Dental Dams and Haggis

This week I produced several illustrations for articles in The Cambridge Student. First up is cartoon for an article about a particularly strict Chinese form of parenting that apparently verges on bullying.

I was also asked if I would produce a series of drawings illustrating the stages of a typical Burns’ Night celebration. Fortunately the author of the article gave me a very good description of the stages so I didn’t need to do a great deal of research. Here then we have the piping in of the haggis, haggis being cut, some of its ‘entrails gushing’, a drop of whisky, a Toast to the Lassies and a cèilidh (Strip the Willow to be specific).

The final cartoon for TCS was to accompany an article about investors employed by the University awarding themselves huge bonuses whilst academics struggle to make ends meet. I'm proud to say this made the front page.

Another one of the cartoonists at TCS asked me if I would like to produce some drawing for Gender Agenda, the official CUSU Women's Campaign magazine. She pointed me towards an article describing a woman’s embarrassment at having to buy dental dams in a pharmacy for contraceptive reasons. I had no idea what a dental dam was so I had to read the Wikipedia article, but I’m still not 100% sure how it works as a contraceptive. I've tried to make the pharmacist look a little bit like Rhett Butler from Gone with the Wind.

This week I also met with the company who sponsor the Young Cartoonist of the Year Award. They’re an insurance company who deal mostly with “high net worth” individuals, and they commission the winner to produce a cartoon for them each year to brighten up their marketing material. Most of the previous winners had set their cartoons in stately home settings or something similar, so I’m determined to try and get as far away from this as possible with my cartoon. I’ve had a few ideas already which I’ll probably rough out and send to them in the next week.