The earliest things we notice are movement , colour and sound. My very early years were the dull second half of the nineteen fifties…Way too young to appreciate the emergence of rock & roll , but hooked way too early by the box in the corner. I can remember most of Talking Pictures Channel’s extensive archive , first time round. Then , as now , they presented a window on a black and white world , which was reinforced by piles of albums filled with grainy photographs of family and friends.
For a long time , this was how I remembered my past. Monochrome.
I have , from time to time , found myself defending the integrity of black and white imagery , as if the drab tones actually added another dimension to what some may call a bygone era.
Alongside this 425 line perspective there was another journey.
My escape from drabness was via the comics I loved to read .
Beano , Dandy and Topper , of course , followed by Sparky , TV Comic and later TV21.
The DC Thompson titles always mixed full colour , spot colour , and black and white. TV Comic and , particularly , TV21 offered glossy full colour and dramatic artwork.
Even at a very young age , I was particularly taken with spot colour.
In hindsight , I know that this was a by product of the printing processes at the time , and was utilised as a cost saving measure , rather as an aesthetic quality in its own right.
I just found it particularly pleasing , and even today I take pleasure in creating an essentially black and white cartoon with elements of colour added.
This is not spot colour in the truest sense , but it works for me.
Having said that , I always had a secret desire to be able to produce full colour cartoon panels like I had seen in American comic books. I was particularly fond of Casper The Friendly Ghost , and his pal Spooky , who had his own book.
As a kid , this really was dream stuff. I was already pretty good at cartoonish drawing , particularly characters like Superman , but I would only draw and colour in pencils .
It would be ten or more years before I felt happy with ink drawings . Some of this , in all honesty , related to technological developments with pen and ink itself.
Many cartoonists swear by dip pens even now , but for a severe left hander , who had to learn to write with a very crude dip pen , when every desk had it’s own inkwell , even writing my name was , for a long time , a smudgy mess and my fingers were forever blue.
I eventually mastered the fountain pen and , more happily , the cartridge pen , but as I used these from Mathematics to English Language , I couldn’t make the giant leap to drawing with them … particularly as the colour of choice for writing back then was blue.
Cartoons , I knew from hours of reading Punch in dentists’ waiting rooms, had to be drawn in black.
I had a fleeting phase of scribbling in ball point pen but was always disappointed with the hit and miss line it produced and the annoying habit such pens have of depositing an unexpected extra dollop of ink where you didn’t want it…which smudged horribly if you tried to blot it.
Felt tipped pens began to offer me the opportunity to experiment with colour , but were no good for me as drawing implements as I found the ink bled too readily into the paper I used .
Trial and error led me into the use of technical pens for drawing and for a long time , when I wanted to use colour , I used pencils.
I was happy with this until I learned how to use a scanner in conjunction with my computer… Cartoons which looked full of colour on paper , looked washed out on screen. I realised that if I wanted to enter the digital age in any meaningful way , I would have to strengthen my colouring before I scanned.
Back then , to marker pens. These had moved on a bit since I last used them. They now offered me not only a more subtle range than the twelve pack of bright colours I had used before, but they had fine brush tips which helped me to keep the colour where I wanted it.
A combination of these and an old version of Photoshop helped me to up my game , particularly with regard to blocks of solid colour.
The real game changer came last summer.
After a number of false starts with illustration software , Loraine bought me an iPad 9 , and I was able to install Procreate .
With the addition of an Apple Pencil , I have been on a steep learning curve.
Learning to produce artwork which looks like my traditional pen work has took a bit of time , but I’m getting there.
I have to say that I have particularly enjoyed playing with colour.
When I showed Loraine , her first comment was how vibrant the colours are.
Importantly , I thought , she saw the colours before she saw the gag.
My usual way of working starts with the gag , then I decide how to
represent the gag in a line drawing. It’s usually at this stage that I decide whether it will be full colour , black and white , or something in between.
For the first time , I have been able to experiment with the notion of colour and work backwards. I hope it works.
In one sense , I have realised a dream , but whether that will change the way I work in future I don’t know.
Whatever happens , I have enjoyed the journey immensely.
