by noelford » 22 Aug 2011, 09:07
Good question, Ray. When I first started selling my work, at the beginning of the seventies, I always carried a notebook to jot down ideas. The problem was, when I sat at the drawing board, I realised that the fun part of the job, the creation, had already been done and I was left with the 'labour' of the drawing. So I threw the notebook away and simply created the ideas 'on-the-spot'. Nowadays, hardly any of my work is speculative, most of it being commissioned, so the ideas come when I read the brief or, in the case of my editorial work, when I read the news story the cartoon is going to refer to. I also think it's fair to say that, after 36 years as a full-time cartoonist, I have acquired the knack of switching inspiration on and off!