…in 1959.

I’m not sure whether the intended readership of this sign are historians, vandals, or funeral attenders, but I like it. There is nothing worse than not knowing when a door was bricked up.

The church in question is St Mary the Virgin, Little Burstead, which is a couple of miles from where I live.

This photograph was brought to you as part of the DW ‘post something on the blog every day even if it is rubbish’ scheme. I can’t see it working myself, but there you go.

Posted by Dave at 1:45 pm on April 30, 2012 and filed under Church, Signs.

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Picture: The Cartoon Museum (Flickr)

Yesterday we trudged through the rain to the Cartoon Museum in London to see the current exhibition, H M Bateman: The man who went mad on paper (pdf link).

Bateman (1887 – 1970) was one of the first to draw cartoons as we know them today, ie an humorous drawing with a funny caption. Until then the drawings had tended to be largely straight, with all of the humour being in a (often lengthy) text underneath. I like the style of much of Bateman’s work – often an entire scene with plenty to see, or a sequence where a comic situation unfolds. He is best known for his ‘The man who…’ pictures, which depicted various social faux pas, usually hapless individual doing the wrong thing whilst onlookers react with horror.

You can see more of his work via the H M Bateman website (click ‘print gallery’). The exhibition is on until 22 July and costs £5.50. Well worth seeing even if (like me) you have books of his work – I hadn’t seen most of them before.

Above: Cartoonist and caricaturist Henry Mayo Bateman (1887 – 1970) works on one of his sketches at his home in Reigate, Surrey. (Public domain)

Posted by Dave at 4:55 pm on April 29, 2012 and filed under Cartooning.

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Well, hello everyone.

*clears throat*

I haven’t been doing very well at cartooning recently. I’m not going to go into the details, but let’s just say I need a bit of help. So, I’ve set up a small experimental website for discussion of ideas. It may or may not work, but it’s worth a try. To find the ‘Cartoon lab’, go to http://cartoonlab.wordpress.com/.

The idea is that I will post ideas which need a bit of work to turn them into something I can use for a cartoon. Any replies / contributions will be much appreciated, and hopefully the process will be fun too.

I’m hoping the technical side of it all works. Let me know if you make a comment and it doesn’t show up. First comments will need to be moderated I think. If you are a WordPress.com user or know what you are doing you might find that a ‘Gravatar’ icon shows up in the same way it does on this site. But no one really knows for sure. I decided not to use this blog, by the way, so that only the people who specifically want to join in with these discussions would see it. I decided not to use Facebook or Twitter so that people who don’t use those sites can join in.

Thanks in advance for any contributions. I do of course still welcome cartoon ideas via the usual methods: email, stopping me in the street, etc.

Posted by Dave at 1:17 pm on April 27, 2012 and filed under CartoonChurch progress, Cartooning, Ideas appeal.

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I am finally, after rather a lot of messing around, able to launch my new website, ‘The Dave Walker Guide to…‘

The general idea is that it will be the place I regularly post new non-church-themed cartoons (ie ones about everything else). At the moment there are only 5 cartoons on it (and you will probably have seen most of them before), but the plan is that I will add new ones as time goes by. The target is once a week initially.

Do go and have a look. Aspects of it almost certainly won’t work as I’ve had technical problem after technical problem with it, but hopefully you can see something. Please do tell me if you spot anything I could improve. One issue is that the cartoons aren’t as sharp as I’d like them in some browsers, but none of the programmes I use seem to be able to get decent results on that front. I’ve tried to make the cartoons bigger than on my other websites as I think they look better than way.

I should add that this emphasis on more general cartooning does not mean that I have plans to give up the church-based ones. The aim is to broaden what I do a bit. I’m really only doing one church cartoon a week now anyway. CartoonChurch.com is continuing, as is this blog.

While I’m here: I’ve also signed up for Pinterest, the newfangled image-sharing website. The ‘davewalker’ username was taken, so although I have saved the ‘cartoonchurch’ one the one I am using is ‘diagrams’. It is a favourite word. And to get all of the self-promotionalism out of the way in one go: I’m about to launch a new Facebook page for my general cartooning as opposed to my church-themed work (Edit: have done and it is here).

Posted by Dave at 2:19 pm on March 9, 2012 and filed under Cartoons.

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[Larger version]

Photograph: Last night I arranged the cartoons from the still-to-be-named ‘Book 4′ in the order in which they will appear. In the first book they appeared in file-name order because I didn’t get around to arranging them. ‘My Pew’ and ‘Exciting World’ have them more logically ordered, not that anyone but me would have noticed if they were peculiarly arranged.

The book, to be published in time for the Greenbelt Festival in August, still has no title. Anyone who comes up with a title that I go on to use will receive prizes. I mean actual literal ones.

Today I will be handing in a memory stick with all of the image files and the small pieces of paper numbered in the correct order (pencil, upper left corner). Conveniently the publishers, Canterbury Press, have their offices about twenty two steps from the desk I go to on Wednesdays and Thursdays to put bold and italic tags into web pages.

Posted by Dave at 8:54 am on March 1, 2012 and filed under Cartooning.

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Last week we went on holiday to Devon and I did some crafts. Pictured above is a teacup/saucer and teapot, both made using a mould and then drawn on, using a pen that can be made permanent by firing the item for a second time. The drawings have a ‘tea procession’ theme. Both are standing on an ecclesiastical chopping board, cut using a sawing-machine (may not be correct technical term). You can see more photos of these and other crafts I did during the week on my Flickr page.

Will DW teapots become available at any stage? I don’t really know.

Aside no 1. If you want to go on holiday and make a teapot, we had a very good time last week staying at the Ashbury Hotel, linked to the Manor Hotel, where I did these crafts. You can do all manner of other things there – do ask me if you want to know more.

Aside no 2. The other set of photos I uploaded today were of our trip to the Olympic velodrome. You can see them here.

Posted by Dave at 8:29 pm on February 19, 2012 and filed under Cartooning.

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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.

Posted by Dave at 7:08 pm on January 24, 2012 and filed under Blogging, CartoonChurch progress, Cartooning.

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[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.

Posted by Dave at 12:44 pm on December 24, 2011 and filed under Cartoons.

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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]

Posted by Dave at 10:12 pm on December 14, 2011 and filed under Books.

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[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).

Posted by Dave at 8:42 am on December 2, 2011 and filed under Cartoons, New CartoonChurch cartoons.

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[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

Posted by Dave at 8:26 am on December 1, 2011 and filed under Cartoons, New CartoonChurch cartoons.

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[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.

Posted by Dave at 8:56 am on November 30, 2011 and filed under Cartoons.

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