“I feel like one of the great things about cartoons is that they have a sense of life and I like revelling in that joy and bringing that to my work.”
Andrew Weldon is a successful Melbourne cartoonist whose cartoon career began whilst he was studying architecture at university. As a hobby, he would draw cartoons for the university newspaper and was actively involved in stand-up comedy as he enjoyed making people laugh. Whilst the extroverted nature of stand-up comedy spoke to one side of his personality, he said he realised he preferred putting pen to paper and producing cartoons that were equally as humorous.
“I think it’s a very extroverted thing being on stage, performing and getting laughs, and that spoke to a part of my personality. I think another part of me is quite happy being in a quiet room doing a drawing. In the end I took that energy into cartooning because it just felt like it suited me more,” he said.
After finishing his degree, Andrew focused on being a cartoonist for 6 months to see if he could make it a career. 26 years later, he’s still drawing and has no plans of stopping anytime soon.
Andrew has certainly made a name for himself within the cartoon community. Some of his achievements include publishing two books of cartoon collections, illustrating the book series ‘Don’t Look Now’ with Paul Jennings, and creating a book with his wife titled ‘Lazy Daisy, Busy Lizzie’. He has also drawn cartoons for The Age newspaper and The Big Issue magazine.
Andrew says he is proud of all his artistic achievements, however, three projects that are significant ot him are the book ‘Lazy Daisy, Busy Lizzie’ that he wrote with his wife for their first child, and his two cartoon collection books 'If you Weren't a Hedgehog... If I Weren't a Haemophiliac' and 'I'm So Sorry Little Man, I Thought You Were a Hand-Puppet'.
“It was at a time when we just had our first child, and so we were reading her a lot of very simple books. We naturally started to come up with ideas of our own and we ended up creating it together. It was a very satisfying process,” he said. “I found the two collections of my cartoons that have been published [also] really satisfying. I've always loved that type of cartoon collection as a reader so that's been really pleasing.”
Andrew describes his work as funny, to the point, and joyous. Drawing all his cartoons by hand, he loves that cartoons can be compact yet hold so much detail. Whether it be a standalone humorous piece or a political cartoon, Andrew tries to incorporate humour in all his work.
“My work is based in humour. I love that [cartoons] can be very succinct and funny. I once read a description that said a good cartoon is like a firework going off because of the spark and creating that is wonderful,” he said.
Andrew says he is currently working on creating a graphic novel and in the future hopes to continue creating cartoons, children’s books, and more compilations of his work. For now, he is enjoying the uncertainty of the future, as he finds it exciting.
“Something I've always liked about the job and the art form is that it's a combination of visual art and expression, but it's also commercial. It’s basically work coming from unexpected places and I don't quite know what opportunities are going to come up in the future,” he said. “Part of me thinks I should have more of a five-year plan but another part of me just likes to write and see what's going come up.”
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