Ern Shaw's Greeting Card Designs

Ern Shaw's card games

The humour that Ern Shaw creates in his work can clearly be seen again in his card games.

Ern Shaw’s Books

An Ern Shaw quote:
“The sweetest of music is the laughter of children.
In recent years, I have had the pleasure of producing dozens of paintings and story books for young people.”

Some of the most famous names in publishing published his books, such as Mellifont Press who published one series of 100 books which Ern Shaw created and illustrated.
Other publishers who published his books were Hutchinson and Collins.

The following are examples of his work from his books...

Ern Shaw's Dingbats Characters

Tiny, Mac,Toodles, Mick and Twanky and many more, were names for the funny colourful pixie like characters that Ern Shaw created called the ‘Dingbats’. These characters appeared in annuals, colouring books and games.

His first ‘Dingbats’ annual published in 1950 sold at least 100,000 copies, and inside included stories, puzzles, jokes, games and lots of fun activities compiled and illustrated by Ern Shaw.

Ern Shaw’s comic strip cartoons

Comic strip cartoons take a variety of formats. The joke strip is a complete story in four or five panels and the serial strip which carries on the story from day to day and may be published over a considerable period of time.

Ern Shaw created the serial strip cartoon Mr.Mrs.Dillwater for the Answers magazine in 1923. He recorded the squabbles and adventures of the little henpecked husband and wife and ran for many years.

Another serial strip cartoon drawn by Ern Shaw was Dr. Gnome of Gnomesland. The adventures of Dr. Gnome and the panda Miss Ming ran in the ‘Woman’s Illustrated’ magazine for over 21 years. The character Miss Ming was based on a real panda called Ming brought over from China to be bred at London Zoo and in 1940 was adopted by the Woman’s Illustrated’ to help pay for her upkeep. Ern Shaw thought that such a lovable animal would be a nice friend for Dr. Gnome so he introduced the character into the strip and they had lots of adventures together.

Ern Shaw and Sport

The following is a quote from Ern Shaw’s book on how to become a sporting cartoonist:

“Sport offers a wonderful opportunity to the cartoonist, but to be successful, a highly developed sense of observation, ability and imagination are essential. No artist can hope to make a success of sports cartooning until he has learned to draw the human figure in action."

"I began by visiting a billiards hall and watching the players in their various poses. This being a slower game than, say football or boxing; I had the time to register a pose and make quick notes in my sketch book.
Once you have become proficient in drawing the human figure in action and posses, and the ability to make recognizable caricatures of sporting personalities, you will at least have laid the foundation to become a sports cartoonist.

The camera can record incidents, like the shooting of a goal or a brilliant save but the cartoonist can observe such incidents from the press box or stand, and perhaps give them a more humorous “twist” and produce a pictorial version which would prove very entertaining to newspaper readers.”

Ern Shaw and Hull City Football Club (also known as the Tigers)

The club was founded in Hull 1904 and played for the first three years at the Boulevard Rugby League ground. They eventually moved to the ground of Hull Cricket Club before moving to Boothferry Park.
Ern Shaw would pop into the Press-box among the sports writers for the home games at Boothferry Park and sit unobtrusively at the back of the box, turning out his cartoon masterpieces with consummate ease and the minimum of fuss.
Ern Shaw had a long association with the club and his earliest cartoons of two rather cuddly tigers in bow ties adorned the cover of the club’s match programme from 1913 to 1927.

He produced cartoons for the club’s programme and his cartoons also appeared in the ‘Tiger Mag’, a postwar magazine for the city fans. The ‘Tiger Mag’ was popular because it coincided with one of the most successful times in the club’s history-when they gained promotion as Third Division North Champions under Raich Carter’s management in 1948-49.

The club now plays their games at the 25,000 capacity Kingston Communications Stadium which they moved to in 2002 on the site of the former Cricket Club.
They traditionally play in black and amber, often with a striped shirt design, hence their nickname the ‘Tigers’
After a successful 2007/ 2008 season, they were promoted to the Premier League for the first time in their history via a 1-0 playoff win over Bristol City with a Dean Windass winning volley, under the management of Phil Brown and chairmanship of Paul Duffen.