Happy Incredibly Belated New Year everyone.

News:

1. I have been continuing with my activities.
2. I joined the Professional Cartoonists Association. I have a profile here. I intend to be more professional from now on.
3. A new website on its way. It will be for non-church-related cartoons.
4. An upgrade to this website is on its way. There will be some improvements.
5. A relaunch of my licence system is on its way. There will be some improvements.
6. I have been beset with problems (technical). Problem a: inability to make any printer / scanner work using my main computer (Mac). Problem b: I tried to make my mobile telephone take photographs in pure black and white (no grey like the one above) and failed. Problem c: My cascading style sheets are in a knot.
7. I still don’t really have anywhere to go and work during cartooning days (diagram above) but I have learnt to deal with this.
8. I was going to learn to make newspapers, but it didn’t happen.
9. New year’s resolution: to draw in notebook every day. There have been quite a few days when I have not failed at this.
10. It is dull when people say they intend to blog more, but I do. There may be some shorter updates with less academic depth, etc.

[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.

Book news. The ‘My Pew’ barrel has run dry (no idea why we keep them in a barrel). It is being reprinted and I am told that the ink on the new copies will be touch-dry in about a month’s time. The ones in the picture above are cardboard replicas and not real.

Don’t despair though, my other cartoon publications are still available. Church House Bookshop currently have special offers on the 2012 calendar (2 for £12) ‘The Exciting World of Churchgoing‘ (£6.29) and ‘The Dave Walker Guide to the Church‘ (£5.39). UK postage is £2.50 for orders under £25.00. Other booksellers are available of course, and I link to some of them on my books page.

I can also hint at the fact that there could well be another book next year. It will perhaps be launched in approximately summer (add or subtract two seasons in either direction). The title of this entirely hypothetical volume is still to be confirmed. Thinking of a title usually takes two months of full-time looking out of the window, so if anyone has any ideas let me know.

Below: sample cartoon from the calendar: Furniture

[Large version]

[Full cartoon]

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).

[Full version]

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

[Full version]

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’.

A few items of news:

Cards
My greetings cards are now available from Church House Bookshop and can be found on their page of my various things. This means that after a couple of years of them not being available they are now once again available. There are five designs that can be bought – the sixth (‘My life in segments’) has now more or less run out owing to the plumbing incident of 2006. The ‘orange juice’ design (above) will be the last to sell out.

Calendars
The 2012 calendar can now be bought with a special 2 for £12 offer. This is ideal for people with a friend, or those who are likely to lose their calendar through spilt tea / negligence / weakness / own deliberate fault.

Grandiose project report
1 Some small progress made, not completed
2 Some small progress made, not completed
3 Some small progress made, not completed
4 No progress made whatsoever
5 Some small progress made, not completed

Other news (vague)
It is likely that I will be doing rather less cartooning (were such a thing possible) in the coming months owing to various developments. I have no immediate plans to stop any of the regular cartoons I do, but I’ll be spending more time in London doing other things and less time at home trying to be a cartoonist and undertake grandiose projects.

1. Making the t-shirt website that I have begun to work on actually work so that people can buy t-shirts and everything.
2. Finding a person who lives in my vicinity to do some admin work for me so that things are a bit less of a disaster.
3. Approaching churches near me with a mind to being their cartoonist in residence. The idea being that they provide me with a bit of space to draw diagrams and people flock in through the doors to see what is going on.
4. Actually doing something vaguely useful at my church. And in life generally.
5. Undertake new cartoon project, the nature of which I cannot divulge in case someone else steals my ideas. It involves making a new website and someone with WordPress skills.

Please nag me continually about these things.