We are steeped in early American history here in Bucks County, and that contributes greatly to the richness of our lovely towns and villages. It has also led to colorful local tales multiplying so much that it gets a bit out of hand, which is the subject of this cartoon I drew for the latest Neshaminy Journal.
“Our house dates back to the 1740s, but it’s unique to the area
in that George Washington never slept here.”
Once again a cartoon of mine popped up on the New Yorker’s Day-to-Day Cartoon Calendar. Conde Nast, which owns the New Yorker, tells me that this cartoon has been ordered several times by customers as frameable prints and other novelty items – I assume as gifts for teachers! If you’d like to do the same just click here to order.
Here it is a little larger, if hard to read –
It’s very gratifying to see my cartoon pop up today on the New Yorker’s Day-to-Day Cartoon Calendar. Somewhere up there my Mom & Dad are smiling – and I hope it’s because they’re laughing at the gag!
Closeup below in case you can’t see it –
It’s a real kick to see a couple of my cartoons, previously published in the New Yorker, also printed in their 2023 Day-to-day Calendar. This desk calendar has tear-off sheets so you can have a new cartoon practically every day.
Above is the first one of mine, which I originally wrote about here. Below is my second drawing in this upcoming year’s calendar, which I also mentioned here.
I can show you the calendar, by the way, when I am at The Mercantile this Sunday, December 11, with my son Tom as we sign copies of our new cartoon book, Zeitgeist Meetup. It’s a compilation of cartoons written by Tom, who does occasional standup in Brooklyn after working at NYU, with drawings by me. I hope if you’re in the area you stop in at The Mercantile between 1 pm and 3:30 pm. If you still need to do holiday shopping, The Mercantile has tons of delightful items so you can also pick up some gifts after you chat with Tom and me. And I’ll have some of my funny holiday cards too, if you need to send a chuckle to any friends this season. Please stop by!
At the front and back of Zeitgeist Meetup I included some pages of the sketches I did for all the cartoons in the book – here’s a sample below – just gives an idea of the process we went through in developing the gags.
Over the last year or so my son Tom and I have been collaborating on a big batch of gag cartoons – Tom wrote the ideas in New York City, between working at NYU and doing frequent standup in clubs and bars, and sent them over to me here in Bucks County, where I drew them up when I had time. I’m happy to announce that we’ve finally assembled them into a book titled Zeitgeist Meetup, and we’ll be signing copies at The Mercantile, 444 N. Main Street, Doylestown, on Sunday, December 11 from 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Tom’s humor has a young, New York-type viewpoint, with some ideas coming from his everyday experiences in the city doing improv comedy, some reflecting his standup style of wordplay and visual puns, and a few short-story cartoons like “Bushwick Self-Defense,” “The In-Convenience Store,” and “The Kool Aid Spectrum.” Our book riffs on lots of topics that are in the ‘zeitgeist’ right now— from food trucks to Bigfoot to crickets to Elvis – all just for fun. We want people to laugh!
Tom has been involved in comedy for over 15 years, leading an improv comedy group when he attended Holicong Middle School and CB East, continuing through college at American University and comedy clubs around Washington DC, and now in NYC.
I’ll also mention that two of my latest New Yorker magazine cartoons have been chosen to be in the “2023 New Yorker Day-to-Day Calendar,” which I’ll have there at the Mercantile on display, and I’ll have some of my humorous holiday greeting cards for sale too, so I hope you can come and say hello!
There is plenty of convenient parking at the Mercantile since it’s right in the Doylestown Shopping Center, in the space where BonTon used to be. The Mercantile is a collaborative store that showcases creative small businesses, so there is a ton of great gift items to browse after you’ve chatted with Tom and me – they have beautiful housewares, accessories, vintage items, baked goods, furniture, jewelry, gifts for men and adorable stuffed animals for kids. There are even places to sit down and have a snack when you’re tired of shopping – you can’t beat that!
Zeitgeist Meetup sells for $12.95, and if you can’t make it on December 11 but you want a copy, just let me know. And if you went to CB East with Tom or were in his improv group, please just stop by to say hi, we’d love to see you!
I was on Blaine Greenfield’s podcast last night – a delight all around, he’s the Ed Sullivan of the Asheville, NC area!
I fumbled a bit getting my artwork to screenshare, so I’m posting a pdf of some of my New Yorker published-and-rejected cartoons below, so you all can take the full tour I was going to give Blaine. Please scroll through – just place your cursor on the vertical bar at the right of the image and slide it down to scroll.
(If they appear too small to read, try clicking on the three horizontal lines at top left. All artwork is (c) Pat Achilles, but the first four are (c) The New Yorker.)
Now below is the slideshow I was going to show Blaine of my children’s book illustration, and some illustrations for adult books too. Included are illustrations from The Upside-Down Gardener, Grand Slam Birthday and the Adventures of the Poodle Posse series by Chrysa Smith; Robbie to the Rescue by Laurie Nowlan; Let’s Visit New Hope, by Gayle Goodman and Roy Ziegler; The Book of Jims and Bills! Bills! Bills! by Jim Miller (they are fun books all about famous people thru history named Jim/James or William/Bill, fun to give as a gift to friends of those names), Leading Team Members with Super Powers by Thomas Edwards (a great informational book about working and training neurodiverse employees), and A Woman’s Book of Dirty Words by Mary Fran Bontempo. If you want to purchase any, I believe they are all available on Amazon. (All artwork is (c) Pat Achilles)
This slideshow below shows some of my greeting cards for Eagle Scout events and for the holidays – some are available now on my Etsy shop (click HERE) and some I hope to post there soon. (All artwork is (c) Pat Achilles)
Below are some of the cards I’ve drawn, which Blaine enjoys so much, for Kohlhepp Investment Advisors. (All artwork is (c) Pat Achilles)
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And finally here are my illustrations for the Bucks County Gilbert & Sullivan Society, a wonderful group of devotees to some of the loveliest, and funniest, operettas ever written. (All artwork is (c) Pat Achilles)
Now you have seen all the things I meant to show Blaine – thanks so much for taking a look. Here’s the link to the half hour of me with Blaine: go to https://www.blainesworld.net/ and look for the podcast dated 11.8.2022 And thanks again to Blaine!
–Pat
I have once again dreamed up a humorous setting for the Lenape Chamber Ensemble‘s Children’s Concert, which is coming up Saturday, November 12 at Delaware Valley University. The Lenape Chamber Ensemble is a group of world-class musicians who twice a year host a delightful hour of playful information and performance for kids and their parents, on the weekend when they also perform magnificent concerts for adults at other times and venues. Their talent is sublime, but for their children’s concert I am permitted to draw a light-hearted fantasy of a scene for a poster, just for entertainment’s sake. For this one, I chose pigs as my musicians.
The concert November 12th features the most popular of Vivaldi’s works, The Four Seasons, as well as works by J. S. Bach and Jean-Marie Leclair. I felt a dance ensemble might be fun to accompany my little pigs’ musical performance, so I drew an audience of piglets admiring the dancers representing the seasons, while their accompanists play behind them.
I first sketched pigs in different music & dance positions –
I drew this car parade birthday illustration for Furia Rubel Communications last year. They originated the idea and needed me to make it into an image for them to send out with their best wishes to their clients. I think it’s a great way to make a touchpoint with each client – a beneficial marketing strategy – and remind their clients of the whole team of people working for their interests. I have often drawn the FRC team for projects in the past.
I started with a pencil sketch of the whole train of cars and caricatures of each FRC member.
When that was ok’d I printed out a copy and did a rough color sketch with markers and colored pencils. The great thing about sending out ecards is, there is no more expense in doing full color over black and white. On computer screens, color is free!
I decided to colorize this illustration using digital color, so the colors would match those in the FRC logo and other hues on their website. I drew each carload in black line, then filled it in with digital color.
After drawing and colorizing each piece of the picture this way I assembled them onto one page and added the banner, balloons and honking horns.
Another advantage of assembling this piece digitally is that if employees change from year to year, I can adjust the picture accordingly. And in fact, this year I was asked to add new team members and remove some who have moved on; so with some tweaks Furia Rubel will have an updated ecard showing their full team for 2022.
The New Yorker has published my post-Easter cartoon today on their website, found HERE –
I’ve added an item to my Etsy shop, which uses my popular jaunty Eagle saluting as an invitation card for Courts of Honor or other Scout events. This is a downloadable file which makes it quicker and more economical for the buyer to make invitations – no waiting for mail delivery, no postage fee and you can print as many invitations as you need from the one file. The inside text of the card is completely editable so a custom message can be inserted, and it’s easy to work with since it is a Word document.
Court of Honor season is upon all Scout troops right now, so if your family needs fun invitations that can be instantly downloaded and printed at home for quick mailing, take a look at my Eagle Salute Downloadable Invitations at my Etsy shop HERE.
AchillesPortfolio 