image copyrightHercule Van Wolfwinkleimage captionFake customer review: “One day, hopefully very soon, Dominic Littlewood is going to be chasing you down the street.”
A father from West Sussex has raised nearly £5,000 for a homeless charity by drawing “rubbish” pictures of pets.
It all started when Phil - who operates under the spoof alias “acclaimed artist Hercule Van Wolfwinkle” - doodled his pet dog while colouring with his son.
He put it on Facebook and offered commissions at a joke price of £299, but genuine requests flooded his inbox.
“I think people just found them funny, at a time when there’s not loads to smile about,” he said.
image copyrightHercule Van Wolfwinkleimage captionReview: “Tell ya what mate, why don’t you get back to me when you’ve drawn a picture of my actual dog”
image copyrightHercule Van Wolfwinkleimage captionReview: “It’s going to take a while to process these emotions. I feel like I want to laugh and cry and scream and cry and scream and cry and cry and cry all at once”
He did the illustrations for free and shared them on social media with funny fake-reviews and got thousands of likes.
People were keen to pay him something, but he said: “I couldn’t take their money - the pictures are rubbish. So I set up a Just Giving page and suggested people donate instead.”
image copyrightHercule Van Wolfwinkleimage captionReview: “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10…….nope, sorry, I’m still too livid to speak”
In five weeks demand for his doodles boomed and the 38-year-old raised £4,903 for Turning Tides, a charity which supports rough sleepers and aims to help them out of homelessness.
The Worthing dad is now churning out 150 drawings a week and has a backlog of 600 requests.
image copyrightHercule Van Wolfwinkleimage captionReview: “It gets worse and worse the more your eyes scan down the page. Which is really quite the achievement given how bad her face looks”
He said it is “brilliant fun” creating the cartoons, but the volume of requests had started to become “overwhelming” alongside his full time job in commercial property.
He had to put a disclaimer on his Facebook page. People can continue to donate any amount to support the cause and message him with an image of their pet, but it is not regarded as a payment. It is a lottery whether people get a drawing, as he cannot get to them all.
image copyrightHercule Van Wolfwinkleimage captionReview: “It reminds me of that time I went to a firework display and they set them all off at once by mistake; massively overwhelming at first but ultimately not what I had hoped for and bitterly disappointing”
Despite that, support continues to flood in. One person donated £299 to the cause - the ‘price’ of the original image - and a man even got Hercule’s drawing of his dog tattooed on himself.
image copyrightHercule Van Wolfwinkleimage captionOne of Hercule’s happy customers got the picture of his dog tattooed on himself
Hercule said: “I can’t believe how it’s taken off.
“It’s just a bit of fun for everybody, including me. When it becomes too stressful, I’ll have to stop. But I’ll try to make as much money as I can for Turning Tides.
“My next goal is £10,000.”
image copyrightHercule Van Wolfwinkleimage captionReview: “It’s a good job I’m always losing my glasses”
He added: “Homelessness is such an important issue, it’s a basic right for people to have a roof over the head and food in their bellies.
“With cuts to services, these charities are often the last line of defence as to whether these people live or die.”
image copyrightHercule Van Wolfwinkleimage captionReview: “Maverick can swear like a drunken sailor. There’s no way I’m showing him this cause we’ll not be able to have children in the house for weeks. He’ll be livid”
image copyrightHercule Van Wolfwinkleimage captionReview: “They say musicians always have a tough third album, this must be your tough 177th portrait”
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