Shearwater Ballinasloe Wedding Entertainment

Shearwater Ballinasloe Wedding Entertainment 21

Shearwater Ballinasloe Wedding Entertainment: some of my live caricature artwork in Galway wedding venue the Shearwater Hotel. It’s a good thing the hotel has a big lobby because they were queuing out the door for me at this one! Lots of great reactions and the guests clearly had a tonne of fun with me. Each … Read more

Golf Themed 70th Birthday Present

golf theme 70th birthday present

Golf Themed 70th Birthday Present: here’s a framed caricature that made its way to the pictured gentleman on the occasion of his 70th birthday! He’s a golf and cricket fan so both of these made it into the caricature. I love drawing those vintage colourful socks! The client asked for a discreet reference to it … Read more

Charlie Adley’s Double Vision – Your mañana culture has been good for me!

stood up cartoon

Stood up cartoon from Charlie’s column from a couple of weeks ago (a little late posting it here!)

“During teenage Summers, I’d hitch all over Europe. At 19 I hitched to Israel and then ventured further afield, hitching in New Zealand and Australia in my 20s”


Charlie talks about hitchhiking around the world and being stood up at a meeting through the frame of Galway’s incredibly laid back attitude to time-keeping. These were my cues for this visual metaphor of these two aspects of the column. I like how they turned out, there’s something satisfyingly creepy about how you can entirely swap out a human head and replace it with another part of the body (like an ear or a hand!) and it will still “read” as a person, even with a personality!
It’s fascinating to read about Charlie’s thumb-powered travels in the column (and they’re featured in quite a few previous cartoons, that blue bag is almost an old friend!). The man has quite a portion of the globe ground under his shoe leather, but Galway was the place that snagged him, much like myself. I knew the first day I stepped off the bus, looking for accommodation for college with a friend from Donegal, that this was a city my feet were going to sink into. And a few of those pubs too…
More Double Vision cartoons here.

stood up cartoon
stood up cartoon

Scientist Wedding Caricature

scientist wedding caricature

Scientist Wedding Caricature as featured on one of my canvas signing boards for a recent wedding! The couple in question are both scientists, they must have great chemistry together! The signing board was a wedding gift and I got lovely feedback from the client: Just wanted to say I received the canvas and it’s fab … Read more

The End of the MADness – Tom Richmond on the end of MAD Magazine

Alfred MAD Magazine

Very sad news that MAD Magazine is to cease publication. Here’s Tom Richmond (a huge influence on me) on the passing of this American institution:

Yesterday contributors to MAD Magazine officially got the news that, after 67 years of continuous publication that began with Harvey Kurtzman‘s brilliant comic book and eventually evolved into the magazine that forever changed the world of satire and humor, MAD will stop publishing new content after issue #10 in October.

via Richmond Illustration Inc.
My own thoughts: I feel very sad about this. I was never really in to it but knew it by osmosis (ie The Simpsons). I’ve seen how much it meant to its contributors, especially on Instagram where I’d followed several MAD-contributing cartoonists for a few years. It’s just a gaping hole and I’m sure it’s going to hurt the livelihoods of artists and writers. It seemed financially healthy (although Tom dives into the figures a bit more in his post linked above), it lasted this long. A really sad day for cartoons and cartooning.

Nerja Beach Wedding Caricature!

nerja beach wedding

Nerja Beach Wedding Caricature: this lovely couple commissioned one of my canvas wedding signing boards to take with them to their wedding in Spain. It features them and their kids on the beach with signposts for Ireland and Nerja! It’s nice to think of my wedding signing boards going so far afield and coming back … Read more