New cartoons by Dave Walker
Today I’ve been giving a talk at WordCamp London about WordPress, the software that runs this website. The video of the talk should be online at some stage, but in the meantime here are the slides I used.
Links to websites I mentioned will follow here – sorry that, owing to mild incompetence, they aren’t in the slides.
Here is my ’20 Reasons to Love WordPress’ cartoon, first seen during my talk.
I had two items published by Canterbury Press during 2016, my calendar and colouring book. You can find them at at Church House Bookshop, along with all my other books, tea towels, etc. You can buy them elsewhere, but Church House Bookshop is worth supporting if you are going to buy online. For those who prefer Amazon: my Amazon Author page listing all my books is here.
[Update: Christmas cards now sold out] I also have, on a very limited basis, some cycling cartoon Christmas cards for sale. They are the ‘Santa’s Bikes’ design shown below.
One of my cartoons is being auctioned at Sotheby’s on 13 December. It is a cartoon on the theme ‘If Heath Robinson was alive today’, and is entitled ‘Taking a selfie’. The auction, or at least the part of it my work is being sold in, is to raise funds for the Heath Robinson Museum (my blog post about the opening).
You can see the listing here, and a larger version of the cartoon via this link (will open in new tab).
The whole auction, including contributions from some other cartoonists, is visible here, my cartoon is lot no 282.
Update: The cartoon didn’t sell at auction (see below), but I’m hoping that a buyer may have been found.
So, my cartoon didn’t sell at auction. Who would have thought it? [Thrilling video showing the process of no one buying a cartoon] pic.twitter.com/8r44hJO7b9
— Dave Walker (@davewalker) December 13, 2016
This is my new cartoon for GEOBAR, the fairtrade bar that is ideal for cycling (other active pursuits are available). The GEOBAR website tells you all about different flavours, where to buy them (includes Sainsburys and Waitrose), and the people who supply the ingredients from all over the world.
It is great to do another cartoon for Traidcraft, and also quite nice to be able to post a cycling-themed cartoon. September is deadline month for my cycling cartoon book, so there is a huge amount of drawing going on behind the scenes. I’m at the Fishermen’s Chapel in Leigh-on-Sea drawing for much of this week – see my Twitter account if frequent updates, including the state of the tide, are of interest.
This is my latest cartoon for Traidcraft, as part of their Justice Matters campaign.
The video of the making of the cartoon is below. It is quite fun to be able to do these now I’m working digitally, and it allows you to see how many mistakes and entirely unnecessary steps I take when I’m drawing cartoons.
If you’ve enjoyed this cartoon / video and this is a cause you support please please consider signing the Justice Matters petition here. Thank you! Justice matters petition
Some fascinating insight into how @DaveWalker creates his marvellous #cartoons like this one he made for us!https://t.co/y3CDFUsLiw
— Traidcraft (@traidcraft) July 7, 2016
A message for anyone who has already bought my 2017 calendar. I’m afraid to say that there are some mistakes in it, in particular a problem with a number of holiday dates, and October isn’t the correct October. Canterbury Press are therefore issuing a product recall and contacting all customers/bookshops that can be traced. New corrected copies are being printed as quickly as possible.
So, if you’ve bought a calendar already, please email canterburypress (at) hymnsam.co.uk and they will make sure you get a new one. Please contact Canterbury Press rather than the place you bought it. Any questions – do let me know.
Apologies for this, and thanks to all calendar-buyers for supporting my work.
I’ve done some illustrations for a book, ‘The Invisible Church – learning from the experiences of Churchless Christians’, by Steve Aisthorpe.
It seems like a long time ago now that I did the drawing, but I composed a number of new cartoons for this book, which is published by St Andrew Press. There’s a cartoon for each chapter, some are new, some are old, and some may be familiar but are tweaked a bit.
I don’t do many book illustration projects, but I wanted to do this one as the topic sounded interesting, I liked what I read, and it felt like a good fit with my work. I don’t always find book illustrating easy, but Steve was a good (and patient) person to work with, and I’m very pleased with the results. Oh, and also the cover illustration – see below.
As for the content of the book itself, here is the official publisher’s blurb, which I won’t attempt to precis:
For anyone who is concerned about Church decline, the contents of this book offer an essential blueprint for building God’s whole community in the coming years. This unique set of resources offers practical help and insight for all who want to grow, enrich and develop their congregational life.
The Church of Scotland has drawn on the findings of extensive new research that it has commissioned in order to put together this set of carefully crafted and informed resources aimed at helping every congregation to understand why people leave the Church, how to avoid unnecessary departures and, above all, to develop an enriching, vital Christian fellowship with the large numbers of Churchless Christians in every community across the country.
This ground-breaking book, illustrated by Dave Walker, offers information, hope, insight, prayerful reflection and practical ideas for bringing together in fellowship all Christians, whether they are members of an institutional Church or not.
If thinking about the future of the church is of interest to you then this book may well be just the thing. It is available in the following places, most of which also have further reviews to help you make up your mind:
A cartoon about the Parliamentary debate on UK Aid, taking place today.
This (possibly) demonstrates the advantage of drawing digitally. I was able to get this cartoon drawn and uploaded in quite a short space of time over a lunchtime, and by 3pm it had been recommended for reading for Year 9s at a school in Brighton. If I’m drawing a cartoon for a client I need to take rather more care and do more research, etc, but this shows what can be done.
For anyone interested in further reading I found the following sources useful whilst doing the drawing.
[13 June, 8pm. Text updated to be more accurate. Now says ‘National income’.]
Six weeks ago (please forgive slight blog-post delay) I had the chance to go to Pinner in North London to see how work on the new Heath Robinson Museum is progressing. The museum, due to open September 2016, will be ‘a national centre for the understanding and appreciation of the life and work of the artist and illustrator William Heath Robinson’. Heath Robinson is one of my significant artistic influences, so I am thrilled that the museum is going to become a reality.
Sample Heath Robinson picture: ‘Deceiving the Enemy as to the State of the Tide’. More pictures further down the page.
I had a chat with Veronica Chamberlain from West House and Heath Robinson Museum Trust, and then had a chance to see the site. Some photos are below – it was a rather wet and miserable day and of course work will have progressed significantly since then, but they give an idea.
Funds are still needed to complete the project – you can buy a brick via this page. And if you’d like to be informed about the museum when it opens there’s a mailing list – please sign up if this is your kind of thing.
The museum opens on 15 October. Please do consider visiting (it is very easy on the Tube), telling people, and supporting this project if it is something you are able to do.
One of the fundraising initiatives planned is a sale of cartoons, and I am pleased to say that I will be contributing a cartoon for this. More to follow on this.
Links:
W. Heath Robinson – Installing the electric telegraph between Paddington and Slough
