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My Church Times cartoons
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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