[Image: 'Inept decoration (bishops)', card for Scott Gunn, December 2011]

A quick post to say Happy Christmas to everyone reading. Thanks for all your support of my endeavours this year – comments on my 63 blog posts, ideas for the 64 and a half cartoons I have done, buying the one calendar I have produced, and so on and so forth. I hope Christmas is a happy time for you, and all best wishes for 2012.

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This is the last and final cartoon in the little youth work series I’ve been posting this week. This one is entitled ‘Punishments‘ (click for full version). Once again it is a cartoon from Youthwork magazine.

Thanks for the kind comments (by various means) on the pictures I’ve been posting this week by the way. The four I’ve used have, I think, been the four I liked best from the material that is over a year old, if that makes sense. I’m aiming to put up some more of my more general church ones next week, although it is becoming trickier to fit these things in as I am about to start spending rather more time working in London doing things that aren’t cartooning. But putting new cartoons up for subscribers is my number one priority (apart from the obvious other number one priorities – drawing weekly diagram, looking out of the window at things, dilly dallying, etc etc).

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Today’s diagram on the CartoonChurch site is entitled Going to university (click that link to see it). This cartoon originally appeared as part of ‘The Dave Walker Guide to Youth Work’ in Youthwork magazine. Too see all of the youth work themed cartoons I’m posting this week see this page.

As for the cartoon: well, these things all* happened* to me, and I turned out OK*.

*Exaggeration

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I’m posting a youth work cartoon on the CartoonChurch each day for the rest of this week, (until Friday anyway), before I go back to posting another batch of more general church ones. Today’s is ‘Church congregations‘ (click that link for the whole cartoon – image above is just an extract).

Once again this is from Youthwork magazine.

New on the main CartoonChurch.com site: the youth work trolley (larger, more readable version).

This taken from the monthly series I do for Youthwork magazine, entitled ‘The Dave Walker Guide to Youth Work’.

This is the first of a number of these youth work cartoons I plan to upload to the site – there’s a special youth work category so that you can found a cartoon on that topic if you’re looking for one.

As per usual you can buy a licence to republish this cartoon in church publications or elsewhere.

A quick note to say that I’ve added the cartoon ‘Christmas preparations‘ (small extract above) to the main CartoonChurch website. It can be found with other related diagrams in the Christmas cartoons section.

If you’d like to use one or more of my pictures to brighten up your Christmas magazine or a service sheet the charge is the usual £3 for an individual cartoon, or £35 for a year’s unlimited-use licence – see here for all of the details.

This cartoon was my Church Times Christmas one from 2009. You can find it in the ‘Exciting world of churchgoing’ book (page with all books and suchlike). Originally it was a half page cartoon, so if you’re planning to reprint it it will need to be of reasonable size to be legible. If in doubt I always say ‘do a test print’.

I have had a month or two of blissful non-connectivity owing to breaking my ‘mobile’ telephone. As of 12 September 2011 I once again have a telephone I can use to browse online things whilst out and about. Is this a good thing? Probably not.

I wouldn’t be able to do what I do were it not for the internet, and for this I am extremely grateful. Yet on a daily basis the internet is my worst enemy: I allow it to distract, to take away creative and looking-out-of-the-window-at-things time, and to stop me interacting with those around me. Generally (and there are of course exceptions) the less time I spend online the happier I am.

This marks me out as an idiot. Remind me when I next break my mobile telephone not to buy another one.

I’ll moderate any comments when I’m on the train.

See the larger version of this cartoon here: Differing heights.

I, being towards the taller end of thingst, often feel awkward when I find myself in a central seat near the front in church (well, in truth I often feel awkward in any seat, but that is another story). This is because I’m certain I’m blocking those behind me from seeing the clip art on the overhead powerpoint. This cartoon is my attempt to provide solutions to this problem.

How about you? Are you among the blockers or the blocked? What solutions do you have to the problem? Please feel free to make any comments on this issue, one of the most pressing for today’s church. In preparation for the debate I have categorised this post under ‘in-depth analysis’.

I should mention that this, along with the other cartoons I’ve posted this week, is taken from the Canterbury Press book ‘The exciting world of churchgoing‘, now available with 10 (ten) % (percent) off.

See the larger readable version of this cartoon here: Sermon illustrations – ideas for some good ones.

Information about using this cartoon elsewhere is on this page as per usual. The only problem with putting this cartoon in your church magazine is that your parishioners will have seen all of your best material. My advice would be to leave it nine weeks or so until you’ve had a chance to use all of the ideas. Those of you who use a lectionary will no doubt raise one or more eyebrows at the suggestion that the sermon illustrations can be used in the next nine weeks, but I’m sure that the determined will find a way.

Another cartoon tomorrow. Who knows, there might even be some new material at some point.

A new cartoon has been posted on the main CartoonChurch site – click this link for the larger version: In the vestry. Information on republishing can also be found via that page.

The cartoon is all to do with the things that happen in vestries before the service starts. I have not been allowed in a vestry before a service starts for years, so I really have very little idea what goes on. I have heard rumours that some churches even employ heavily disguised security staff specifically to keep me out. This diagram is therefore based entirely on second hand information and heresy hearsay. If anyone can enlighten me, about this, or indeed about anything, then please feel free to do so.

Some more cartoons will be posted in the next few days as it has been a while. I am also determined to turn over a bit of a blogging leaf from this point onwards. More about that another time.