If you're wondering, each bag takes around 10 to 30 minutes to draw and yes, they are absolutely, positively genuine lunch bags that my kids use to ferry their sandwiches to school. While a few drawings might make it onto the classroom wall, the majority are actually discarded into the recycling bin. What you are seeing are just the "before" photos that I collect and post on my social media pages.

I’ve always loved to draw and paint. As a kid, I would spend many hours after school doodling away in my bedroom and I also have really lovely memories of hanging out in my paternal grandmother’s art studio and watching her create masterpieces while I would hopelessly try to emulate her but really only succeed in creating lots of mess!

I never pursued art during high school or university (I was intent on becoming a lawyer, or so I thought!) and only began drawing again many years later when the whole lunch bag art journey started. My art teacher in primary school always said that art is something that will find you later in life….and she was right!

The original idea for the lunch bags was actually my wife's, not mine! It all started in 2012. My eldest daughter, Sharni, had started school after the birth of her baby sister. To make Sharni feel special and loved, my wife started carving little love hearts and other shapes into Sharni’s school sandwiches. After a few days, I took the sandwich-carving duties, and from there, things escalated quickly.

The daily sandwich cut-outs became more and more intricate, and I was soon fielding ‘carving’ requests from Sharni’s friends and teachers. One day, as I was about to slice up a new sandwich masterpiece, I spied a marker pen on the kitchen benchtop and was struck by an idea. Instead of cutting shapes into the actual bread, why not draw the designs onto the actual sandwich bag itself? And the rest, as they say, is Sandwich Bag history!

I don’t actually remember Sharni’s reaction to the first lunch bag cartoon, but it was probably an eye roll and a groan! That is certainly the usual reaction I get for most of my bags these days from each of my 3 kids, although I know deep down they do appreciate them (really, really, really, really deep down). While I originally started doing this just to bring a smile to my kids, I just love seeing that my drawings are now able to make so many people around the world chuckle too.

If you are interested, you can check out more of my art on my website or follow my adventures on Instagram or Facebook. And if you think you have enough dad joke immunity, check out my prior posts on Bored Panda by clicking here, here and here!