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Cartoon from Diagram Club #072: Introducing Creativity diagrams.

See all of the Creativity Diagrams series.

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Some news. I’m stepping down from drawing cartoons for the Church Times.

I drew my first cartoon for the Church Times (CT) in 2004, and then regularly from spring 2005 onwards, and I’ve been drawing them every week for 21 years, admittedly with a few breaks, including quite a lot of the last year. If you laid all of these cartoons end to end you’d have nine books-worth, plus a few extras.

Being offered the chance to contribute a regular weekly cartoon to the CT by the then editor Paul Handley, in 2005, gave me the opportunity to attempt to make a career of it, for which I will always be immensely grateful. None of the cycling or other work that I’ve done would have come about had it not been for that. And many of you will have discovered my work via the CT drawings.

I’ve decided the time has now come to step away from drawing my Church Times cartoons. I’m not going to write about the reasons, except that it’s been necessary, my own choice, and not an easy decision.

I know there will be some people who will be disappointed about this, and I’m sorry.

It has been a privilege to contribute a regular cartoon to the CT for more than two decades. I have only good things to say about the editors of the paper, firstly Paul, and then since 2024 Sarah Meyrick. Also Ed Thornton, who has commissioned my work for the last year or two. They’ve always been responsive to my ideas, supportive and patient, even when (understatement) I haven’t been the easiest contributor to manage. 

I always encouraged people to send me ideas for cartoons, partly because I needed all the help I could get, but also because combined knowledge and ideas are always stronger than one person’s alone. So thank you to the many people who have done so, and to everyone who has supported me with comments, emails and whathaveyou while I’ve been a Church Times cartoonist.

If you’re in the church world please consider supporting excellent journalism by subscribing to the CT. There are many reasons to do so, but from the viewpoint of someone who believes that cartoons still have something to contribute: the paper has an almost unique commitment to the art of cartooning. Typically you’ll find 3 or 4 commissioned cartoons every week, which is highly unusual for a publication these days. 

As for my own work: If you’d like to keep in touch with what I’m doing then subscribing to my Diagram Club newsletter is the best way to do so. It contains my best work and a bit of everything I do, along with, it must be said, a certain amount of nonsense. It appears approximately every seven days, and the free version (hopefully) contains plenty to boost your morale on an unspecified day of the week. There’s a paid version too, with some more ‘behind the scenes’ content.

If my church-themed work specifically interests you, then the nine aforementioned books all continue to be available. You’ll also find many of the Church Times cartoons from the last 21 years on my CartoonChurch website, and there’s more on the way. Licences to reuse the work in your church publications are available on a ‘pay what you can afford’ basis. If you’re on Facebook follow the CartoonChurch page to see the cartoons in your feed.

Lastly, I have a new project, currently in development, involving my writing, drawing, and bicycles. Once again my newsletter will be the best place to hear more about that, very soon.

Thanks again for all your support – please keep in touch. 

Dave

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One of the first cycling cartoons I drew.

A bit more about the road / sport side of cycling than some of my more recent work.

Found in the Cycling Cartoonist, published by Bloomsbury.

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Some family cycling images suitable for posters, banners, leaflets, websites, etc. The downloadable versions are transparent, so can be used on a background of whatever colour. (Any colour on which a black line is visible, anyway.)

There are three versions, depending on the number and size you’d like.

I ask that you join Diagram Club Paid if you’d like to use these. Thank you!

Practical note for anyone using my work: Please make sure the images aren’t stretched to fit a space, as that always looks terrible and (to put it politely) makes your poster / whatever look a tiny bit amateurish.

Images

1.

2.

3.

Download links

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

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Weekly planner (vague edition).

Free to print off an occasional copy for personal use. If you’d like to use my work more regularly, print off for other people, or use with a group, then I ask that you join Diagram Club Paid. Thank you!

Download links:

Download high resolution pdf

Download high resolution png image

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Can you spot the ten differences?

If you’d like to use this Download for anything beyond looking at online (for example printing off to use somewhere) I ask that you join Diagram Club Paid. Thank you!

For the answers, see Diagram Club #030

A printable version is available for Diagram Club Paid subscribers in issue #030 (scroll down to the Paid section at the end).

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In a world where there’s always something to scroll, and AI is at our fingertips, it’s not easy to keep on making things.

As a professional cartoonist for over twenty years (who would have thought it) I’ve picked up one or two things along the way about how to be creative. And a lot about how not to. It’s my hope that these diagrams will encourage you as well, and together we can keep going.

See more: Creativity Diagrams

The latest ones are in my newsletter:

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A fun Christmas activity – print your own Christmas cracker. There are three versions, Santa on a bike, Christmas trees, and a blank one for you to do your own thing.

What you will need

A functioning printer, and card or paper you can print on. It will work fine with paper but will be less rigid than card. A3 might be ideal, but most of us don’t have an A3 printer, so A4 will work too, it will just be smaller. Also scissors, and if you want to colour them in, art materials.

Instructions

1. Print with as small a margin as your printer will manage. The files are at the end of this post. I’d recommend the pdfs if they will work for you, but I’ve supplied image files as an alternative.

2. Fold along the six dotted lines, as it’s easier to do the folding before you start cutting. Hopefully it’s fairly obvious which folds go which way – you should end up with two ‘ridges’. See my photo for vague and approximate guidance.

3. With just the two dotted lines folded (the ones in the middle of the three at each end – if that makes sense) cut out the solid line sections with scissors. You should be able to cut through two layers of paper so you’re cutting out a diamond shape each time. Really tricky to explain.

4. You can colour it at any point, but perhaps best to colour after cutting in case you spend ages colouring then do the cutting wrong and it ends up in pieces…

5. Gather whatever is going into the cracker. Could be a hat, a joke you write yourself, chocolate, anything*! [*That will fit in, you have available, etc etc]

6. Then roll the cracker as best you can into the cracker shape and stick with tape. Glue might work I suppose, but I wouldn’t advise it.

7. It won’t go ‘bang’, so you’ll have to shout that.

Downloadable pdf files

Santa cracker (A4 pdf)

Christmas trees cracker (A4 pdf)

Blank cracker (A4 pdf)

Downloadable .png files

Santa cracker (.png image file)

Christmas trees cracker (.png image file)

Blank cracker (.png image file)

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