Getting to the art of the matter

Lyndhurst u3a member Mike spent his career creating cartoons. Now, he pursues his passion of creating lifelike bird scultpures. He shares his tips to creating compelling artwork.

The one common principle when creating any work of art, is that the artist should produce a piece of work that is pleasing and satisfying to themselves. You cannot possibly try to ‘second guess’ what other people will like when painting a picture, drawing a cartoon or carving a bird study, because everyone is different and have their own opinions of what is good or not so good. The obvious exception to this is if you are working on a commission - then you make what your client asks you to make.

So when I draw a cartoon, carve a bird study or write a comedy sketch or short story, I am aiming to produce a piece of work that I, myself, find pleasing and satisfying ……if anyone else also happens to like that piece of work then that is a bonus.

This principle is particularly applicable when dealing with humour because, as you will appreciate, what one person thinks is funny may not be at all funny to someone else…….they may miss the point, completely.

When drawing cartoons my approach is to take a perfectly normal, ordinary everyday situation or news item and then twist it and exaggerate it out of all proportion until it becomes laughable.

I have included an example of what I mean by taking that approach ……. when the government celebrated the launch of their new Track & Trace system, telling us that it would solve all our problems….well, not for Arthur it didn’t………!

This cartoon also illustrates how, with a few simple strokes of your pen , you can make the lady look extremely angry by giving her heavy, fierce eyebrows…..and make Arthur look completely panic stricken by adding a dot to the centre of his eyes.

Another piece of advice is – do not make your cartoon characters look too much like real people. Give them a ridiculous, funny looking appearance .e.g two circles for their eyes…and another bigger circle for a blob of a nose. If you make your characters look too human – too real, you risk upsetting your readers. It’s why in animated cartoon films, when characters are flattened by a train or are pushed over a cliff, they immediately jump up and start running again….and we all laugh, but we wouldn’t if they looked like real people.

Another of my ‘creative art’ passions are my British Bird Studies which I have been making and exhibiting all over the country for the past 45 years. Every piece is a ‘one-off’ original piece of art.

No moulds or castings of any kind are used. The whole bird study is made entirely by myself….the carving…the painting….the making of the base from natural wood and stone.

To begin with, I take a handful of nylon reinforced modelling clay in my left hand and begin the shaping and carving process from there and, as you may imagine, it takes many hours of careful concentration and work to turn that lump of clay into a life like study of the species. When the carving is complete it is dried and hardened and I then use gouache paint to capture the exact plumage of that species. Finally I mount the bird study to an appropriate base made of natural wood and stone reproducing the kind of habitat where that particular species may be found.

All the bird studies are made slightly smaller than in real life and comes with its own signed certificate of authenticity.