About Jeroen

I'm a cartoonist. Yeah, a real one, I swear. It's just because man cannot live on bread alone that I just happen to work in a bank, also.

Brrrrr…

Let’s celebrate some more rejection with this cartoon. Translated for your convenience this time!

It’s pretty topical here in Belgium – it’s past half of May, and it’s still a miserly 12 degrees (C) here, cold, grey and rainy. It’s supposed to be a sunny 20 by now! But it could be worse. In the evening news, I saw it was snowing in Portugal and Spain. What the hell?

I hope the weather predictions are wrong and the real spring will return later this week. Got a big birthday coming up on Thursday… :P

Rejected

So we have this Flemish newspaper, and on their website they’ve started publishing an evening edition, and for this publication, they’re looking for cartoons, and that’s why they came to me. Pretty cool story so far, right? Now, their idea was to let me (and others) send them whatever I came up with and if they like it, they’ll buy it. Not my typical way of working, but hey: exposure, right?

However, they’ve rejected everything I’ve thrown at them so far. Ouch. But hey, maybe someone else (with a different sense of humour) will enjoy them. So I offer you… my rejects!

Mind you, my international friends, these cartoons are in Dutch… The first one is translatable however.

“Great news, honey! The doctor said I have genial warts!”

Now I’m afraid the next one not only is untranslatable, but also really inexplicable to non-Flemish people. So please pardon our little topical inside joke here :-)

I have this feeling more rejected cartoons can be expected soon. Stay tuned!

Jeroen

 

Cool story, bro

Don’t get overexcited, this is NOT a new Happysad cartoon!

On the contrary, this is an old one dating back to 2007. The reason I’m picking it up again is this cool anecdote: some time ago, I was contacted by a New York philosophy professor who came to ask permission to use this cartoon in a book he’s writing on quantum mechanics in popular culture. How cool is that? I love knowing my cartoons will end up in some academic publication on another continent. I love it even more when people have the decency to at least request permission, instead of just stealing it like most people tend to do. By the coolest thing was that in his e-mail, he actually addressed me in Dutch! Turns out he studied in my home town some thirty years ago. Nice touch :-)

 

No news is good news

Hey everybody,

dropping by to say hi and let you know things are fine. I was talking with Yonderland girl recently (yes, we’re still in touch very frequently), and at one point I was reminded of my plans to change things in my life. Funny, I almost forgot about those – but not in a bad way. Not in the sense that I had given up on them, but in the sense that self-improvement is becoming more of a habit, and less of something I need to remind myself of every day.

And things are going quite well. My cartoon customers have finally ended their hibernation, and I’m getting interesting assignments again. I’ve picked up running again, and I’m very pleased that the sun is out more often. Of course, I can’t rest on my laurels just yet – I still have a long way to go. But I’ve decided to just go along and enjoy the ride. That might also have something to do with a BIG birthday coming up next month…

I’ll write some more about that later. Meanwhile, not to leave you entirely empty-handed, here’s a bunny saying woof:

Show ‘n’ tell

For lack of new cartoons (yes, still) I thought I’d show you a few other things I’ve been trying out earlier. Mostly because people came with a request for them, so not because I was dragging myself out of my comfort zone… but sometimes it’s nice if other people can do that for you :)

The first is a card announcing the birth of the son of a friend of mine, who is a house painter – hence the theme. Some people may also recognise the logo I used. I wasn’t sure what people were going to think about my fairly ‘non-traditional’ approach, but I hear people really liked it, so Yeay :-)

And speaking of logos, I was also asked to design a logo, another thing I have virtually no experience in. But again, my clients were very pleased with in, so Double Yeay. (Never mind what D-A-D means. No relation with the previous assignment either.)

So there. What do you think?

Jeroen