In 2020 I had the privilege of being interviewed for Jester, The magazine of the Cartoonists Club of Great Britain. This is a slightly edited version of that interview. All comments were correct at time of interview.

Many thanks to Simon Chadwick, Jester editor for letting me use it here

2020 has been an exceptional year for all the wrong reasons. How’s it been for you so far?

In February I was looking forward to a big project that was going to see me through the year and, of course, it was put on hold when we went on lockdown. I’m in the shielding category so I was basically stuck in the house for twelve weeks with no work and relying on pensions and the SEISS grant to see me through. I spent much of my time revamping my website and redrawing old cartoons to put up on Cartoonstock. Happily things have picked up in August with the publication of my children’s book and I’m hoping the Big Project will pick up again. I’m also looking at setting up an internet shop and merchandising some of my old work,

• I notice you claim you began work back in BC times (before computers) and yet you’ve embraced them entirely. Can you recall your first experiences with cartoons on a computer? Was it a boon or a faff?

Heh… i describe myself as a “veteran”,… much better than “an old codger who remembers Cow Gum, Letraset, rubylith film and Frisket Fingers. I have composed type by hand and printed directly off a litho stone, casted off copy and  weilded a mean process camera. And then some idiot invented personal computers and most of what I’d learned became obsolete . It was a case of adapt or perish as everyone started buying a PC and CorelDraw and were suddenly “graphic designers” . So I bought a McIIsi, a scanner, Adobe illustrator and Quark Xpress on several dozen diskettes and joined in. At that point I was still doing my cartooning with good old pen, brush and ink and scanning them into photoshop. It’s only relatively recently I’ve gone more or less fully digital. Still miss the smell of Cow Gum.

• Did you start out as a graphic designer who also did cartoons, or as a cartoonist who dabbled in graphic design?

A graphic designer who did cartoons. My first job was as an advertising artist with my local newspaper where I was quite happy for  eight years before taking a voluntary redundancy to start my own graphic design business. I’d started doing cartoons at the paper and, being a big science fiction fan at the time also did cartoons (“fillos”) for science fiction fanzines. As time went on I found my work gradually went from 95% graphics/5% cartoons to 5% graphics/95% cartoons. I became known in networking circles as “The Cartoon Man”. I’m now a pensioner and semi-retired and I’ve fully embraced cartooning. I’ve gone from Jim Barker Design to Barker Illustration and Graphics to Jim Barker Cartoon Illustration

• What cartoonists, strips and comics did you enjoy growing up?

There was a progression of comics growing up - Jack and Jill to Playhour to Dandy and Beano to Victor to Hotspur to Valiant to Lion to TV21 about which point I discovered American comics and mostly forgot British comics until Warrior and 2000AD. In newspaper there were The Broons and Oor Wullie and I was big fan of Angus Og by Ewen Bain and The Big Yin by the legendary Malky Mccormick. Throughout that there were artists whose work I really liked but never knew their names. Now I know they were people like Frank Bellamy, Mike Noble, Ron Embleton, Ron Turner, Brian Lewis, Mike Western, Leo Baxendale, Ken Reid… the giants. And Dudley D. Watkins, of course. I recently bought David Roache’s MASTERS OF BRITISH COMIC ART and spent many happy nostalgic hours with it. Though my all time favourite artist in any medium is Chuck Jones.

• Has that changed compared to now?

My American comic reading is now sporadic via the graphic novels in my local library. Literally an hour before all the libraries were locked down I maxxed out my library card with thirty graphic novels. They’re now read laying in a pile beside the computer waiting for the libraries to open upagan and I can take them back.I will read anything by Gil Kane, Walt Simonson, Darwin Cooke or Bruce Timm. I’m a bit out of touch with the current UK scene but I love Phil Winslade’s LAWLESS. And many members of the CCGB,  - Rich Skipworth, Roger Kettle, and Brighty among many others

When someone asks what I do I reply “I draw funny pictures”. Most of my work has been commissioned for books, advertising, web sites or presentations Or creating character mascots.

•You appear to be very comfortable with techology and unafraid to tackle social media. Do you find that effortless or is it a case of discipline, or something you make yourself do?

Appearances can be deceptive. I have my various bits of equipment trained to do what I need to produce my work, though I know there’s a whole lot more I could be doing with them. I’m self taught on everything and when I need to explore a new area I can usually find information on what I need somewhere on the net. Big fan of YouTube tutorials.  My main social media home is Facebook. I have Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram accounts but I don’t use them as nearly much as I probably should. I’m very comfortable on FB because the majority of my contacts there are longtime friends from my days In SF and mystery Fiction fandom or cartooning and business networking.  It’s like being in several permanent floating conversations. I haven’t embraced Zoom as much as most people seem to. If I’m in a meeting with ,say, fifteen people I’ll be the one in the bottom left hand corner nodding and not saying very much. I much prefer hiding behind my Jim FB persona.

• Are you PC or Mac based, and what is your go-to software? Has that changed much over the years?

I’m a Mac man. Always have been, always will be. I’ve occasionally had to use a PC and I just cannot get the hang of them. They seem overly complicated compared to the Mac. As I said, my first machine was a Mac IIsi  and I scanned my drawings into Photoshop. These days I have an iMac with a Cintiq and an iPad Pro for doing artwork on. I mainly use Procreate, with occasional forays into Photoshop and Krita. I use Explaindio for my animations.

• Do you ever find yourself drawing freehand or is it all digital?

I still do pencil “roughs” to work out ideas and then scan them in and finish them in Procreate. I haven’t used brush and ink for quite a while.

• What’s your creative space like?

Untidy. I used to have actual offices way back when I did more graphics  and Then I collapsed everything and brought it all back home to what was our dining room.

 Describe what surrounds you when you work.

Clutter. An atmosphere of despair and utter chaos.

• Is gag cartooning something you fit in around other work, or do you set aside time to do that?

I don’t know if I’d call myself a “gag cartoonist”, since I’ve hardly ever gone the time honoured route of submitting cartoons on spec to magazines and newspaper. The one time I tried I was rejected by Ian Hislop at Private Eye. That’s when i knew I was a Real Cartoonist. When someone asks what I do I reply “I draw funny pictures”. Most of my work has been commissioned for books, advertising, web sites or presentations Or creating character mascots.

• How long has your cartoon strip The Bairns been running now? How do you find the weekly pressures of creating the strip? 

It’s not a strip… it’s a topical cartoon for my weekly local newspaper The Falkirk Herald, based on a story in that weeks paper. I used to work for the paper and started it when I was there and they let me continue it when I left to go freelance. I’ve been doing it now for (…gulp…) over forty years. They send me three or four subjects to choose from and they trust me to come up with something. I can usually find something to work with in the stories, though I do suffer the odd creative block like everyone. I’ll admit to occasionally recycling an old idea no-one remembers from years ago. I did about sixteen lockdown cartoons in a row April to August.