polarized double

IT'S NOT TOO OFTEN I manage to secure work from my native UK these days, but this one was a rare example of such an excursion. A sweet/ confectionary manufacturer in the North of England got in touch with me after they were searching for old-school cartoon graphics [apparantly it wasn't too easy to find someone suitable for the job, or so they confided] . More of this imagery coming up on here shortly, but today at the time of writing being the 23rd of December 2017, means it is as good a time as any to add on this wholly festive image onto this site. I think this image may have ended up on the confectioners' website, but I really have to check. Also below: early rough layout/ tryout shetches. RAB L. RAUSER

THIS ONE represents yet another out-of-the-blue commission, typical of the sort of thing  which has kept me busy for most of this calendar year of 2017. A customer looked thru my visuals and felt I might be the right chappie to construct a festive image of his childhood memories of the old British  IPC comics like WHIZZER and CHIPS , COR!! , Shiver and Shake, etc etc, which peaked from the late 60s to the mid-70s period especially. Sure enough, a lot of the style I draw in today naturally springs [at least in part] from the apex of olden-style UK funnies-comics, : I never realized it at the time, but all that endless hours of poring over such material in childhood was subconciously being filed away in my memory banks for storage and  future reference  , without me even realizing it---I kid ye not!! First time around, I most certainly preffered the more traditional comics fare from D C Thomson:  IPC/ Fleetway were a more noticably 'chuck-everything-at-the-wall-and-some-of-it-will-su

'Hey, Keith!-----AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHAAAAAAGH!!!!' The above primal scream was the opening introduction to the track I FEEL ALRIGHT, a cover of an Iggy and the Stooges tune, that features as a closing song on the debut album by early, first-generation punksters THE DAMNED ALBUM:  DAMNED DAMNED DAMNED, catalogue number SEEZ1, Stiff Records, early 1977, the first bona-fide UK punk album, pre-dating both the Pistols and the Clash. This platter is still more than likely my favorite single studio album put out by anyone ever, and it most certainly was in my mis-spent youthful days. Anyway, I have used this snippet of Damned song intro to usher in my winning design for a recent customer, a very straightforwards, very commercial interpretation of a character dreamed up by another dude, but I was given free reign to draw it how I wanted, which is always a nice route from my point of view. Meet: KEITH THE LEAF, a copanion piece character to good old RONALD RAINDROP.

IN MY 30S, I spent a bit of time trying out political caricatures [I have a fair few of these try-out designs as yet unscreened on this site]. Back then, print was still king, and internet access  for all was still a long way off---at least it was so  for me, as  I was pretty late  in getting a computer, in fact it was 2007 when I finally got online. It was really tough trying to get into the Political Caricature Market back then: I did get some interest from the London Evening Standard newspaper who most certainly encouraged me. I had no problems thinking up silly ideas or lampooning politicians and it was a field I could have quite happily  taken to, had the opportunity and encouragement been there. As ever, I moved onto other styles of drawing, however although I lost interest due to no openings becoming availible to me in the 90s, the advent today  of the Internet offers up work opportunities  for me to do this sort of thing. Here is another pretty savage example, [great fun though