Carbon 2018 recently commissioned this cartoon illustration of an eco-friendly Formula 1 car, complete with wind turbine and solar panels.

I suppose the next stage up of eco-friendliness would be a Fred Flintstone-like hole in the floor.

...until I step off the top of the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth for my charity abseil in aid of the Myositis Support Group.

You can find out a bit more about my links to the charity by clicking here.

If you've not done so already, I'd be dead chuffed if you could please sponsor me on my JustGiving page here.

On The Banks Of Hatchet Pond has been available for just a year now, and in that time we've sold just over 1000 copies in and around the New Forest. This is a very pleasing achievement for a small publishing venture, but naturally we want to build on the success so far. 

Although the book's action takes place in the New Forest, you don't need to live there or be visiting to appreciate it, and because of the book's ISBN people have found and purchased the book online across the country. 

We've made that process even easier now by launching a Podge & Dizzy website complete with online shop. Please pay it a visit here. 

I've been asked by a few schools recently to create sets of characters that embody that particular school's learning values or illustrate visually what could otherwise be a difficult concept to grasp. On this occasion Beaulieu Infant School wanted a set of four superhero characters to personify reciprocity, reflection, resilience and resourcefulness. 

It was great fun sketching out potential characters and designing costumes based around the school colours, and all of the four designs I settled on sailed through the approval process for me to then draw up properly.

If you're a school that wants to utilise some colourful characters to help capture the imaginations of your children, do get in touch.

I posted recently about some cartoons I'd created for about laughing. Well, the book is available now!

It's called "The Pocket Book Of Laughter" and is by Lisa Sturge with a forward by Dr Madan Kataria, and is about the joy of laughter and the benefits it can bring. Some people find it harder to laugh than others, so the book aims to help them find ways to laugh while helping others to discover new ways to giggle and guffaw. Laughing has other benefits too, from strengthening the immune system to increasing confidence and helping us connect with people.

You can find out more at www.laughterlinescoaching.co.uk or if you'd like the ISBN to order a copy it's 9781291380026.

I had a busy day yesterday at Ranvilles Junior School in Fareham tackling four different topics across the four year groups. It was Book Week, so the children had come back from their Easter break to a (hopefully) fun day of me leading cartoon workshops and guidance on character creation.

The first session was with Year 4 who were looking at the Ice Age. We started off doing step-by-step drawings of commonly known Ice Age creatures that the children suggested before making up some utterly fictional animals along the lines of Ice Age's Scrat - so part one animal, part another. This resulted in a sabre-toothed mammoth and a Podo (possum and dodo).

Year 5 had just started studying Animal Farm, so it was my task to show them some cartooning tips for drawing pigs and horses, plus a last minute speed-drawing session of a cartoon bull.

After lunch I got to see Year 3 who were looking at The Gruffalo, and the brilliant way in which Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler introduce the character by describing his various monsterous body parts. We had a go at creating our own monsters with the children making the suggestions and me drawing them onto large sheets of paper. By far the weirdest was the creature whose body consisted of a ring doughnut with sprinkles.

Finally Year 6 were after cartooning tips to help them more accurately depict a 'good' character from a 'nasty' one, so we looked at face shapes, facial expressions and body language, creating an example character of each as we went.

All-in-all, a very busy but rewarding day and a lovely school to boot!

I've recently completed a set of cartoons for a new book called the Pocket Book Of Laughter, written by Lisa Sturge of Laughter Lines Coaching.

The Cartoonists' Club Of Great Britain has put together a nifty little ebook for Red Nose Day jam-packed with gigglesome cartoons. See some of the top UK cartooning talent doing what they do best. There are even one or two of mine in there.

The ebook is available from Lulu.com at under £2, so it would be a crime not to, wouldn't it. Here's the link. Off you go...

I had a great day yesterday at Orchard Infant School on the edge if the New Forest. As part of World Book Day the staff and children would be dressing up as their favourite storybook characters and they asked me to come in and work with children on how to create their own.

After a rather mad and funny assembly of staff hamming it up in their costumes, where I was somehow turned from an author into being a visiting Arthur, things settled down somewhat into class by class visits.

To get the children thinking the classes were divided up into groups of three with each child in that group being given a number, 1, 2 or 3. If the child was number one they had to think of the first name of the oldest person they knew (possibly a grandparent). If number two they had to think of an adjective, and if number three they had to think of a body part. When all put together we had some excellent character names, such as Victor Curly-Arms, Richard Tall-Heart (a knight if ever there was one), and Jenny Long-Fingers (a witch, I reckon). We picked one per class which I then drew, attempting not to do the obvious each time, and then they got the opportunity to draw theirs but on the understanding that each member of the group took their own approach to it. The children were encouraged to think about what sort of adventure the character might have to help influence the look too. The variety and inventiveness was brilliant, with princesses, robots, heroes, cats, and all manner of new characters exploding upon the pages. Incredibly good fun!

The past week has been a flurry of cartooning in the decidely warmer surroundings of Malta. The Cartoonists' Club Of Great Britain was holding its second Mini-Convention on the island, and families were invited, so we backed up our bags and headed for the sun. Apart from the obligatory sightseeing (Valetta, Mdina, Playmobil factory) there was plenty of time to enjoy cartooning via the daily themed competitions, speed cartooning, animal doodling and a cartoon-based quiz with possibly the greatest round ever-devised in quizdom. We also managed some more serious moments with talks on cartooning with Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash, while I did a talk about my experiences with self publishing. It was a great opportunity to share ideas and techniques, but what any gathering of CCGB members seems to generate is an incredible buzz and excitement about the art of cartooning. Despite the calibre of the other cartoonist pros you just can't wait to get stuck in to the daily cartoon competitions, and the inspiration is something you cling to for days afterwards. During the week I managed a first, second and third place, so that's not to be sniffed at. An utterly brilliant experience.