The Reynold Girls - I'd Rather Jack

Choosing toys for Christmas.

This time of year many people with Children, or those that know people with Children, such as Grandparents are thinking of buying toys for children, but where to start? There's so many toys available these days for children that it can be difficult to choose something that's appropriate. If you go to a large toy department shop there are millions of toys to choose from. Where to start?


A good way to choose toys for children to give them at this time of year for Christmas is to watch what your child already plays with, and just as importantly what they don't play with. If little Jimmy never touches that 500 piece jigsaw of Whitley Bay, then it's probably not a good idea to buy little Jimmy another 500 piece jigsaw of Whitley Bay. He won't appreciate it at all! But what if he enjoys playing with his Power Rangers figures or his older brothers Roller Skates? Then, a good starting point would be some Power Rangers on roller skates perhaps?

Whatever you do, ensure that the toy gift you buy the child (or children) this year is suitable for their age. A petrol Chainsaw is not a suitable gift for an 8 year old under any circumstances, even if they do have ambitions to be a lumberjack later in life!

Doing business on the internet.

If only I'd discovered the wonders of gel pens when I was younger. Perhaps I'd have chosen to be a cartoonist much earlier in life when I was younger? As it was I didn't decide to be a cartoonist until February this year. At first I thought it might be difficult, but then I joined a cartoonist forum and after giving some advice to the other cartoonists on there, I decided to give up my job at the drop in centre and devote my life to making wonderful cartoons and making people smile, with my dynamic and unique cartoons, always remembering that those that criticise are just jealous of my natural abilities to make people laugh. Everyone who has seen one of my cartoons has laughed at me - and there's no better endorsement of brilliant talent then that!  


Here's a quick look back at some of those cartoons.

A woman squirts.

Why o why o why o why do we not have more women firemen? If I was going to phone the fire brigade, it would be nice to think that perhaps there was a small chance that they would send a fire tender full of lovely young ladies, perhaps in tight red t-shirts, would be coming to save my front porch from being badly burnt.

This country is not once it once thus was.

*I've been asked to point out that I am no longer permitted to contact the local fire chief via post due to the previous volume of my correspondence (allegedly constituting harassment).

I thought it was a good idea.

I've been experimenting with drawing shapes to help me make faces. This is my first attempt, which I'm thinking of offering as a fully fledged commercial service as soon as I've done at least another two! I started off with the nose shape, but of course it didn't start out as a nose at all, oh no it didn't.

Thinking the colour scheme would look very good as a series of childrens books? What do you think? Would you buy your children a book that looked like this, perhaps it would have some words in it as well. In a nice plain bold typeface like this?

I should think of a story for this childrens book. It could be the next Harry Potter or something like that.

Hilarious Speed Camera Cartoon.

I had the idea for this cartoon while I was sitting in my dining room this morning, eating some toast. I was looking at the BBC news website and I was reading a story about how they have removed all the speed cameras in Oxfordshire, allowing everyone to drive at whatever speed they now choose to! Now the police are complaining that people are driving too fast! Of course people are going to drive too fast. That's why they buy cars that go fast, over something like a bicycle, which doesn't go very fast.

I showed this cartoon to my children, and they thought it was very funny and that I should send it to the BBC, they might show it on the BBC breakfast news programme or something. I emailed it this morning, but I'm still waiting to hear when I'll be invited onto the famous sofa to discuss my latest mastertory piece.

It's health & safety gone mad.

The other day I was walking down the street when I noticed that there was some signs that I should cross the road and start walking on the other side of the road, pavement. The sign was an effing great big hole in the road that some jobs worth had dug up apparently. But this wasn't enough. Alongside this natural 'sign' was a red & white barrier a flashing light or two and some traffic cones. How insulted I felt. The local council or whoever it was who dug the hole had decided for me that I wasn't intelligent enough to avoid a huge hole in the ground, and decided to make it bloody obvious that there was a great hole in the footpath.

Clearly all this health and safety nonesense had also prevented the workmen from gaining access to the hole, as no work was taking place that Sunday afternoon. Anything could have happened to that hole the whole time it was just left there, inviting vandals to perhaps fill it in, or throw some elderly people into it that they had just mugged, and because of all the warning signs and health and safety  - everyone would have been walking on the other side of the street and wouldn't have noticed the mountain of dead pensioners inside the hole.

I take great pride in my civic pride, so I was compelled to make a small physical protest to all this crazy health and safety nonsense. I removed one of the flashing amber lights, and I now use it in my back garden to warn the postman not to stand on the gravel where the dog likes to do his business. If I have prevented just one pensioner from being left in a hole for a whole weekend then my effort will have been worth it.

Siege mentality.

When I first started my successful cartoon career, I was often asked why I was bothering, as I was pretty good at the job I was doing at the time anyway, and I couldn't drawer for toffee. Well I'm the sort of person that when I'm told I can't do something, I want to do it all the more!

Like my ex-next door neighbour who told me that I couldn't sunbathe in my own garden naked! How dare he tell me what I couldn't do!!! As it happens I wasn't even sunbathing naked in my back garden. I was wearing speedos, but he couldn't see them due to an unfortunate thyroid problem I was suffering from in the mid-90's (all cleared up now, thankfully). But I wasn't going to be bossed about by someone who didn't even have an upstairs lavatory for guests, and a poorly installed conservatory.


I took the same view of those who sought to dissuade me from becoming a cartoonist. I instinctively knew that my cartoons were brilliant, so what other people thought was largely irrelevant. I'm happy to say that I was proved right in the end. This site has had over 511000 visitors since it's launch in February 2010 (11,000 since March  2010 alone!), and as I proved in a recent post - many positive search results on Google.


Now, I am considering myself as an experienced cartoonist. I provide help and support to many web cartoonists - who actively seek my wise advice on all matters concerning cartooning matters. If you need to know which type of paper to use with which type of pencil or pen - then I can advise. Soon I will be launching my own cartoon correspondence school, but unlike others out there - I will be upfront about the costs. 


The same goes for clients who might want to use my services or cartoons. I publish my prices up front, unlike many cartoonists who are very secretive about what they charge. Why do they do that? I've no idea. Seems very stupid to me (and most other people). If I was a client and I wanted a cartoonist to drawer a cartoon for my website or newsletter - I would want to know how much it was going to cost right away. It's no accident that many of these so called 'professional' cartoonists appear nowhere in a Google search for "cheap cartoonist".


So if you want a "cheap cartoonist" for your recession busting business - then look no further than Leonard Gubbins*




*I'm also available for Search Engine Optimisation, Tarot Reading, and Oven Cleaning (weekday evenings only).

How to make people laugh at your business.

Business is a serious business and nothing more so now that business is in declining from the recession created by Gordon Brown in his last budget. I have some experience of business management and franchise operations ( over 8 months at Burger King alone!) so I feel well placed to advise business people about their businesses.

Firstly, it's important to understand why your business isn't doing so well. Could it be that what you are selling, or the service you are offering isn't suitable for the current ecomonic climate that we all find ourselves in right now? Perhaps you are a luxury goods provider, and people can't afford your luxury goods at the moment, because they have just lost their jobs. Maybe you should think of opening a pound shop on your premises until things pick up a bit?

Pound shops can be an excellent place to conduct business when people haven't got enough money and they need a cheap car cleaning spong and a multipack of hula hoops to see them through the dark days of the worst recession we've ever seen since the last one.

Changing your business is just one step you can take to avoid having to live like a common or garden chav, but while you are busy 'downsizing' your business to something more suited to the economic reality of life these days in post Soviet Britain, you also need to consider that no business can go from high class watch makers and jewellers, to a pound shop without some excellent publicity materials and promotion.

If someone in Angola wants to find a pound shop in Sheffield for instance, you want to get the very best possible search result in Google. It's no good having meta tags or keywords for Sheffield Pound Shop - as all the other pound shops in Sheffield will have gone for that obvious tag. No, what you need is something more specific, like for instances thus this, if your name is David Groat, then what you need is to be number 1 for the search term "david groat, no longer a high class watch maker and jeweller, but now a pound shop until things pick up a bit"

Using this sytem will guarantee you the number 1 spot for anyone anywhere in the whole world who wants to know where the best pound shop is in northern Britain. and searches for that term!

Alongside all of that there services which can be provided by any good popular SEO expert, you will need something eyecatching to attract people to your new pound shop (or whatever scummy type of business you decide to do until things pick up a bit). I suggest that something like a cartoon logo for your shop and publicity material would be a very good start.

Here is an few examples of the sort of cartoon logos that I can create for your business to see you through the recession, and avoid that sale of that much loved kidney.

I can be contacted for quotes for all such commissioned work via my normal contact email address (business email) leonard.gubbins@googlemail.com or HERE

Handy finger insertion (3)

In the final tutorial of this short tutorials on how to draw hands for your cartoon charactures, we are going to explore with the pointed finger or 'the wiggle' as some cartoonist call it. This can be a very important techique to give your characture a realistic and believable relationship with other charactures in your drawings. It can also help if a characture is able to point at something that isn't as obvious as it should be, or just needs to press a button (such as in Robot cartoons and the thus suchlike).

I'm a poo stain advisor.

I'm often asked if there's any other special skills that I possess alongside all the wonderful talents that I also possess such as cartooning, sprititualism, drain and sink unblocker, search engine optimisation, world peace envoy, psychologist and drame coach. Well I'm also a fully qualified poo stain advisor. I'm thinking of setting up my own poo hot line to advise pet owners and those living with elderly relatives on the best approach to various stains and mis-haps on various floor surfaces.

Puppy poo is possibly the most common stain within the home. The best approach is to NOT PANIC. At the first signs of the puppy doing a poo it's very important to remove the puppy from the area (as the puppy might stand in the poo and spread it all over the house). I suggest that the puppy is taken outside and left there for some time to comtemplate it's actions. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: If you live in a 5th floor flat then DO NOT PUT THE PUPPY OUTSIDE. It will surely die, and while this will solve any future poo stain dramas, the sight of a five year old girl crying herself to sleep for months on end is not something I would want anyone else to go through.

Now to deal with the poo. How to deal with poo on carpet and how to deal with poo on a hard floor is entirely different. With one, you can sometimes just scrape, with the other you'll have to consider a commercially available cleaner.

What sort of poo is it? If it's a hard one then it might be possible to just pick it up and place it in a BIN OUTSIDE! This is very important. Do not place the poo in a waste paper basket in your office. You'll loose clients, take it from me! If it is a soft one then you might want to consider how well it matches the colour of the carpet before you start rubbing vigorously with your kitchen towel roll paper.

Well I hope that gives some hope to cartoonists having to deal with poo and other normal people who might have messy puppies. I can't go into detail about elderly relatives, as the wife has just informed me that my bath is ready, and "won't stay hot for very long".

Lean on me...

I am often asked where I drawer my rather excellent cartoons and these people asking me this don't mean which room in the house I use, but what I rest my paper on.

There are many 'desks' available for the use of cartoonists these days, unlike during the second world war, where all the desks had to be melted down to build Spit Fries. I was looking for a new desk recently, as I found the kitchen table I was using wasn't really good enough, now that I am a professional cartoonist. My first port of call was, of course, the Argos catologe. Argos have a great reputation for Gel pens and garden furniture, so one could expect them to also have a great range of desks for cartoonists. How wrong I was. As you can see the only desk they had in stock was this one below (this bit of writing). Now that may be a suitable desk for a cartoonist that is just a hobby cartoonist that just drawers cartoons for a hobby, or just for something to do - but professional cartoonists have a few more requirements from their desks. Luckily Argos have a very good exchange/refund policy, so once I'd got my wife/girlfriend to build the desk, and then un-build it - we took it back to get a refund.

Now I was stuck with the dilema of which desk I should buy for my cartoon professional career.

I went into the bed shop next door to Argos, while wife/girlfriend went next door to Brantano's to look at some flip flops for her forthcoming community service. I knew it was a long shot, but who knows. They might have an old desk in the managers office that they didn't want any more. They didn't, so I walked out in disgust, and gave them the sort of look that told them in no terms uncertainly that they have lost me as a customer forever (even for bedroom furniture).

This would have made an ideal desk for a cartoonist, but the bed shop didn't have any for sale!

Talent Free Authors Wanted...

I am often asked if it would be possible to become an author on this very successful blog. Well if you have the ability to write, have a computer with a keyboard and an internet connection, then YES it is. I am extremely busy working as a cartoonist since giving up my day job, and building a team of blog authors would be an excellent way to keep this blog regularly updated with little effort on my time. Please get in touch via email (for FREE) here or at leonard.gubbins@googlemail.com and become (almost) as successful as me.

Another LULU portrait. Digitally enhanced.

LULU

Here's another LULU portrait I did some time ago. As I said yesterday, I don't really like LULU that much any more, but I have 230 wonderful lifelike portraits of her, and none of Garry Barlow. I wouldn't be surprised if LULU herself (or possibly her mum) offered me £20 for this. If you have someone in your family that looks even a little bit like LULU, get in touch (email address on sidebar) and I'll send you a life like portrait for FREE!

Love is a Chainsaw!

Love is a chainsaw and a decapitated head cartoon.

I've taken some advice from my good online friend Cretin 229 (you may remember him from the Disney colouring book?). He has shown me how to do subtle shading to give my cartoons a little more depth than they had before. I've also invested in a new felt tip pen (I was in the post office anyway - it's amazing how many things the local post office sell for cartoonists to use). Mrs Rogerson was in there. I haven't seen her for ages, but our conversation was cut short when I found out she'd just been to Skegnes with her daughter-in-law and didn't need any new tea towels. Her Dean will be out of prison soon. Not that I'm one to gossip, but I reckon he did it.

Anyway I was inspired to draw this rather marvellous cartoon by Valentines day. If you'd like this printed onto a card, get in touch with me and I'll let you have a price. I expect it'd be around £20 per card, but if your valentine means anything to you, it's worth it. I can't be responsible for any restraining orders issued as a result of sending anybody one of my unique cards.