The Sunshine Room

This is something I painted for the fine folk at Pickles Magazine; Issue 8 of which is now available to download. Aside from my contribution, it features some great, football-inspired art and design from some talented people. Don’t be put off by the fact that Ashley Cole is on the cover.

My effort was inspired by a tweet from my friend Christopher Taylor, who stated that he dreamed of strolling through Carlos Valderrama’s hair. Who hasn’t, eh? Still, the image stuck in my mind and when Pickles asked me to contribute a design on the subject of lust, my mind returned to Chris’s tweet and here we are.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here, as the ‘Long Term Project That I Wish I’d Never Started’ continues at a Berbatov-like pace. Hope to be able to start sharing some stuff soon though.

I’m as guilty of this kind of thing as any sports fan. I regularly lounge in my seat at the Sydney Football Stadium and between mouthfulls of pie offer beery advice and constructive criticism to Alessandro Del Piero. Just to outline my credentials: I haven’t kicked a football in over four years and when I was 14 the coach of the team I played for once opted to leave me on the bench and start a match with 10 players.

The pub interior is loosely based on my old local, The Hand in Hand in Brixton. I would often sit in the back room, watching live matches in the company of football critics whose collective tactical genius remained criminally unrecognised by football authorities. England may have won the last two World Cups if the FA had only tapped into this rich vein of thinking.

The pub exterior is based on The Selkirk in Tooting; a fine establishment with a bar billiards table and nice selection of beer. I miss both pubs.

Just a quick one to add to the enormous volume of Pope jokes currently weighing down the internets. I probably should have put something in there about horse meat lasagne for added originality.

This isn’t as expansive as some of my other cartoons, as I had to skimp on the detail  in order to get it out there before Benitez gets the sack. There’s no time for fancy cross-hatching when Roman’s finger is on the trigger.

Here’s something I drew for my chums over at the Swindon Town web fanzine, The Washbag, as part of their ‘Hall of Shame’ series. It helped to generate a bit of interest in my stuff and resulted in a few more people following this blog, all of whom will unfollow when I post the cartoon I’m currently working on, which is on the subject of Newsnight. Yep.

A relatively new phenomenon in modern football is that of the morose supporter realising that his or her misery is being broadcast on the stadium screen and immediately perking up to exhibit near orgasmic levels of joy. This is particularly prevelant at large international football tournaments;  keep an eye out for it during the European Championships next month. 

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything new on here (and even then it was a picture of some testes), as I’ve been working on episodes seven, eight and nine of Mungo for Twohundredpercent, to whom I am extremely grateful for allowing me to take on the doodling for a few months. It was a real treat, but I’m all done now, so I should have a bit more time to post cartoons more regularly in The Sunshine Room.