Cartoons cartoons cartoons

Here are my latest published cartoons for your "enjoyment", 2 colour ones from Prospect, 1 from Private Eye. I've sold quite a few this month and I'll post the rest when they appear in the magazines. The build Rome one is not one of my better gags in my opinion, but I am very fond of the drawing. Conversely, I'm really proud of the other two, but the drawings could have been better. I tend to rush through the drawings and draw as many as I can in a few hours. Often the first and last couple of cartoons are not so well drawn, and sometimes I'll even redraw them the following day. Could be something like that happened here, but I can't quite remember.

Reader 1 Cartoonist 0

I rather forgot about the Readers Digest cartoon caption competition, but it seems I did in fact lose. To this one:



It is better than mine, I reckon. Congrats to William Thomas, who wins £200 and my original artwork. Pretty good, you would have thought. Here's a link to the page that the image is on. You'll notice that the cartoonists are already doing badly. And the latest I'm hearing is that it's 3-1 to the readers now. We'd better pull our socks up.

Beat the cartoonist

Cartoonist of the 30 day period

Ah, the prestige!

I am Prospect magazine's Cartoonist of the month. They sent me some questions and I did them the very generous service of answering them, and they're also going to put up some more of my cartoons over the course of the week. Thanks must go to Prospect's outgoing cartoon editor, Susha, who has been very nice and encouraging towards me. You can see my latest cartoon for them on the link too, as well as a portrait of me by Evgenia Barinova (link to her website on the left there).

The new style

I've decided to revamp my style a bit and these two cartoons, which are in this month's Prospect, are the result. I've tried to loosen up quite a bit, simplify and create more dynamic cartoons. I've been a little dissatisfied with the look of some of my work and wanted it to be less stiff so I've moved in this direction, influenced by some classic cartoonists like Steinberg, 50's animation and modern stuff like Serge Bloch. I think the style works well with the outline-less objects I sometimes include (like the tie salesman's counter below). I also think they look great on the page of the well-designed Prospect magazine, but I am biased.

More book

A couple of pictures of my book, so you know it's, like, actually real.

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival

Presenting my 'Humural' cartoon from last weekend's Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival. Here's the official website. Pics from 2009 taken by cartoonist Gerard Whyman should be up soon. And, here's the Professional cartoonists' Association blog about the whole event.

Crystalline Structure Friday- the book!

I've put a book together of my cartoons, which is available to buy from lulu.com at a very reasonable (ok, unreasonable) price of about 9 quid. I chose a rather lovely format for the book, it's about novel size, but this seems to have made it more expensive than I thought. If you are desperate to see 100 or so of my cartoons, both published and unpublished, then this is the book for you. Or alternatively, you could meet me in person and I will give you a copy. I live in Moscow. See you there!

If you really, desperately want to know why it's called Crystalline Structure Friday, you'll also have to buy the book.