Rod's usual styles of drawing...

'Rod's usual styles of drawing', my chum, cartoonist Dan Collins, said that when he was talking about the National Lampoon book of cartoons, that we both had work in. I never really thought about it before, but I suppose it's true, I have and have had a variety of different styles, but it's only apparent when a bunch of cartoons, and not those from the same batch (a batch of cartoons would be the 10 or 12 one is sending to a particular publication so they would all, presumably look similar) appear alongside one another in a publication. In this case the cartoons were themed, so they came from different periods and got shoved into the same batch, so that's something of an excuse. But is he right? Do I tend to draw each cartoon slightly differently?

Here's a range of the things, some quite recent, some older:

From Punch, around 1984

From WSJ around 2005 or 2006

From The Sun (USA) 2004 or 2005

From The Harvard Business Review, 2005 or 2006

From National Lampoon's Favourite Cartoons of the 21st Century

Current pencil cartoons, 2007

And finally, and trust me there were plenty more, a cartoon illustrating a debate about Parliamentary Reform in the UK, from Prospect, November 2005 , I think, and I think they all pretty much prove Dan's point.

"Listen up. Guy's had this terrific idea for Parliamentary Reform."