Posts from — May 2008

PCOer Royston Robertson reviews the exhibition
Pont: Observing the British at Home and Abroad at the
Cartoon Museum It’s probably asking for trouble to use the word “important” in relation to a cartoon exhibition, but it seems applicable here as Pont, who was known as Graham Laidler to his mum, is so often overlooked when histories of cartooning are written.

Also, these cartoons from the 1930s were clearly instrumental in helping to creating the magazine cartoon as we know it today. And a tribute to their worth is the fact that so many are laugh-out-loud funny, even now.

Pont’s The British Character cartoons, which appeared in Punch and make up a large chunk of the show, still seem to hit the nail on the head. Even the captions in themselves are funny: “Fondness for laughing at our own anecdotes”; “Passion for not forgetting the moderately great”; and, my particular favourite, “A tendency to leave the washing-up till later”.

The drawings demand your attention, and repay you with lots of brilliant details. Look at that impatient left foot in the drawing above! In “Life in the Flat Above”, part of the Popular Misconceptions series, we see every member of the family jumping up and down on the floor and clanging pots, but look closer and you see that figures in the paintings on the walls, including an elephant, are also jumping.
Laidler died at 32, a tragically short life, but what a groundbreaking legacy he left. The cartoon above looks like a 1930s precursor to the melancholy of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts.

So it’s an important show, but it’s mostly just very, very funny. The exhibition, which includes a comprehensive and reasonably priced catalogue, is at the Cartoon Museum until July 27. Go and see it.

The Cartoon Museum website

The PCO: British cartoon talent

The perceived wisdom is that the children’s comic market in Britain is in decline, but Random House publishing is attempting to reverse the trend with a new comic called The DFC. Initially the comic, which is aimed at eight to 12-year-olds, will be subscription only, though there are plans for it to appear in shops. You can read an interview with David Fickling, the man behind the comic, at Times Online, and the DFC homepage is here.

The PCO: British cartoon talent

First person testimony on how it feels to try and make something this big in less than ten hours comes from PCOer Pete Dredge.

’For the majority of our working year we toil away in solitary isolation, hidden away, apparently unloved and unsure of our worth. Two days in Shrewsbury’s town square working on a big board in front of an appreciative audience and we leave with enough ego to see us through the next twelve months. Thank you people of Shrewsbury.”

Click the picture to enlarge it.
It’s British cartoon talent

Our second cartoon from the PCO Artist of the Month for May 2008, PCOer Arthur Reid.
It’s British cartoon talent

Workshops and cartoon “clinics” were a major part of the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival as usual this year, and PCO members Andy Gilbert, Paul Hardman and Tim Harries were at the forefront, helping members of the public to develop their cartooning skills.

Here’s Tim Harries on how he ran his “Create a Comic Strip” workshop:

“I explained the mechanics of producing a three panel strip, from character design, story refinement to actual drawing techniques. This was all duly noted and I suspect roundly ignored by several of the more boisterous participants, judging by the finished strips. I’m not complaining mind you, invariably the strips produced that day were energetic, great fun and frankly bonkers.

“Children have a terrific ability to just get on with the business of drawing, unencumbered by any doubts regarding their artwork. The young chap finishing off his 12-panel creation Bob the Flying Pickle was in no doubt that Bob was indeed a pickle that flew. More critical eyes would have perhaps renamed him ‘Bob the wobbly squiggle’ but that’s missing the point. Fun was being had, ideas were being explored and pickles were indeed flying. And you can’t say fairer than that.”

Photos by Gerard Whyman.

Click here for British cartoon talent

PCOer Martin Rowson writes about his time as Cartoonist Laureate to the former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and wonders whether he’ll survive the regime change.

I suppose that Ken Livingstone’s defeat by Boris Johnson means that I’m no longer the Official Cartoonist Laureate to the Mayor of London, although I’m not quite sure. Somewhere in the bowels of City Hall, the Great Glass Testicle by the Thames, there is a contract, drawn up between the Mayor’s office and me.

It was, I now freely admit, a joke. It was also a joke to remind Ken of his promise every time we met, and it remained a joke, after he was elected mayor in 2000, to browbeat one of his policy wonks at a party about his boss’s failure to keep his promises. However, jokes are dangerous things, and a few days after the encounter with the wonk I got a call from Ken himself, saying we were going ahead, and that I was duly appointed as the Cartoonist Laureate for London.

The terms of the contract were pretty straightforward. I would provide drawings of the Mayor or of events involving him, the GLA and the administration of London, in return for one pint of London Pride ale per year. This, I stipulated, had to be bought by the Mayor with his own money over the bar of a public house during licensing hours. And that was more or less it.

At the time of my appointment in 2001, I got a great deal of press attention, mostly because neither the mayor nor the GLA had actually got round to doing anything else by that stage. I got invited to attend the opening of the new City Hall by the Queen, and produced what I think was my finest cartoon in the job, of “Red, White and Blue Ken” rolling his tongue out as a red carpet for the Queen to process down, with the Duke of Edinburgh behind her.

But by 2007, payment was, strictly, five years in arrears.

This didn’t actually stop me voting for him and I still churned out stuff for GLA’s in-house newspaper – The Londoner – up until February 2008. One of Boris Johnson’s few palpable election promises was to scrap the paper, but even that wouldn’t make me vote for him.

I’ll ‘fess up and say that I admire Ken Livingstone probably more than any other politician I can think of. His bravery in thwarting New Labour was a beautiful and inspiring thing, and both the Congestion Charge and the pedestrianisation of the North of Trafalgar Square were enormously brave too, in the latter case because nobody had been able to make a decision to do this for sixty years. But I hope that that admiration didn’t constrain me from taking the piss when so inclined, even if, as things turned out, the beer that might have provided the piss dried up rather sooner than I’d hoped.

And as every workman is worthy of his hire, if Boris comes up with the goods, I’m more than happy to drink his beer and piss on him too. I await the call.

Bloghorn says click R for Rowson.

It’s British cartoon talent

PCOer Arthur Reid has more than thirty years experience as a cartoonist. A graduate of Gray’s school of Art in Aberdeen, he has contributed cartoons to many magazines and newspapers including Punch, Private Eye and The Oldie. He is a winner of numerous awards for visual joke-making and has also served as a judge at several international festivals, including Knokke Heist in Belgium.
The best British cartoon talent

It does get about – British cartoon talent