I'm going to draw Penelope Cruze.

I've decided that it might be quite good fun to draw somthing cartoonists call a caricature. That is a picture (or drawing) of someone done in a cartooney style, but instead of just looking like a cartoon drawing that I've copied from another cartoonist (so many cartoons are all the same these days. Drawn with lines. Lettering for the caption etc) this one will look like I had the celebrity right there in front of my drawing pad when I did this.

My plan to do this drawing and make it look like the celebrity that I want it to look like is to draw the picture while quickly looking at my pad and then quickly looking at a photo of the celebrity back and forth as I go. I'm going to draw the celebrity just like they appear in the photo, and then exaggerate their features to add some fun and uniqueness to the drawing. If I didn't do this, then it would just be a drawing of the celebrity.

Remember I am not an artist, and I'm also a single mum.

I'm hoping Penelope Cruze will give me at least £20 for this drawing caricature of herself image.

Here we go.....

I think that worked out quite well. I'm sending it to Penelope Cruze today, but I have to send it by email, as I don't have a colour printer. If she wants it for her art collection, she'll just have to print it out herself.

Drawing small cartoons is no fun at all.

I've decided that it was time that I decided to launch a highly successful strip cartoon series that will get published in many newspapers all over the world. I expect it will pay very well. At least £20 per day, per newspaper. Which could soon add up to a great deal of money.

The problem I have with drawing a newspaper strip every day for vast amounts of money, is that the size of the strips in newspapers, means it's quite difficult to draw at such a small size for newspapers comic strips.

It's not the humour or the drawing skills that is the problem. Just drawing something very small, with a very big brush pen. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was some sort of conspiracy to prevent people with large brush pens from selling cartoon comic strips for newspapers, and denying them a vast income of many £20 notes from each newspaper that would take the comic strip, if only they were drawn at a bigger size.

It's quite clearly madness. But I shall continue to spend most of my time drawing at least 4,000 strips, and then I'll send them out to see what the market thinks.

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.

A Friday the 13th Caricature.

This is a cartoon portrait of my next door neighbour. I can't tell you her name, as she wishes to remain anonymous, but agreed to me posting her caricature on the internet. She has been having trouble with her neck for several years now. Various doctors and other patients in various waiting rooms have not been able to diagnose her condition. All she knows is that she gets terrible pains in her neck, especially after line dancing.

To be honest, I think she's quite depressed about it now. It's been going on for so many years. The doctors don't want to know. Even other patients have stopped listening. I thought long and hard about how I could help cheer her up a bit. I could have trimmed her front hedge for her, but I didn't have time for this, as I needed to take a faulty tin opener back to Argos that day. So after a long hard think taking several hours, I decided that I could make her smile with my cartooning skills.

She's often said about how she wishes she just didn't have a neck any more, so I came up with this hilarious caricature of her (wearing the polo neck her nan knitted for her last year before she died. In fact THE last thing her nan ever knitted. Some have suggested she was catching a bus to the wool shop when the accident occurred, but that could just be an urban legend!)

Drawing done entirely on the computer. Black HP mouse, 19" monitor, but made to look like pencil crayon hand shaded.

* Her front hedge is still a state, but at least now she's smiling!

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.

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.

Hedge Trimmers Trim Hedges!

I have often been asked how I keep my hedge so neat and tidy all year around. Well I use a hedge trimmer of course. I used to have a huge pair of rusty shears, but I found that these didn't use electricity at all, so I invested in a Bosch hedge trimmer (not the one in the picture - I couldn't find a photo of my own trimmer). So now I own a Bosch hedge trimmer, which trimmer should you buy? Firstly you need to find out how far away from your house your hedge is. If it is 100 metres away then you might need a very long cable to reach your hedge. So you need to buy a hedge trimmer with a very long cable (or wire). Next you need to work out just how much of a weed you are. It's no use buying a great big heavy one, if it makes your wrists ache after a few minutes. I suggest you go into a shop and feel them all for weight, then when you've made your decision to buy, pop home and get onto the internet and buy one from there (it will be cheaper).

Here's some more hedge trimmer pictures.

Enjoy your trimming.