I am French, 55 years old, and have been living in Thailand since May 1989. I have a Thai wife who I met in 2005 and we got married in 2012. We don't have any children.

My Dad is a painter and an architect so yes, I come from an arty family.  I started to draw and paint before I could speak (which worried my parents actually). I have a vivid memory of my time as a 4 year-old child at the kindergarten when I refused to leave school because I hadn't finished my giant colorful parrot painting. 

Having said that, I wasn't particularly gifted at drawing back then. There was always another kid in the class who could draw better than me and even my younger brother (who is a teacher) has always drawn better than me too.  

Yes in part, but they are mainly used for the Wai Kru ceremony - a Brahmanist ritual that pays respect to teachers with the characters of the Ramayana playing the part of the teachers themselves. And then there are the Ruesee masks which are more a sort of Shamanist mask used for sak yant (Thai tattoo) masters for certain rituals. These are very intense masks and often regarded as low-so folk art by well-educated Thais but by Western standards, they are much more interesting to collect. 

I have probably the biggest collection of these Ruesee masks in Thailand.  

I worked for them for 16 years from 2003 to 2019. I was on a freelance contract and paid per cartoon published. I never received a salary, paid holiday or any end-of-year bonus, etc but they paid me quite well and basically published everything I came up with. Very rarely did they refuse one of my cartoons. 

And being freelance meant I could work from home and even from France when I was on holiday there. So overall, I'd say that I was treated fairly and I was happy working there.  

Well, the management changed to something a bit more conservative shall we say, and while the newspaper continued to publish my cartoons, there were issues with pay and the documentation necessary to process my work permit. I guess at that point we had reached the end of the road.  

I worked for the Bangkok Post for several months but it didn't really work out. They were choosier about what got published and much of my work was getting declined. I remember three cartoons in particular - one about the Kurds being abandoned by the U.S, one about protesters in Hong Kong and then another cartoon about the Uighur camps in China. This was a frustrating time because they were important issues that I felt very strongly about.

They were also not keen on my 'Farang Affairs' series (cartoons which form the basis for the content of my new book)

When your hard work goes unpublished, you suddenly feel useless, and of course as a freelance employee, you are not getting paid either!

Such is the life of an artist though. There is often an unimpressed third party standing in your way. A person who blocks your work and prevents your fans from getting to enjoy it. 

But to end on a positive note, I now do some work for Prachatai English. It's a great online dissident media outlet. They are very human rights-oriented and they defend those without a voice. I'm delighted to work with them and be a part of their team.  

Ha ha, yes but I can't talk about it. It was an honest mistake as I didn't even realize that I was drawing a cartoon that could get me into trouble. My opinion editor at that time was a great guy though and he spotted the cartoon just before the newspaper went to press. But he told me that he had a sleepless night that night!

Thaksin and Prayut (the current Prime Minister) are both cartoonists' dreams as they are both very caricatural. However, you must be careful because it can become a kind of comfortable trap for cartoonists when a leader is too caricatural.  Trump for example is becoming too easy to make fun of him and if we cartoonists overdo things, we can be accused by pro-Trump people of being 'lazy libtards'. 

But is it our fault if sometimes the target is too easy? Should we stop criticizing Trump for that reason ?  

Yes, you are absolutely right. The lock down hasn't changed a thing for me. It's like I've been preparing for this moment my whole life. LOL

Well, I was a freelance photographer before I became a cartoonist and that was even worse. Drawing doesn't cost much in terms of equipment and travel expenses. Yes, for most it's not easy to make a good living - but doing what you love in life is a rare privilege is it not? So it's no problem for me.

There were hard times in my early life when I really was penniless. My first room rental in Thailand was 2,500 baht per month and my luxuries were a fan and a fridge! Now I live in total luxury compared to that period. If you want to know exactly, my income with The Nation at the end of last year was 45,000 baht per month. Not a great deal of money really. 

No, I don't. I only focus on the things that bring a certain meaningfulness to my life. All of those side-lines you mention, I did a lot when i was younger - just to survive. But if you keep taking on extra work, you realize one day that you simply didn't do what you really wanted to do.  

Between 30 minutes and three hours depending on the sophistication of the drawing.  

No, it's not a 'best of', it's a very specific theme in fact.  It's about all the little misadventures and cultural misunderstandings that a farang meets during his expatriation from the early months to when he becomes "more Thai than the Thais". 

I did publish some of this work in the 'Farang Affairs' column in the Nation every Saturday in the past but most of the drawings are new drawings I did specifically for the book, so there will be many cartoons that you haven't seen - even for those who know my work well!  

About five months.

Just drop me an email : stephff.cartoonist@gmail.com