”
Girl 1 “How do people grow?”
Boy “People grow at night. If you go to bed early you will grow tall.”
Girl 2 “How do buses grow?”
Boy “Buses are just like buses. They don’t’ grow.”
Girls (in unison, having sensed an opportunity) “How do traffic
lights grow?”
Boy (playing into their hands) “Traffic lights don’t grow.”
Girls (gaining momentum now, and growing sinister-like the twins in
The Shining) “How do taxis grow?”
Boy (banging his head on the seat with each syllable, frustrated with the game which he had partly created) “Taxis-don’t-grow!
Girl 1 “How do people die?”
Girl 2 (straight afterwards) “Why do people have red hair?”
Father (as though having his children unlock two of the great mysteries of existence before a captive audience might be more than the universe could bear.) “That’s enough kids. Shut up now.” •

History for simpletons

All together now...

War! Huh! What is it good for?

(sorry Edwin)

Imaginary medical conditions #2

This sketch got incorporated into the illustration for The Economist in the previous post (Economical tigers - http://stevemaystuff.blogspot.com/2010/02/economical-tigers.html) but is actually illustrating the debilitating effects of 'Brigadier's Syndrome' on a child -

symptoms include -

excessive bellowing, theatrical growth of facial hair, and an alarming affinity for gin & guns.
(Soft toys are liable to be shot, stuffed & mounted.)

(You have been warned!)

Economical tigers

Recent commission for The Economist magazine on the subject of heat re-cycling
- you might have noticed I became slightly more excited about the prospect of drawing tigers which the nice folk at the magazine seemed happy to indulge me with, bless 'em!

Hurray for tigers!

Guardian All Ears 20th February

Decided to run with the dissonance & 'hieroglyphic exclamations' in the text (with a little added dairy product of course)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/feb/20/all-ears-the-guide


(Article by Michael Holden)
On busy trains conversations rise like dissonant music from all
angles, leaving you to bear befuddled and silent witness to the
results. Departing Manchester recently I was regaled by the almost
hieroglyphic exclamations of a Welsh woman in the seat behind me,
themselves punctuated by outbursts from a businessman and his clearly
long-suffering PA to my left-referred to here for reasons of clarity
as Alan and Lynne.

Woman (on the phone) “Did he tick all the boxes?”

Alan: (jabbing at a chart) “He’s lost focus”

Woman “You’re kidding?”
Alan: “He needs to get focused again”

Woman: “You’re (+I)kidding(-I)!”
Lynne: “Here’s the schedule for next month.”

Woman: “I got rid of all my yoghurts”

Alan: “Salesmen will always benefit from focus.”

Woman “Remember he’s on holidays…the slim guy with the glasses and the
army jacket and the long hair…well he told me he was on holiday…you
said it was super. You couldn’t see? Well that’s gutting that
is…that’ll be your last scan now, unless you pay for another…they’re
coming down are they?”

Lynne (nervously watching Alan read something) “It all adds up.”

Alan (dismissive) “There’s no point doing the math.”

Woman: “You’re breaking up. I’m going to a meeting but I feel so
un-meetinglike.”
Alan: (waving the paper angrily) “I can’t read this, cut to the chase!
Where are the bombs in this agenda, where are the bombs, the IEDs?”

Lynne (stifling a scream but still loudly, while snatching back the
documents) “IT’S JUST A LIST OF IDEAS.”

That shut him up, for a while.

The Economist - heat re-cycling

One of a couple of illustrations commissioned for The Economist magazine - complete with virtual rubber duck