How to draw a bed sheet monster cartoon that will scare you enemies and delight your friends and local business associates.

I am often asked how I can draw a scarey cartoons bed sheet type ghost characture, and I can. For other people it might not be so easy, so I've spend many hours googling and have found this link which may be useful if you wish to draw a cartoon bed sheet type ghost thing, although I don't approved of cheating and drawing pencil lines first, it's probably an American thing anyway.

Here's the link: http://www.wtry.com/pages/missingmissy.html 

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.

British Televisional Soap Operas.

The wife/girlfriend is a great big fan of many of the British Soap Operas that appear on our televisional screens. She insists on whatching them, regardless of what she is also doing at the time. Thankfully they are usually broadcast in the early evening, so some things are never interuppted!

Having agreed to share living accommodation with her some time ago when our 'relationship' began (inspired partly by a very poor bus service between our each abodes at the time), I have accidentaly found myself watching these very popular televisional shows. While obviously I'm far too high brow to actually watch these televisional shows, I did find myself taking a passing interest in the bizzarre plots. It seems that they all have the same plot, with different actors and charactures playing out the same stories over and over. For instance, all of the soap operas currently have a plot about a body having being buried and it being discovered by a group of hoodies. A few months ago they all had charactures that were having babies. It's quite remarkable how similar all of these shows are, and I suspect, until Channel 5 launch a soap opera about aliens or something, it will continue to be like this.

Mr Bright's Bloggage.

Wonderful news this week. The delightful Mr Bright (sometimes commentator on this very blog) has started his very own blog. He calls it Brightys Bloggage, which is very amusing. So far it's a little dissapointing, with only 2 posts in two days. Hopefully, as time goes on he'll decide to take his blogging a little more seriously.

Not that many pictures on the blog as yet, but some really interesting short stories about a cartoonist that used to work for DC Thompson, and the Publishers of The Beano. What an imagination that Mr Bright has!!!

He's a screen shot of the site:

You can find the site here:

http://brightys-bloggage.blogspot.com/

Photo finish to a new career!

Small child almost ruined this photo
of a slide I was taking!

Since the invention of the camera around 10 years ago, digital photography has become very popular past-time for many people. Digital cameras come in all shapes and sizes, very much like the people using them. Fat bloke with a slim compact? It does happen.

For good results in photography it's very important to spend as much money as possible, on both the camera and the accessories, such as camera bags and tripods. An expert can instantly tell from looking at the photograph if the photographer has skimpt on equipement, so it's no use pretending you can get away with not spending at lot of money. It will be apparent in your completed photographs.

Once you have spent all this money (or invested) on photographical equipement, you might want to consider creating your own business taking photographs of people and places (inside & out). People without expensive photographic equipement, or those that want to be in the photographs themselves, will pay hansomely for good photographs taken on expensive equipement.

To test the water, it might be a good idea to limit yourself to only 5,000 business cards, and place these in as many local shops and post officers as possible. Word of mouth is a very good way to create business, so be sure to tell as many people as possible of how good you are at photography.

Good luck with your new career. With some luck, all that money you have spent on equipement to take a few snap shots of your Poodle, will soon be paid back many times over.

Heatwave in the UK.

The day I'm writing this has been the hottest day of the year so far. By the time you read this it could be cold again, but probably not. It's like 1976 today. And that brings me neatly to the problems of wearing synthetic fibres in such hot weather. Now I fully appreciate that many of the readers of this blog (at least two of them) like to wear synthetic fibres because they are cheap, easy to wash and relatively unstainable. And who hasn't lived with messy relatives! But in extreme heat they can cause unfortunate problems for their wearers.


Now there's two solutions to this problem (you all know what I'm talking about!). One solution is to change your nylon underwear at the very least once per day, regardless of what the morning 'sniff test' tells you. The other popular solution is to have regular 'council house' showers. Always carry a can of Old Spice deodorant with you, or if you can't get that, Sure for men. You can use Sure for women, as long as it's a neutral flavour and not some over the top flowery girly flavour with flowers on the container. Women are probably best using a clean damp flannel or a piece of Bounty Kitchen roll that's been run under a tap.


Be warned. Depending where you choose to have your 'council shower' can have a detrimental effect on your employment status, or get you banned from certain public library's or shopping centres. In your car is usually fine, as long as you aren't stuck in traffic alongside a bus lane.