As a child I used to create funny letters with cartoons at bedtime and post them under my sister's bedroom door to make her laugh. At school I drew cartoons of other children who were a pain in the butt to me and my friends. We would sit together at lunch times and laugh and laugh at my drawings of the school bullies which helped us all to shrink them down to size. I remember one guy who has been particularly mean to me seeing a characature I drew of him. He didn't like what he saw and and was very remorseful and profusely apologised to me! On my last few days of secondary school I drew a cartoon of all of the teachers and classmates. I didn't hold back on my observations. My form tutor said that the staff room had been in stitches both at laughing at themselves and some of the pupils they recognised as having difficulty with from a teaching point of view! Humour is such a positively unifying human emotion.
In adulthood I have drawn cartoons of work situations ( e.g. driven by workplace politics or staff relationships) or colleague's mannerisms that struck me as funny. I did a whole comic strip once about different people's relationships with the office photocopier which always broke down. So I gave it the personality of being temperamental because it wanted to be treated nicely. There was one person in the office it never broke down on "because" she said "I know how to talk to it".
My cultural influences for humour were definitely inspired by watching Monty Python as a child in TV and their films - "Life of Brian" being a favourite. It was such a departure from all comedy I had seen on TV before. Cartoonists which make me laugh allot include Steven Appleby, Edward Monkton http://www.edwardmonkton.com http://www.stevenappleby.com
Have a fun day!
See you tomorrow :)
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