Joyous 'toon time

The weather being conducive to the task, I spent most of today up and down ladders to give the old hacienda's guttering a long-overdue clean-out. Sooo... no time to catch-up with current affairs to support a new cartoon offering. Instead, I've delved into the archives to post an example of work from a period when I was not only trying to create fun for viewers... but having fun myself as the work process
evolved,

Circa 1992 I abandoned use of various marking pens to re-acquaint myself with old-fashioned 'dip-pens' and india ink as a cartooning weapon of choice. The move turned-out to be arguably my most joyous period of creation as a professional drawer of funny pictures. The style of drawing I developed with the dip pen was (IMO) quicker than anything I had achieved previously, was more tolerant of minor mistakes in line-work, looked more casual and seemed to adapt well to added colour, which was just then emerging as the norm for magazine 'toons. With the new colour element soon to be mandatory for most of my work... experimenting with various media was also enjoyable.

Here, Peter Reith ... who shared the blame for his party's failure to win the 1993 federal election... is adorned with coloured ink whilst the back-ground features coloured crayons. Computer colouring of scanned images was still 4 or 5 years in the future, even for early adopters of the new technology.