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.

The Rejection Section

Hears the first cartoon in the new feature I thought of for this blog - The Rejection Section ©. This cartoon was sent to over 8 different publications, and yet surprisingly, despite the fact it's been specially 'hand shaded' they all rejected it. Well, I'd like to be able to say they rejected it, but the fact is - they ignored it. How very rude! That's 8 more publications that are on my shit list.

The way things appear to be going, there's only going to be Smash Hits magazine, and MotorHome Monthly left to accept my hilarious cartoons.

If you know of a publication that deserves the chance to publish my unique humourous cartoons, then please let me know. The local post office to be has quite a limited range of periodicals, and Mrs Braithwaite gets a bit upitty if I spend too long fingering her glossies.

I've been rejected yet again!

One of the most frustrating aspects of being a successful cartoonist is the sheer volume of rejection one has to deal with on a monthly basis. I never send anything other than unique and wonderful cartoons to various magazines and trade magazines, and yet they don't even have the decency to reply to me giving me a good enough reason why they don't want my cartoons.

When I send something off to a magazine I expect them to accept the cartoons or at the very least explain themselves when they don't want my cartoons. Those that don't reply get struck off my list of publications to send to, as quite frankly I don't wish to do business with companies that employe rude cartoon editors. I now have quite a long list of publications that simply aren't worth bothering with:

• The New Yorker
• Private Eye Magazine
• Bella
• Woman's Own
• Dudley Parish News
• The Gaurdian Newspaper
• The Lancet
• The Daily Star (rejected my strip cartoon idea about boiled eggs - idiots!)
• Razzle (how they can claim my cartoon broke certain laws I don't know - they have photos of meat!)
• Viz
• The People's Friend (perhaps the cartoon should have been coloured with watercolours?)
• The Advertiser (free newspaper)
• Furniture Salesman Monthly (inc Carpet Warehouse Times)

None of these publications will now get the chance to publish any Leonard Gubbins cartoons. The way I look at it is, either take legal action against them, or just ignore them.

I've decided to start a new feature on the website today. It's going to be called THE REJECTION SECTION. Here I will publish all the cartoons that these fools have ignored so far. There's quite a lot of them, so it should be a long long running feature.

Here's the first cartoon in the Rejection Section:

I thought Bella or Woman's Own would love this hilarious cartoon as it covers women's issues quite well, while at the same time being quite funny. Sent it to both of them - heard nothing. How very rude. Perhaps the female cartoon editor had the printers in, and wasn't in a polite mood? I don't know. What I do know is that I won't be sending them any more cartoons like this!

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).

Careful Now...You'll peel!

As we enter the middle to end of the summer...About two thirds of the way through, more like.... One only has to look around whilst on the way to work or walking the dog , or even as one ogles the women as they sunbathe on the beach...I say ogle, I mean to say study, yes that's it, study the female form purely for artistic reasons... Probably three quarters of the way through when I think about it.... The one thing that sticks out the most is the different skin types. You have your olive skinned .."ooh, I just spam myself in Trex, wrap up in aluminium foil , (or aluminum for our Amercan friends) & just go brown without burning", types. You have the.."I need to be careful so I have to use factor 4 diluted with lighter fuel" who go a lovely warm beige. At the end of the scale there's me with my fair Irish skin. I need to apply factor 50 sunblock, pop on a duffle coat then apply a liberal coat of Sandtex Smooth masonry paint over the top.... Three fifths of the way as the nights are just starting to draw in..... Cornish Cream is a lovely colour (or color as our merican friends spell it) but I wouldn't recommend it for a suntan top coat on your duffle coat. Nice, though, on a dwarf wall conservatory. To summarise.....(or summerize as this f**king Amezrican spell checker reckons it spelled)... I burn like a tw*t! I've done a drawing, ain't I?...

Worldcup 2010 England aren't in it.

England are out of the world cup and some other teams are now in it instead. I don't really follow football, but I'm sure whichever team wins it, will be the best team. This got me thinking about all the traders that have been selling England memorialbeelia for the contest. They must be very upset that England are now out of the contest - think of all those flags and tea cups that they won't be able to sell now! This got me thinking that this would make a really funny cartoon, so I drew a really funny cartoon about it this morning and posted it on my blog. I hope you like it.

This cartoon is availble for sale, for publishing on blogs, tea towels (you'll have to sort out the printing yourself) and business cards.

As always, comments welcome. Anything nasty will be reported to the police.

Google is my friend.

I have often being asked. This charming, and successful blog was started just a few short months ago, but already it ranks very highly for some key search terms - which is a clear demonstration of how important it is for the internet to have this thus blog in existance. What would the gap be filled with if this site didn't exist? Probably another website of dancing kittens - a search term which this blog doesn't rank at all for.

So some of the terms that this blog ranks so highly for include:

• "cartoon chocolate digestive" - #1 position from 15,200 results!!!
• "steve bright talent" - #1 postion, from over 1,700,000 results - just a few up from a Stephen Gately video clip!!!
• "gel pen cartoons" - #15 position from around 78,500 results (second page!)
• "local post office gel pens cartoons" #1 position from 14,000 results.

Demonstrating that it's how you use Google that matters. As long as people use it properly, then I rank number 1 for just about any cartoon related search you care to think of.

Many times people have tried to tell me that my cartoons were not as good as others that they'd seen, but I'm sure they'll be laughing on the other side of their faces - having seen the evidence that they are in FACT so good, that Google ranks them so well.

And that's why Google is my friend, and Xezop993 doesn't know what the hell, he (or she) is talking about.