Category / Smith

by Andrew Pilcher

Putting the world to rights

smith-pilcher-840-150821Oh dear. It’s been a bit of a tough summer – at least it was when I wrote this next batch of cartoons. Us humans have been acting in a really stupid manner again, everyone’s been shouting at one another, shooting one other and blowing each other up for no sensible reason whatsoever. So pardon me while I get this out of my system, making very obvious points in a very obvious way because some things are so very obvious that no-one ever seems to pay any heed to them. Normal service resumes on Bank Holiday Monday.

 

by Andrew Pilcher

What’s cooking?

smith-pilcher-839-150819

by Andrew Pilcher

Do not adjust your set

smith-pilcher-838-150817It’s hard work making the colours look discordant enough. I hope this works.

by Andrew Pilcher

Synesthesia

smith-pilcher-837-150814I set myself the question of how to represent different smells in a comic strip without using ‘stink lines’ which only ever seem to represent an unpleasant or overpowering odour. I decided that colour would be the best way to go about it, and that led to a series of cartoons of which this is the first.

Lynx aftershave is exactly the same stuff as the range of adolescent smellies known as ‘Axe’ in the States. It doesn’t smell too bad used in moderation, but its target demographic doesn’t know the meaning of ‘in moderation’ yet.

by Andrew Pilcher

Who watches the watchmen?

smith-pilcher-836-150812The Cat Who Stares at Stuff, that’s who.

by Andrew Pilcher

Plastic bags

smith-pilcher-835-150810I’m always amazed by how many plastic bags our groceries come in when we get a delivery from a supermarket, especially when you consider that whenever I actually do a big weekend shop, I can manage to get the same amount of stuff in about five of six. I think that’s a habit I’ve retained from the days when I didn’t drive, and learned the trick of doing a weekly shop and carrying the groceries back home in as compact a way as possible.

Why do cats like plastic bags? Aside from the obvious attraction of the rustling sound they make, of course. A commenter has noted that some cats like to bite the – something I’ve noticed Bella loves to do as well, though she prefers upmarket bags from Waterstones the booksellers or the handles of carriers from Next. It may be the particular plastic that they use that attracts them – Smudge loved a plastic bag tidy from Ikea; it got a catnip-like reaction from her.

I really shouldn’t have to say this but don’t forget, cats and empty plastic bags do not mix. Don’t leave your cat unattended with anything that might potentially suffocate them.

by Andrew Pilcher

Sea Fret

smith-pilcher-834-150807I’m not exaggerating here – on Hastings seafront on some days you can cross the road and go from deep fog to bright sunshine.

by Andrew Pilcher

Give ’em enough rope

smith-pilcher-833-150805Yes, this is a bit late, I’m afraid. I drew it yesterday but didn’t manage to colour it in until today. Unfortunately colouring is so soothing and restful that I fell asleep at the computer doing it. So I had to do it this evening instead, with a break halfway through for Bake Off (I like to think I have my priorities correct).

This is my first strip created using tracing paper and tracedown sheets in order to get the backgrounds in each frame looking much the same without looking mechanical. The process involves drawing the first background as normal, and the tracing it onto a sheet of tracing paper. Then, using the traced copy as a template, and sandwiching a tracedown sheet between the tracing paper and the final artwork (imagine carbon paper without the waxiness, so pressure leaves an erasable graphite mark on the paper below) I draw the same background into the other frames. The characters get drawn into position over the backgrounds. Then the art gets inked and the pencil marks erased as normal. It’s a very involved process but it works – its stopped the tree from mutating from one frame to the next.

by Andrew Pilcher

Webcam

smith-pilcher-832-150803A bit of an experiment, this one – how would a cat react to finding a webcam, and what would the webcam record about the encounter?

This nearly got animated, but I ran out of time. That also explains the black last frame – this really should be a five frame comic but for it to really make sense the frames have to be exactly the same size.

I’ve drawn the entrance to my study here, you can see my coats, two Albuquerque Isotopes baseball hats and my Panama hat (as worn in my Facebook profile) hanging from the door.

by Andrew Pilcher

Red and yellow and pink and blue

smith-pilcher-831-150731And to finish off the colouring-in theme for this week, here’s the ‘I can sing a rainbow’ song rewritten for Crayola colours. Each colour name has been rendered in its own colour according to the official Crayola-Hexadecimal colour conversion chart that you can see here. The writing’s a bit shaky because I had to do it using my graphics tablet.