Posts from — April 2008

PCOer Pete Dredge writes about making a Big Board for the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival:

I’ve been in training for weeks now, aiming to be at peak fitness for the Big Board Challenge at Shrewsbury this month. Yes, the “knee-bending, back-stretching, squat-thrusting and magnum marker pen-clutching” exercise DVD has been dusted off once again in preparation for this most unnatural of acts for the normally indoor, horizontal A4 practitioner of the cartoon art. Rather like a finely tuned Test cricketer being asked to adjust to the Twenty20 version of the game, the entire spectacle is rather more entertaining for the uninitiated than for the true connoisseur of the art!

British cartoon talent

Kipper Williams of The Guardian is one of this year’s PCO Big Boarders at the festival. Above is one of Kipper’s submissions to the “But is it Art?” exhibition, which is already open in the town.

The full list of cartoonist Big Boarders drawing at this year’s festival, over the weekend of Friday 18th and Saturday 19th April, is:

Steve Bright, Clive Collins, Bill Stott, Ross Thomson, Martin Honeysett, Alex Hughes, Pete Dredge, John Roberts, Matt Buck (Hack), Royston Robertson, Mike Turner, Noel Ford, Steve Best (Bestie), Dave Brown, Ian Baker, Chris Burke, Andy Davey, Neil Dishington, Paul Hardman, and Andy McKay (NAF).

PCOer Pete Dredge will be blogging tomorrow about how it feels to do a big board at Shrewsbury.

British cartoon talent

Bloghorn noticed yesterday that artist David Hockney has donated his largest ever painting to the Tate Britain museum in London. The enormous picture is called “Bigger Trees Near Warter” and he’s made a pun in the title. It’s a play on words with a small village in East Yorkshire. This art behaviour is bit like that made, day-to-day, by cartoonists.

Some of our own oversized art talents will be big boarding at the Shrewsbury cartoon festival in a couple of weeks time. The picture here should help explain exactly what they will be doing and Bloghorn will be publishing the full list of the participating PCO cartoonists soon.

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival Big Boards

British cartoon talent

Cartoon by Peter Brookes of The Times

An exhibition entitled Cartoonists 2008 opens at the Chris Beetles Gallery in London on April 8 and runs until May 3.

It is the gallery’s second annual show devoted to the art of British cartooning, following on from its successful You Havin’ a Laugh? exhibition last year.

The show features cartoonists from publications such as The Times, The Sunday Times, Private Eye, The Spectator, Daily Express, London Evening Standard, the Telegraph and The Economist, and includes PCO members Andy Davey, John Jensen, Royston Robertson, Kipper Williams, and Mike Williams.

Original artwork is on sale, at prices ranging from £50 to £5,000.

The gallery, at 8 & 10 Ryder Street, St James’s, London, is open from 10am-5.30pm, Monday to Saturday. Tel 020-7839 7551, email gallery@chrisbeetles.com or visit the website.

British cartoon talent

Caricature is the art of exaggerating the features of the face while retaining the identity of the person being drawn. Reverse caricaturing is the art of giving someone the body they may, or may not, desire. Here, one of the PCO’s patrons, Libby Purves, gets reinvented as a bunny girl.
British cartoon talent

The Guardian’s Family section yesterday listed the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival as one of its Things to do with your family …

The paper admits, however, that the talk by its own Steve Bell may not be suitable for all ages!

British cartoon talent

Bloghorn is going to be taking a break from our regular Friday feature during April as we feel we may have a lot on our plate with the upcoming cartoon festival. PCOer Martin Honeysett has submitted this piece for the But is it art show up in Shrewsbury.

British cartoon talent

As well as the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, April also brings with it a long-awaited exhibition celebrating the life and work of the late Dave Follows. It takes place at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, from April 19 – June 29.

Dave, who died in 2003, left a significant legacy of artwork that spans three decades. His work appeared in newspapers, comics, and magazines all over the world, including the Sunday Times supplement Funday Times (weekly for 15 years), more than 20 local newspapers, such as the North Staffordshire Evening Sentinel (daily for 20 years), and Buster comic.

Dave lived in Stafford all his life. He had a special soft spot for the Potteries and its people. His daily cartoon strip May un Mar Lady, written in Potteries dialect, first appeared on July 8, 1985, in the Sentinel and was a local institution for nearly 20 years.

The exhibition, May un Mar Lady: Three Decades of Cartooning by Dave Follows, includes a huge selection of Dave’s original cartoons, a reconstruction of his work area, life-size cartoon figures, a May un Mar Lady pilot animation, and a preview screening of a documentary exploring the Potteries dialect in the context of Dave’s cartoons by the Stoke-On-Trent based film production company Inspired Film And Video.

British cartoon talent

Six exhibitions of high-quality cartoon and comic art opened at the Shrewsbury festival yesterday evening. All free to enter and available to all, are the But is it Art? cartoon show and a one man show for Dave Brown of The Independent. The national UK Cartoon Museum has lent a collection for display and there is also a caricature show and contributions from cartoonists and artists from both Belgium and America.

British cartoon talent