Cartoonists don't usually get to find out what the response has been to their published work; after an editor accepts a gag we generally wait patiently until it appears in print, at which point...nothing happens.  But every so often, someone will enjoy (or loathe) a cartoon enough that they decide to get in touch, and that always feels fantastic.

This cartoon appeared in Private Eye recently:



Shortly after it appeared I was contacted by someone who liked it enough that he wanted to buy the original drawing as a gift for his girlfriend. Since then I've heard from a greetings card company that wants to use the gag as a design within its range - but using a real-life library and hoodie!

The company uses photos for its designs, with speech bubbles adding the humour (a little like the Private Eye cover concept). They normally use stock images and come up with their own captions, but they think this gag would work and are planning to set up a photo shoot, in which a model will pose on the street as my recoiling character.

It'll be strange to see one of my pen-and-ink drawings come to life. The plan is for the shoot to take place in the next few months. Assuming it goes ahead, I'll post an update here (hopefully with the eventual card design, for comparison).