24 Things I drew this month - Thing Twenty Four. Plus...Cabin Pressure news.

Click for paramount version

Happy New Year! From me, and from all the crew at MJN Air. Which, I am happy to be able to tell you, WILL be returning for a fourth series. We don't know when yet, but my best guess is sometime in the second half of this year. 

Thank you for reading, and for all your nice comments about my drawings this month. Normal service will now be resumed. 

Oh yes it is.

Hello, hope you had the merriest of Christmasses. If you are wondering where the twenty-forth thing I drew this month is, it will be here tomorrow. In the meantime, you might enjoy listening to the Radio Four Panto I wrote with my friend and ex double act partner Kevin Baker. It's on at 6.15 tonight, stars Sandi Toksvig and Andy Hamilton, and features loads and loads of other Radio Four names, from Kirsty Young to Nicholas Parsons. If you like Radio Four, I think you'll enjoy it. If you don't listen to Radio Four much, it will be largely incomprehensible.

24 things I drew this month - Thing Twenty Three

Something a little jollier today...

24 Things I drew this month - Thing Twenty Two

Bah, Humbug.

24 things I drew this month - Thing Twenty One

Also woof. 

24 Things I drew this month - Thing Twenty

Woof.

24 Things I drew this month - Thing Nineteen

Here, have a scribbly opera house.

Buildings are really dull to draw, it turns out. Glad I'm not an architect.

24 Things I drew this month - Thing Eighteen

Whoops, late again. So, first today, here's something to make you glad it's not summer.

24 things I drew this month - Thing Seventeen

There is actually a perfectly good explanation for why I have spent some of this evening making a paper model of a tube train driven by Queen Victoria, and carrying, among others, Isaac Newton, Morecambe and Wise, Henry VIII and Winnie the Pooh.

Hard though I accept that may be to believe.

24 things I drew this month - Thing Sixteen

24 things I drew this month - Thing Fifteen

I've only drawn one line today; but in fairness it is quite a complicated line.

Click for bigger (actually, that goes for any of these drawings) 

Team A

Team B

24 things I drew this month - Thing Fourteen

24 things I drew this month - Thing Thirteen

Another scribbly one, but I thought it was time I tried drawing something that wasn't a face or an animal. Or the face of an animal. So, here's this. 

24 things I drew this month - Things Twelve a, Twelve b, Twelve c and Twelve d.

I was away at the weekend, so I took a sketchbook, and tried doing some quick, rough sketches of people unlucky enough to sit near me, before they either moved or noticed. Also, to encourage me to be fast and loose, I tried not rubbing anything out; with mixed results, as you'll see.

On the train up:

In a cafe: (That's a tumbler of orange juice in front of him; he's not a giant with a pint.)

At the barber's:

In the pub:

24 things I drew this month - Thing Eleven

Yes, that last one was meant to be Stephen Fry, but it didn't quite come off. The mouth is all wrong. Similarly, this one is meant to be William Hague, and has also not quite come off. Caricature is hard. You see, this is why I normally make faces up - then you can't get them wrong.

24 things I drew this month - Thing Ten

Oh dear - missed a day again. I'll put two up today to compensate. Here's the first. 

24 things I drew this month - Thing Nine

Funny how one thing leads to another. The monsters came from the buffalo, but then I had such fun drawing the big guy at the back that I spent an hour today doodling thugs and villains. This one's my favourite. 

...but he's ever so good to his dear old Mum.

24 things I drew this month - Thing Eight

Monsters! (Part 2)

My scanner's not quite big enough for it, but you get the gist. Monsters. That's the gist.

24 things I drew this month - Thing Seven

Monsters!  (Part One)

24 things I drew this month - Thing Six

Work in progress.

24 things I drew this month - Thing Five

...and, hopefully just sneaking in under the wire of midnight, please accept this complimentary dodo.

24 things I drew this month - Thing Four

Hello, sorry, I was at the Winter Festival in Hay on Wye yesterday; without my scanner or indeed my computer. So, here's yesterday's Thing, a quick caricature of someone I saw at the festival:

...And I'll put today's up later tonight, and we'll be on track again.

24 things I drew this month - Thing Three

Given that the word 'buffalo' is the name of an animal, a city in America where that animal could theoretically be found and a verb meaning to bully; the following sentence, invented by linguist William J. Rapaport,  is grammatically correct: 'Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.' The meaning is that buffalo from Buffalo who are buffaloed by other buffalo from Buffalo, themselves go on to buffalo a third group of buffalo from Buffalo. A tragic glimpse there into the vicious cycle of abuse rife in the bison community of upstate New York. William J. Rapaport, by the way, is an associate professor at the University of Buffalo. So, presumably, this is all based on an eye-witness account. Anyway, the point is... here is a drawing of a buffalo. 

24 things I drew this month - Thing Two

Pip pip.

By the way, if you happen to be going to the Hay on Wye Winter Festival this weekend, I will be there, doing this. Do come along.

24 things I drew this month - Thing One

Ok, this blog needs a bit of a kick to get it moving again, so just for a month I'm going to turn it into a sketchbook-blog. Every day from today until Christmas Eve, I'm going to post something I've drawn that day. Like a sort of horrible advent calendar, only instead of charming pictures of robins and snowmen; dodgily shaded pictures of grumpy old men. Speaking of which...

It's of a man I sat opposite on the tube. I call it 'Man I Sat Opposite On The Tube'.