Posts from — December 2009

David Levine, since 1963 caricaturist for the New York review of Books, has died. You can read an obituary from the New York Times and scroll through a short slideshow about him here. The Review of Books has an excellent archive of his work from the 1960s to the present day available here.

Updated: 31st Jan 2009. Bloghorner Steve Bell has a tribute to Levine published in The Guardian.

Bloghorn is very pleased to be able to publish an interview with David Lloyd, artist of V for Vendetta and co-founder of Cartoon Classroom, a free resource to connect artists and people who would like to learn how to draw.

How do you think the Cartoon Classroom and its list of expert teachers in drawing can help young people who do think in images?

Well, we’re not just for young people and we don’t specify anywhere on the site that we are. Anyone can make use of cartoon workshops or teaching in that area of art if they want to, and they already have in the past. Are water-colour weekends just for young people? There’s a tendency to think ‘ cartoons? ah, young people ‘ .  This is a  misperception from a Disney/comics train of thought, I guess. The work I helped with at The London Cartoon Centre in the 80′s and 90′s was just for young people, because it was specifically meant to help the young unemployed.

So, the classroom is a non-profit learning resource for everybody?

Cartoon Classroom is intended to be a resource that anyone can dip into for exactly what they want by having as many institutions and artists as possible register with it. We must get that spread of involvement in the site, otherwise it will fail in its task.

David, personally, what does drawing mean to you?

A pleasure and a pain. I love being able to draw and create but it often hurts because I’m striving for the best and can’t always get there.

Why do you think you feel that way about it?

Because I’m cursed with ambition.

Many creative people seem to spend a lot of energy trying to define why they do what they do. Do you? Did you?

Never had the choice. This was all I could turn into a living when I left school. But I have answered a similar question in interviews by saying I loved to draw and loved to write stories, and loved movies and tv, so it was natural I worked in strip art because I could do the things I’m naturally good at and enjoy making things that are like movies and tv at the same time.

Bloghorn will be publishing some more details about Cartoon Classroom over the new year.

The Daily Mail has announced that pocket cartoonist Ken Mahood is retiring. Mahood, who next year will celebrate his 80th birthday, has drawn news and sports cartoons for the Mail since 1982. His first cartoon was published in Punch in 1948, a magazine for whom he was later Assistant Art Editor, and in 1966 became the first political cartoonist on The Times.

The UK Political Cartoon Gallery is to move from its premises on Store Street, near Tottenham Court Road in London, early in 2010.

Owner and publisher Tim Benson told Bloghorn;

I believe we have gone as far as I think we can [at the Store Street venue] without becoming stale and repetitive. Staying in London I believe is also no longer any great advantage. There is just too much competition for publicising what we do. Out of London we believe, we will get far more interest and far more local coverage. A change of direction will breath new life into the society and our new prospective venue will allow us to do far more in the way of exhibitions than we have done before.

Tim would like to thank all those who have supported the gallery over the last five years – and confirms there are four new books planned for publication in the New Year.

The Guardian Theatre Blog has a piece on putting cartoons and animation on the stage, as seen in a new production of The Cat in the Hat, and in the Daily Telegraph’s Alex, left.

Read it here: Drawing power: when cartoons and theatre meet

This features the genius of Bill Watterson’s much-loved Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. It also highlights the good and bad nature of digital distribution of imagery, because strictly, this is a copyright violation. What do you think about it? Please tell us in the comments below. Spotted by Royston Robertson.

Ipswich Borough Council is expected to give the go-ahead to plans to revamp part of the town centre around a statue dedicated to the cartoonist Giles this week. The scheme, to be known as Giles Circus, will raise the statue of his Grandma character to a more prominent position and will include improvements to the pavement area, seating and disability access. The statue, which also features other members of the Giles Family, is situated near the late Daily Express cartoonist’s former studio and was unveiled in 1993 by actor Warren Mitchell.

It is a fact universally acknowledged that a supermarket retailer in possession of the No1 spot is in want of a commercial wheeze – such as this one.

Of course, Bloghorn says you’d be better off buying the real thing with a personal caricature from people who can draw like this instead of relying on a computer filter to do it all for them.

Perhaps Tesco might even start to employ cartoonists to do this work live in store?

The latest Cartoonist of the Month over at Prospect magazine’s First Drafts blog is Huw Aaron. Click here to read the interview.

Welshman Huw says that the response from fellow countrymen when he says he’s a cartoonist is usually “Does ‘ew work for Disnee then, butt?”

Bloghorn also liked his response when asked how he copes with rejection: “I store up the bitterness inside, layering each new rejection onto my festering ball of solid bile …” We’re almost certain he’s joking.

As we reported yesterday evening, Peter Brookes of The Times won the Political Cartoonist of the Year Awards for 2009. His colleague Morten Morland completed an excellent evening for the News International print title by winning best single image for a drawing of Gordon Brown and President of the US, Barack Obama.

The Times has coverage and Morland writes here too.

This post was corrected for a glaring misidentification of the US president at 12.26pm 11th December.