We all take influences in our work, even if you are a cartoonist. I loved the work and easy line of the late Bill Tidy and he also told brilliant jokes. But the person who I think of as the master of his craft, and he tells no jokes, is Graham Thompson. Never heard of him? Well you should have and anyone reading this will now have heard of him. If you are a jig saw fanatic then you may well have done one of his puzzles as he did loads of these later in his career.

I came across his work in the late 70s and 80s. For a time we shared the same agent, see my last post. I met him once or twice, a quiet tall bloke with a friendly demeanour. I was shown one of his storyboards early on when I was starting to do storyboards for ad agencies. Done on a storyboard pad, you’d get about twelve pre printed frames on an A2 pad and then you’d draw each frame in turn. The one shown to me of Graham’s was a major work of art. Tiny drawings getting over the action of the commercial in each beautifully rendered frame.

He was also commissioned to draw for posters, book jackets and ad campaigns. His speciality was vehicles which he was able to draw with unerring accuracy but with the people in them having a special kind of vigour and energy.I bought my then young son a book simply called cars and trucks which Graham had drawn, it made me somewhat envious of his skills every time I showed it to my boy!

The drawing below has to be one of the best examples of Graham’s work, but what’s special about it, apart from the drawing, is the story in the picture. Not content with rendering a great drawing of a Morgan Sports car, the speed cop having a craft smoke just adds to the joy of the image. I found this in an old book from the early 80s that our then shared agent produced to promote us artists.I don’t think that Graham ever went short of work.

In the same book is a photograph of all the artists he claimed to represent. Graham is the bloke in glasses at the top left of the photo and I’m bottom right.

I can find no ‘footprint’ of Graham on the internet these days apart from examples of his jig saw work, which is a shame, his work was an inspiration to many cartoon illustrators like myself. He was an inspiration to us, the Master.