Puns can cause terrible groaning responses, but they are a useful part of the cartoonists’ toolkit. They can encourage and develop incongruous humorous thinking and inspire drawings of all kinds…

The principle aim of this research is to develop ways to find the funny and build it in the comics medium. The impetus for this came after a long period…

For a long while, I have been struggling with getting characters to move convincingly around comics panels and pages.  This has become a long-drawn-out process of impatience and overthinking. Most…

‘Games’ and ‘Tilts’ usually belong to the world of improv, but it has been interesting to apply them to cartooning this week. My improv teacher describes looking for the ‘game…

This week, I’ve been exploring how to create comic strips. This turned out to be trickier than I imagined, as there are multitudes of approaches in varying ‘beats’ of 2-panel…

It has only occurred to me recently that it is important to develop a ‘comics voice’ for characters, so that it is practical to create work quickly and confidently. By…

Recently, I have been experimenting with a daily doodle to notice how I am. This creative practice developed after a conversation with coach 'SS' who set me the following assignment…

This post covers the final ten days of the online Caricature Resolution of 2023 (the first 19 days are covered in post 42). In this last half, I began to…

This is day 20 of the online 'Caricature Resolution 2023' challenge to create a caricature every day in January based on a list provided by The International Society of Caricature…

I recently joined the online group 'Street View World Tour', where participants collectively urban sketch places from Google's Street View. This takes place once a month (the first Thursday) and…

This week, most of my creative practice happened in online drawing groups, including 'Drawing with Dylan', 'The Sketchy Bitches' and Ilga Leimanis' workshop 'Drawing for Thinking' at the University of…

It’s been a very long time since the last post with much and varied creative practice in the interim, so best to skip to the most recent practice of drawing…

If comic amusement is an emotion, could emotions be useful for constructing funnies? Philosophy professor Noel Carroll defines comic amusement as an emotional state (directed at incongruities), similar to other…

This post explores how important and how tricky conveying expressions can be for the construction of funnies. It explores the search for the right expression, the teaching of expressions in…

This blog documents my work with the incongruous notion of flamingo-ballerinas that began in September 2020. Initially, these flamingo dancers were created for a birthday card of an old friend…

Just a brief post to note my limitations for future consideration (and perhaps development or avoidance...) I am not good at precision, at measuring, or at understanding relational space and…

Recently, I gave a talk for the University of the Arts London with the repeated request for the audience to share any ideas or advice on creating positive creative spaces…

This week, my creative practice experimented with David Shrigley’s approach to creating single-panel cartoons, where he creates images and words in response to his lists of art prompts. For example,…

This week, I finished a zoomorphic representation of my 'sketchy' friend, Lene, who wanted to be turned into a fox. She is a ginger-haired goth, who claims to be a…

The comics diary began as an exercise from cartoonist/teacher Lynda Barry's book 'Syllabus' that is useful for beginner cartoonists.  In a nutshell, you write brief notes on the day 'what…

When I taught English in Japan, I noticed that many of the learning activities had at base the notion of ‘the hidden picture’, where you engage curiosity by hiding images…

In funnies, it is common to find funny animals as characters – these can be anthropomorphied (animals given human characteristics) or zoomorphised (people given animal characteristics), but it is difficult…

Recently, I have had the good fortune of regularly meeting up with a cartooning enthusiast in Leamington for walks and talks about the funny. We have enjoyed a couple of…

Recently, I watched a fascinating documentary on artist Maggi Hambling that stayed in my mind for days afterwards and inspired me to create some cartoons of her. Hambling talked about…

On the second September, I was working with Argentinian cartoonist Liniers' approach of exploring the 'emotional landscape,'and as my mood was very much one of a resistant resounding 'no!' I…

This week, I have been experimenting with the various art prompts provided by ‘Inktober’ (Inktober 2020). Inktober happens each year for the month of October when there is the online…

In the last month I have been struggling with various negative emotions, including flaring pain from sciatica and general despondency at the thought of more lonely lockdown in the dark…

The comics diary and personal creative practice stopped over the last month. Instead, creative practice happened in smaller ways by attending the ‘Sketchy Bitches’ online drawing group, by creating birthday…

I saw Tom Fishburne being interviewed at NCS Fest and he was a positive, smart, happy man, so this inspired me to research him further and to watch his TED…

Jim Davis (creator of Garfield comic strips) spent 30 minutes sharing his ideas on humour construction in a presentation entitled the ‘Art of the Funny’ at the NCS Fest 2020.Davis…

National Cartooning Society came together on Zoom on Saturday 12th September 2020. Members of the NCS are required to work professionally as cartoonists, so this was very much a forum…

The ‘Sketchy B*tches’ got together on Zoom to celebrate ‘Roald Dahl Day’ (13 September) by drawing quick portraits of each other ‘dahled-up’ and in the style of his illustrator Quentin…

It is about time that Grandad appeared in this research blog for without him this would not be happening...(this is also true of a number of other important people especially…

Creative practice has been very difficult for me - how to start? - how to play? - how to develop ideas? - how to be confident? It is also probably the…

Formats matter. This is problematic for someone who got grade ‘E’ at Maths O’ level (several times over actually even in the resits) and spirals out of control when I…

For a long while, I’ve struggled with the issue of leaving traces of pencil on my breakdowns (or rough drawings) before inking. There has also been a longing for lines…

This post works through a difficult week of crashing into unwellness to find a way back to creativity, and perhaps a way to safeguard creative practice for future. I am…

In the first session (10.07.2020), Simone’s biggest concern was my lack of funny friends, so over the last month this was considered, and changes made. I also had the task…

Cartoonist Simone Lia is mentoring me over the Summer and in our first session, she asked about my close friends, so I mentioned the first three friends in mind. It…

I created an image deliberately designed to appear automatically in the case of broken webpages on this website. Basically, I wanted to suggest that the page was taking a break…

On Sunday, I joined my first drawing session with the 'Sketchy B*tches' for a Zoom session called 'La Dolce Vita'. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sketchy-bitches-x-la-dolce-vita-tickets-113324679166 In this session, we drew each other in either…

On Saturday night, for some reason I felt bloated, kept getting up to relieve myself, and slept badly. The best part of this dull tale is that my mind started…

Roger Sabin (my PhD supervisor) suggested that I watch this programme on the BBC iPlayer - 'Bauhaus Rules with Vic Reeves': https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0007tqs This was a fascinating programme for the Bauhaus'…

 This week was very exciting because I started to do a Domestika online training programme with Professor Liniers (aka Argentine cartoonist Ricardo Liniers Siri).https://www.domestika.org/en/courses/623-graphic-humor-give-us-our-daily-comic-stripHe's incredible! There will be much more…

I used Derwent 'inktense' pencils for this, because they are water soluble and it's a quick easy way to paint (with minimal stuff and mess). Enjoyed this much more than…

This is a tricky question to resolve. It concerns creators and makers of all kinds – the difficulty of the blank page and the uncertainty of work processes and the…