Yes it's f***ing political/everything's political...

I don't claim to know much about politics, but the more I hear from each of the candidates for the up-coming London mayoral election, the more I just think "Who are they kidding?". As with nearly all politicians in the lead-up to an election, they go around promising all kinds of things that they most likely can't deliver - cutting the cost of travel, a 24-hour tube service, free dinosaurs for the unemployed - but as soon as they get elected, all that is conveniently forgotten about. "I said what now?"

Anyway, all this led me to draw this cartoon depicting the three "main" contenders for the role of Mayor of London (Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson and Brian Paddock) as balloons full of hot-air...

Happy voting!

Paul's Amazingly Gratuitous Blog Post

So I just noticed that I now have 250 "Likes" on my Paul Shinn Draws Facebook page...

Happy (belated) Birthday Rachael!

I try my best to keep track of when my friends' birthdays are, but sometimes one manages to pass me by. And so, I only realised when I saw a post on her awesome One Good Thing blog, that I'd missed my friend Rachael's birthday last week!

To make amends, I drew her a picture featuring Rachael's equally awesome character Flimsy The Kitten...

(This isn't the first time I've drawn Flimsy. I did a couple of guest illustrations for Rachael's blog last year to celebrate her clocking up 1000 Flimsy drawings.)

Crouching Unicorn, Hidden Dragon

For some reason, people seem to want me to draw unicorns recently... I was asked by a friend if I could draw them a picture of a dragon and a unicorn. So, yeah, here that is...

Happy Birthday Alyana!

It was my friend Alyana's birthday today. She recently told me that she had started taking violin lessons, which gave me the idea for her birthday card...

Teenage Non-mutant Alien Turtles

Earlier today, I watched a video online where Michael Bay was talking about the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, and mentioned the fact that the turtles would be "from an alien race". ...yeahbuhWHAT? They're MUTANTS, not aliens! IT'S RIGHT THERE IN THE TITLE!!

So, it seems as though, not content with ruining Transformers, Bay now has his sights on messing up the Ninja Turtles... However, it did give me the idea for this drawing...

And also gives me the opportunity to tell my favourite joke. Ever!

What is E.T. short for?
Because he's got little legs!

Illustrious Artists: Blue

So this week's theme on the Illustrious Artists facebook page is "Blue".
The first thing I thought of when I saw this was: What could be more blue than a depressed Smurf...?

Illustrious Artists: Sun and Spring

I joined a group on Facebook called Illustrious Artists. As well as giving various creatives the chance to discuss their work, or even stuff unrelated to their work, there's also a weekly theme posted to act as a starting point for producing something new.

Last week's theme was "Sun and Spring" and I came up with this illustration of a little kid bouncing too close to the sun and getting a bit too hot...

Someone commented that it was like a modern version of Icarus, which I liked.

Dr. Strangeblog or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Timeline

I have a Facebook page for Paul Shinn Draws where I post links to my blog and website, and keep people up-to-date with what I'm doing drawing-wise. If you haven't already, I'd be happy if you "Liked" it...

Anyway, recently I was notified that at the end of this month my page would automatically be updated to Facebook's new Timeline profile. Now while I'm slightly unimpressed with the overall layout of this new profile – and Facebook's marketing of this new design as a great way to "tell your life story" – I was intrigued by the prospect of including a cover image to my page, which is basically a landscape image which spans the width of the page layout.

So, seeing that I was soon going to be forced to adopt this new layout, I figured I might as well draw something to use as my cover image, giving a concise summary of what I do, and make the change sooner, rather than later...

Coming soon...

Exciting projects are exciting!

Watch this space...

Happy Birthday Zarina!

The other day was my friend Zarina's birthday. Zarina tweets quite a lot of photos of food (but she also tweets links to her amazing artwork, so that's okay). So I decided to draw a picture of her taking a photo of her birthday cake on her iPhone ready to tweet it to the world...

And in a wonderful moment of life imitating art, after I gave her the card, Zarina then took a photo of it on her iPhone and tweeted it!

If you're on Twitter, you can follow Zarina @cobaltcafe. She doesn't just tweet photos of food and her illustrations are amazing!

Happy Birthday Ireeni!

Today was my friend Ireeni's birthday. She went to see the recent Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery, and was very impressed with his painting Lady with an Ermine. So for her birthday card I drew a picture of her as the Lady with an Ermine...