AN off-beat sense of humour and an eye for detail has led an artist to open a shop in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales.

Graham Ashbridge - known to friends as Glock - combined his love of drawing, humour and motorbikes to begin designing cartoons which now feature as prints, greetings cards, mugs, coasters and computer mouse mats.

After successful commissions from the business world, he opted to take over a vacant shop unit owned by his brother at Hawes. Glockworks opened on Good Friday to coincide with the start of the tourist season.

Mr Ashbridge, aged 46, was born in Darlington and grew up at Downholme, near Richmond.

After gaining an HNC in civil engineering, he worked in the technical drawing office for Darlington council for 23 years. After a spell working for Northumbrian Water at Durham, he took voluntary redundancy in 1999 "to race my bike for a couple of years."

Motorbike-mad, he had raced during the Seventies and Eighties and quickly regained the "bug", coming second in last year's Melville Club championship.

Mr Ashbridge also took the opportunity to turn his hand from technical drawing to cartoons and began making greetings cards, which he sold at fairs and country shows around the region. He also undertakes commissions.

He had begun drawing cartoon cards for people leaving work and was careful to add as much detail as possible.

"Opening the shop gave me the chance to draw in between selling items," he said. "The advantage is that I can draw all day. When I was travelling round the shows I couldn't do that; you can't draw much while driving!"

He realised he would have to broaden his subject to appeal to non-motorbike-lovers. "I was in the dales so I went to the library and asked for pictures of sheep," he said.

Then emerged cartoons of Swaledale tups engaging in everything from strikes for longer hours to requesting "window seat, no smoking" as they board the trailer for the journey to the mart.

Ellie, the border collie dog belonging to Mr Ashbridge's girlfriend, Sharon Gibson, also proved an inspiration, as did the thousands of walkers who descend on the dales.

Inspiration can strike at any time and he carries a notebook and pencil at all times, leaving it by the bed for ideas which strike overnight.

He is also strongly inspired by the pre-Victorian cartoons of satirical publications such as Punch.

"I like a lot of detail," said Mr Ashbridge, who draws in pencil before finalising in good quality felt-tipped drawing pens. "It can take up to three days to complete a drawing, but most of that time is spent planning and trying to tell a story or crack a joke in a single image."

The drawings are tested out on friends to ensure they "get the joke" before the design goes on sale.

Sharp-eyed buyers will notice a small, black cat's head hidden in every cartoon. "I adopted Maggie the cat when I shared a house in Darlington. My housemate was a Labour supporter so we called the cat after Margaret Thatcher. She died years ago but I was really attached to her and I put her motif in each drawing."

His nickname, Glock, dates from when, as a toddler, he struggled with the word glockenspiel, managing only the first syllable. "My parents began calling me Glock and it just stuck," he recalled.

* Glockworks is in Main Street, Hawes, tel 01969 667887.