Category — Artist of the Month

Bloghorn’s Artist of the Month for February is Neil Dishington – he signs his work as Dish.

Dish has been widely published in Private Eye, The Spectator, Punch, The Daily Express, The Guardian, The Oldie and in many trade and professional publications including Financial Advisor, Medican Publishing, Save and Prosper and Scottish Banker. He specialises in one-line jokes and in “interpreting” written articles.

Bloghorn asked him how he started out as a cartoonist:

Well, I was always one of those children who drew “cartoons” on the back of my maths book rather than listening to the teacher explaining the Pythagoras Theorem, so I guess that was the start.

After five years at Art College painting pictures that were going to change the world, I took up teaching in order to pay the rent. I met a certain David McKee, he of Mr.Benn and Elmer the Elephant fame. We shared a flat and I discovered he had started cartooning. He was a big influence on me. Then I got married and within months my wife was expecting, so in order to boost funds I sent some cartoons to The Daily Mirror and sold one for £5 … never looked back after that!

Bloghorn’s interview with Dish will be running here for the next four Fridays – or you can check out our previous featured cartoonists in the links on the right hand side of this page.

Nathan Ariss tells Bloghorn what and who makes him laugh in the last of our posts about him and his work:

I admire any stand-up or sit-down comedian who can actually make me laugh as I’m quite a tough audience. I enjoy clever, quick-witted jokes, but I can also go for gentle, human, observational stuff and even the lightest of whimsy (so long as it’s delightful). I love the strength and simplicity of purely visual – “silent” – comedy and revel in surreal, lateral and blatantly absurd cartoons, because I think I must be really smart to “get” them.

A simple name-check of artists would have me list Quentin Blake, for sheer freedom of line and overall life-affirming execution; early Searle, (particularly Molesworth and St. Trinian’s), and Thelwell both for their superb techniques for what is, in essence, simply getting black on white. Hargreaves for required lessons in describing movement; David Low’s war cartoons; Posy Simmonds, Jean-Jacques Sempé, Charles Ardizzone, David Gentlemen and Chris Orr, variously, for illustration; Mort Drucker and David Stoten for characterisation; Liberatore’s RanXerox, Manfred Deix and Terry Gilliam for grotesques; Don Martin, Gary Larson, Gilbert Shelton, Robert Crumb, Hunt Emerson, Frank Cotham, “Bud” Handelsman and Holte, all for various style and cartoon services rendered; and finally, nearly everyone I can think of with that casual, “free-line” feel: Scarfe, Steadman, Larry, Tidy, Hoffnung, Bretecher, Husband, Lowry, Feiffer, Sorrel, and Myers, not to mention more than a few of the artists currently frequenting the membership pages of the PCO.

Not content with Nathan’s efforts to answer this question, Bloghorn ruthlessly asked him how he sees the future of cartooning in the digital age:

I tend to believe that the future is full of unexplored possibilities and is not one automatically to be feared. Yes, these are serious times for humourists, but I am determined to remain positive about the prospects for the arts in general, no matter how impoverished and altered the markets may become. Cartooning, it seems to me, is the last remaining art form which is not recognised as such, and I believe that the next decade will see a better appreciation and understanding develop for the craft in its own right. There are some exceptional talents currently working in this country, and who knows? We may just have entered a glorious new age of the modern cartoonist.

Bloghorn thanks Nathan for his thoughts over the past four weeks and promises a new artist of the month next Friday. Please come back to find out who it will be.

Bloghorn’s Artist of the Month, Nathan Ariss explains how he makes his cartoons:

I know, this is really that question about which nibs and paper I use, isn’t it? Well, to put the knitted Parker on for a minute, I mostly go for the Gillott’s 404, lightly dipped in FW acrylic ink and drizzled on to Bristol Board. I have also been known to use charcoal, graphite, crayon, Pitt, Pigma, and Artline pens on “Not” paper, or any bit of scrap that can potentially take an ink wash for toning or colouring if so desired later on.

I’ll generally take on the artwork only after all the thinking, writing and basic compositional stuff is worked out in my head. I tend not to make pencil roughs as I like to “see what happens” when the ink hits the page. I try to work fast and loose at this stage, and try not to stress too much if some rouge elements – like that one – appear, as that can easily be excised later on in Photoshop.

I might produce quite a few versions or progressions of the same idea, or the image could just come fully formed, but I try not to judge anything there and then. I’ll walk away for twenty minutes or so to let it all dry, then scan it, and see if there is anything there that might be useable. From here it might need a few ink washes, or it could just be tidied up, or some elements pieced together as layers, perhaps distorted or possibly coloured within the blessed Adobe – hallowed be thy name. At this later stage I like to be more thorough and I try to take my time. So, lots of stretching, walking away and caffeine.

Then it’s on to final adjustments and printing off a copy to see if I can live with it, just the way it is. Invariably I can’t, but after a tiny bit more tweaking and tinkering it somehow just seems to settle, and whispers “Ooh-ee! I’m done!” Hurrah!

You can see more of Nathan’s answers to our interview here.

Artist of the Month, Nathan Ariss explained to Bloghorn how he became a cartoonist:

I feel immensely fortunate to have been born into a creative household where it was entirely acceptable to set one’s sights on becoming an artist, musician, actor or professional itinerant, which is pretty much what I am all about to this day.

As a kid I was always drawing, and it still feels like the most natural thing in the world to do, even if the tools I use have changed a bit. I think we are all natural artists as children. Unfortunately, it usually gets knocked out of us when we are told we have to grow up or be more realistic. I try and keep something of this child-like directness and honesty alive in all my work. Back then it was all about cats, or rubbish monsters, or people with big noses, clowns with flowers growing out of their heads; grotesques really. I don’t know if I’m cured yet, but I still like to draw people with really big noses.

Nathan’s top tips for would-be cartoonists are:

Take up juggling, learn a musical instrument or just sketch for the sheer love of it. Nothing will hone your skill as an artist more than regularly practising something which utilises your eye to hand co-ordination (hopefully via your brain). Another tip would be to try and develop your own sense of humour. Beyond that it is all speculation and opinion. No one else knows what might work out for you.

Nathan Ariss is our featured artist for January 2009.

Well, thank you for asking me to be your Artist of the Month dear Bloggy. As your January 2009 pin-up, it falls to me to inject a tone of – dare I say it? – optimism into the current credit-crunchy world of the freelance cartoonist. Yes, traditional markets may be shrinking, commissions and spirits appear to be down, and doom and gloom seem to scour this land, but perhaps the New Year is exactly the right time to look to the best that the future has to offer and positively set about embracing it. With that in mind may I wish us all a very happy, joyous and prosperous New Year!

Nathan works as a cartoonist and illustrator, has been published in Private Eye, The Spectator, Slightly Foxed and Business Executive (BEX). Other work includes book and album illustrations and covers, school text books, advertising campaigns and greeting cards, as well as numerous private commissions.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent
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Reflecting on the future of cartooning in the digital age in our last entry for 2008, PCO Artist of the Month, Denis Dowland, writes:

Technological advances give with one hand and take with the other just like chancellors. I certainly do not miss the good old days of dragging heavy portfolios round studios, at or soon after lunch-time, to baffle brain-addled, red-braced juvenile yuppie editors, I’d better stop now, it’s all coming back to me. I simply couldn’t wait for the internet.

Now that video has virtually taken over the medium, however, the internet is swamped by infantile trash, taking us back to square one, if not further. This only requires an upgrading of our working methods, like the telephone once did. The threat I see as more insidious is the unstoppable drive toward the cretinisation of society as perhaps its only means of holding together, its naturally enthusiastic adoption by the mediocre and its resigned and guilty acceptance by those who do know better. Grumpy old git, moi? I love it.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent
Subscribe to The Foghorn – our print cartoon magazine

PCO Artist of the Month Denis Dowland, tells Bloghorn about some of his cartoon influences: “A good gag’s a good gag so I am not so particular about graphic styles. I think the great majority of cartoonists, and I don’t even mind being counted as one of them, come up with at most a handful of works that will stand the test of (short to medium) time.

“Bill Tidy, McLachlan and lots of people whose names I cannot even recall have done stuff I wished I had done, never mind Cruikshank. Larson, ubiquitous as he is, comes up with real beauties in my view, and I’m slowly working my way around claiming authorship of one or two of that chap Stott’s scribbles as well. I have just seen Scarfe’s exhibition and some of his caricature is jaw-dropping. Caricature is a discipline I have never attempted, I couldn’t tell you why.”

His top tip for aspiring cartoonists is: “Get a job. I am not a good role model for any aspiring artiste (sic). Some young people want to become cartoonists for the same reasons they’d want to be pop stars. It’s a pose one can strike without bothering to learn a craft. This is of course a reflection of my own middle-age views and experience. I would try to inspire young people to embrace neurology, astrophysics or history or any scholarly pursuit instead. Boring old prat, I know. I love it.”

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent
Subscribe to The Foghorn – our print cartoon magazine

PCO Artist of the Month, Denis Dowland, reveals to Bloghorn how he goes about producing his cartoons …

“I have had to learn to resist the Big Creative Rush, especially after a grand meal or closing time, when everything comes out so clear and sharp and you can do, of course, no wrong.

“I have to let most ideas stew for some considerable time, we’re talking months here, mostly, before I commit them to paper, or nowadays the computer, lest I look at a page in total bafflement as to what on earth I may have had in mind the night before. I think something similar happens to Gary Larson on occasion.

“Once the idea is fixed it’s like painting by numbers. I love having just finished a picture but doing it is a grind; a common enough malaise.”

There will be more work from Denis next Friday.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent
Subscribe to The Foghorn – our print cartoon magazine

Kate’s last piece of advice to any aspiring cartoonist is to “have endless perseverance, draw from the heart and be a shameless self-publicist”.

Kate also feels that the internet has opened up many new ways in which cartoonists can now promote themselves. “The digital age also means a lot more choice for us in the way we decide to present our work.”

Bloghorn says T for Taylor
The PCO: Great British cartoon talent

Bloghorn asked our Artist of the Month, Kate Taylor, how she started out in drawing;

Since childhood Kate loved to draw and only ever wanted to be an illustrator. She has always worked as a self-employed freelancer, but, with her output always “veering towards” cartooning.

She always admired the cartoons of the late Mel Calman but tells us she tries not “to look at other people’s work too much, because everyone else seems so funny.”

Bloghorn says click T for Taylor

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent