Ross Noble

Brilliant comedian from Newcastle, UK.

Mark Latham

Mark Latham left politics in a bit of a huff after loosing the last election.
He claimed it was health issues (which is probably true - he doesn't look very well).
He just published a book in which he lambasts pretty much everyone he's ever worked with, mentored, talked to or walk past.
Sour grapes?
Maybe.
Probably.
All a bit of a shame really, as Latham used to have a bit of a larikin attitude that was easy to warm to, and now he's become a whiner.
I'm not sure if this is a very successful caricature, as it tends to look more like our treasurer Peter Costello (although the two share a certain amount physically in common).

The Meaning of Life - and a comment for Charmaine

This weekend I finally finished my Monty Python DVD collection with their movie The Meaning of Life.
I would like to make some comments about it.
1) For those cartoonist friends of mine who love pirates and have been living in a pond and have never seen the movie, Terry Gilliam directed a short film that preceeds (and then attacks) the main movie.
The movie is called The Crimson Permanent Assurance and is about an old accounting firm who set their building to sail and attack big business.
The crew of the CPA (a joke I have only just understood now that I've typed it out) are all very old men, who arm themselves with makeshift pirate gear - blades from an overhead fan, the fashion a dagger by attaching a receipt spike to a stamp. Their cannons are filing cabinets that fire drawers.
All lovely stuff.
Go watch it if you haven't seen it.
2) All of the Pythons put in stellar performances - Graham Chapman is especially good. Eric Idle does a lovely job in a scene where he plays a silly American woman. Michael Palin plays a range of silly characters in a very silly and entertaining way.
3) In one scene Terry Gilliam plays a Bo Peep character in a slightly husky transvetitey kind of voice. I mention this only because he looks and sounds remarkably like Kirsty Allie. I live in hope that one day he hears of this comment and is appropriately amused.

Comment for Charmaine:
I have a friend from my days at Southern Cross called Jason Blundell, or Airbags as we all know him (he crashed 3 cars in as many weeks when he first started).
I noted once over dinner that he has the kind of fresh faced look that would be perfect if you needed to cast someone in a movie about either of the world wars.
My friend Alex Harris backed this up by suggesting that Bags looked like the entire cast of the Sullivans, which is the comment I figured you'd enjoy.

Preference

I had a free minute to persue something intellectual.
Which do you prefer?
The one on the left is 100% crass and therefore amuses me a little more, but the meshy bizzo on the one on the right actually works quite nicely with the design.
Incidently, for anyone enamoured by the meshy breasts, I believe they belong to someone who is actually a chap.
Have a good weekend.
I hope my antipodean art mongering friends have a moment to consider this creative dilemma.

FRANTIC

Well here's a bloody thing.
About the only thing I enjoy about my role here in TV land is that being 2nd in the market means that I've got just about nothing to do all day, giving me ample time to get on with drawing.
The other producer here is on leave, which means I've been busier this week than I have since I started here in March.
I am not pleased about it.
However - I recommend all of my arty farty uni friends Lee, Lisa, Charmaine to go visit here
Limbolo.
It is chock full of stuff I am very certain you guys will enjoy in particular.

Reflection

I picked up some work I've just had mounted and framed and as I left the carpark I noted that the topmost image had created an interesting reflection in the window on the car.
Pic taken with my mobile so it's a shitty snap.

Onionhead

More from the archives.
10 - 12 years ago?...
Many, MANY moons ago when I was in uni, I was playing with this character you see above - Onionhead.
He lived in a big old factory on a hill (the rough sketches of which are still among the favorite things I've ever done).
I made a couple of photocopied books, enjoyed playing with a character.
It was simple but still enjoyable.
As part of my studies I created a range of other Onionhead products.

The Onionclock

This is a real clock that really works.
It's made out of a small saucepan that I belted all the enamel off of.
It's very tactile, so tactile in face that I cut my fingers on it several times.

Onionbran

This is actually a very large box of Onionbran cereal.
It's nearly a metre in hight.
It's the sort of thing I've always found very hard to do - all that precise cutting is not really my forte.
These photos were taken by a fellow student called Mark Goding, a fellow who produced a remarkable body of work for his final year - all about Elvis being a member of the communist party.
It involved photo manipulation, painting all sorts.
He even had some Russian coins designed and made up with Elvis' head on them.

The Cheshire Cat

It is somewhat terrifying to think that this series of three images are almost 10 years old.
I apologise for the poor quality.
The originals are under glass, quite large, and very hard to photograph.
I only came across these photocopies when I dragged out my old folio.
These are all photocopies of photocopies and I've made not much effort to tart them up at all.
They were all done in pen and ink.
The idea was that Alice in Wonderland was set in a hospital.
The Cheshire Cat (above) was a heart attack victim, and was enormously fat.
There is a colour version of him in my folio showing him standing up with a row of stitches down his belly.

The Mad Hatter

I made the Hatter truly mad.
His pal, the March Hare is a bloke in a rabbit suit who probably imagines he's a rabbit.
It's very hard to make out the doormouse at this size, but he's a dead rat near the March Hare's foot (spot the perspective fuck up).
They are a little frightened of the tea.

The Caterpillar

The inspiration for the Caterpillar came from watching the last interview Dennis Potter ever gave.
He had lung cancer (as did my Caterpillar) and knew he was not long for this world so figured that he might as well keep smoking the cigarettes he enjoyed so much.

Voices in my head

One of the various things I do to supplement my income is voice acting.
Television and radio commericals mostly.
My niche role is accents and silly voices.
My mother is from Manchester and my father Glaswegian, so I was born into a house of accents and it's always been an interest of mine.
For anyone who listens to this and is curious to know, the last voice is a New Zealand accent, something all Australians can tell within a millisecond.
Anyway - here it is - it's a little bit more than a meg - Elliot Cowan's VO Demo

Give Away To A Good Home

Give away to a good home.
Male cartoonist/designer cross.
30 years old.
2 previous owners.
Housetrained.
Useful.
All enquiries welcome.
Email for further information.

A Prick

This another that may have appeared before, but I'm not pishkying about through my archives to find out.

Have we seen this before?

It's entirely possible this has been posted here before.
It's also on drawingboard.org where someone described it as a mixture of Halle Berry and Gollum.
It was hard to argue with that.

Notes from my fantasy life...

This would probably be a much better picture if the woman's head appeared to be attached to the rest of her body.
Having said that however, the caricature of myself is amongst my favorite drawings ever.

Cranky Face

I have a thing for short hair and boyleg pants.
She looks like she should have a mobile but clearly doesn't.

simultaneous 

Clutching

I'm going through my recent archives, posting stuff that's only been on drawingboard.org, or stuff that I'd forgotten to post at all.
This one may have been posted before, but it's a nice enough drawing so you can all enjoy it for a second time.