Studio Devona

Back in the 1970's and 1980's I did mainly cartoons for birthdays for the family. This one was for my father as he used to have fried meals fairly often with home grown mushrooms.

In the 1980's my father went to Germany with friends and they broke down on the main road and back in those days he did a lot of repairs himself. This cartoon imagines him using a cow to tow the car after giving up on trying to repair it.

In the 1980's my father and family went to Europe and at the time he was keen to collect horse manure for growing mushrooms so I did this cartoon imagining them trying to bring manure back through customs.

A 1980's cartoon of pet gerbils drinking homemade family wine. Both my mother and father made wine for many years and the gerbils often used to get out of their cages.

2007. Imagine opening your door around Christmas time to be greeted by a group of cat carol singers - perhaps this is the scene you would have.

2007. A large garden party at a friends home with scenes from that.

1997. A friend was going to visit Australia for a holiday at Christmas so I did a card with her teating her bikini line.

1998. Some cartoons for amusement where human's pretend to be shrews with long noses.

2023. More cat humour about getting extra food.

2008. A more detailed cat cartoon which is a fat cat sitting on a hill overlooking the city of Exeter back in the 17th century. The cat has stopped to enjoy the evening view and is settling down on some straw with a bottle of wine and smoking an old clay pipe.

2008. Cute sleeping cat with a red rose.

2016. Yes I did used to collect cat whiskers for many years and still have hundreds of them.

Creating a design to advertise my ceramic pipes a long time ago and here I used an idea taken from ancient Egyptian art.

Some quick scribbles as an idea for a children's story book about old Devonshire smugglers hiding rum in barrels underground at night.

2010. One of a number of maze puzzles I came up with.

Drawing for a mermaid which was then painted onto the bottom of a friends swimming pool.

2006. A design for a car bumper sticker which I actually did print out and use.

Drawing of Hayes Barton, the house where Sir Walter Raleigh was born in Tudor times. I used the computer to colour it after scanning the inked drawing I first did.

2013. More cat humour I came up with when the area where I lived had a day without water due to a burst water main in another street. Here the cat is offering the use of her litter tray for human's.

2013. A very detailed design for Christmas card which I came up with based on a cat theme. Here the cats are all using balloons to float around the sky but one is has had so much food she is too heavy to get off the ground so needs lots of ballons and a special safety harness.

2013. A drawing I did for a short story about the River Exe in olden times. It shows a giant salmon coming out of the river where it was blocked and Roman people on horses panicking to get away.

2013.  Design I created for the purpose of carving into a pottery amphora that I made. I tried to give it a tenticle look to represent an octopus with Atlantis in mind.

Cats enjoying the snow on the hills over looking the City of Exeter. This follows the earlier fat cat theme.

2013. Close up detail of the cat. The original was drawn on paper in pencil then inked in, scanned and then layers created which were coloured using Adobe Photoshop.

Made for a friend to go on a laboratory door.

Basic concept idea for a bottle cleaning product.

Design for a product which we used to make which was added to cat litter to absorb smells.

Contour mapping from a Devon history project I was doing. It shows the hills with a river valley and an area of land between three points.

2015. One of my favourite Christmas season designs where I have given a festive pirate cat theme.

2015. Design for a friend who wanted to go camping with an old style fire pit and cart.

A bit of make believe going on in this cartoon. Have you ever wondered what happens to letters you type on the computer, the one's that go missing when you thought they were there? They appear in farmland near Crediton in Devon where they are gathered up by pixies and fed to rabbits. The rabbit becomes very knowledgable and philosophical too.

Quick pencil portrait of a lady who was doing craft work. This is the kind of portrait work I was doing when I was in my early teens.

Dartmoor humour. The ponies were really there in the photo I took and are usually called grays but I was playing on words with them being all white.

This character was inspired by a visit to Wistman's Wood on Dartmoor some years ago. The twisted tree's with lichens and the moss covered boulders gave rise to this old man who I called Drew. I wrote a story to go with him about the wood. Wistman's wood is a special place which has sadly been damaged since 2019 and so people are encouraged to walk around the wood now rather then going into it so that it will have time to recover.

A circular seasonal calender diagram I created on the computer. I was looking to see how traditional events throughout the year tied up with the circle divided into eight.

The first water colour painting I ever tried in 2018. It was done from a photograph that I took looking from Manaton towards the rock stack known as the Bowerman's Nose. I added extra colours to represent moss, lichens and heather of the moor.

A series of cartoons I created to be used in a song about shrews. Each image shows shrews eating, dancing and having fun. The song was called Shrewberry Fair and was created by The Shrew Sisters and hopefully can still be found on Youtube somewhere.

Another cartoon from the shrew song Shrewberry Fair. This shrew is celebrating the harvest full moon.

Another cartoon from the shrew song Shrewberry Fair. This shrew is celebrating the mid summer with all the colourful flowers and warm sunshine.

Another cartoon from the shrew song Shrewberry Fair. These shrews are playing in a meadow of wild flowers on a warm summer day.

Cartoon of a friend who is very clever with string and tying knots. This was done for a birthday card.

Using a photo I took of sheep on the moorland near Okehampton to create a design to encourage people to be mindful when out walking.

After enjoying a summer watching the newts floating around in my garden pond I made up this cartoon about a newt called Isaac and his receipe for pond weed pie.

2018. Birthday card for a good friend who I have spent many hours with enjoying times playing music on Dartmoor.

2021.  Design of the cover for my music album. I used a photograph I took at sunset with the light coming through the heather flowers.

2024. Design for a song which I finshed in January of that year. Change of Heart can be found on Youtube and is about new life and a new mindset after the darkness of winter.

2024.  Design for the cover of my song Wanted. At first I tried to create the look of a wanted poster from the wild west but as the song was not about outlaws I gave it more of a sepia look as if from the end of the 19th century instead. The dandelion seeds blowing away represent years passing suddenly.

2024. Some dog humour during the December snow fall.