Revellers at the Groucho Club, London’s premier trendy media hangout, found something to distract them from the anti-climax of the General Election last Thursday night: live cartooning.

Members of the PCO, the organisation which runs the Bloghorn, were on hand to draw cartoons in an informal capacity – is there any other way in the Groucho Club? – on the subject of politics and the election, as well as drawing live caricatures. The cartoons were then pinned up on the walls, showing up the Emins and Hirsts.

Cameras are not permitted in the Groucho, and the cartoonists went untroubled by the paparazzi outside the club, so there is no photographic record. Instead, we offer you some fine drawings of the assembled scribblers by Wilbur Dawbarn.

Much fun was had by all, even if there was still no conclusive result in the election by throwing-out time at 4am. But, who knows, we may be back there for the next election in a matter of months …

The Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival doesn’t actually finish at the end of the weekend.

Exhibitions continue in venues across the town and organisers run workshops for people keen to explore the skills of drawing and communication.

Cartoonist Wilbur Dawbarn ran one of these events and here are photos from his workshops. Bloghorn thanks Shropshire Council’s event development team for passing these along to us.

Some of the work produced will be displayed at the town’s Wakeman School and Arts College at the end of June.

An informant tells Bloghorn that Wilbur let slip he sometimes “meditated” on a subject for a cartoon while having a lie-in in the mornings. One of the older ladies immediately produced a cartoon of him lounging in bed – you can see it below.

"It's nice to finish the day's work before breakfast!"

Bloghorn thinks: If only…

Alan Coren, ex-Punch editor and PCO patron (Art: John Roberts)

Bill Stott is a cartoonist. A rather good one, actually. Even the great Alan Coren thought so. But then he loved cartoonists generally.

Like many cartoonists, Bill doesn’t change his trousers with unseemly regularity. It’s a working-at-home thing. Why bother when the ones you’re wearing have a perfectly serviceable extra few weeks in them … and probably a healthy supply of mints and pocket fluff? However, the recent change of season occasioned a re-trousering, whereupon one of the pockets yielded a piece of gold dust.

It was a short note from Mr Coren, penned a short while before he died, which Bill had rammed into the pocket for filing; a paean to cartoonists intended as an introduction to the website of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation, of which he had just accepted the title of inaugural patron. Bill hadn’t the heart to publish the piece because Coren died shortly after sending it.

In it, having left Punch, Coren mulls over what he misses. The limos, the yachts, the voluptuous assistants? No, he says, “None of these. What I miss most is those Tuesday mornings with the sadly late and very great Bill Hewison, my brilliant Art Editor, when we would sit at a huge leather-topped desk overlooking the complete absence of central heating, pull off our generously lent company mittens, and sift through the hundreds and hundreds of roughs submitted by the extraordinary numbers of extraordinary cartoonists which – and, remember, I speak as a writer – made Punch the brilliant and, most important of all, hilarious magazine it was.

“I miss the six hours of those golden-era Tuesdays when Bill and I would struggle – handicapped by constant helpless laughter – to choose, from 20 times as many, the 50-odd cartoons we needed to lift the readers’ spirits and break their ribs in next week’s magazine.”

He continues:

“Cartooning is the toughest art of all. A freelance cartoonist lives and works alone, staring out of the window in the fervent daily hope that something will begin to draw itself on the sky, then murmur its caption in his ear. He needs this to happen several times a day, every day, because he has not the faintest idea whether the editors who pay his rent will laugh at the same thing he laughs at, and therefore has to send them lots and lots of things, praying that they will laugh at at least one of them, and the cartoonist can get his shoes mended.”

Coren concludes that his greatest struggle was that “we couldn’t put a thousand gags in the paper, so how to select the best when ten are equally funny?” Enough, enough already. We cartoonists couldn’t possibly be so immodest about our talents. But … thank you, Mr Coren.

Declaration of Interest: Andy Davey is chairleg of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation which runs The Bloghorn (Editor: Matt Buck) and the print magazine Foghorn (Editor: Bill Stott).

He and the organisation welcome your comments, and your contact with us at our artist portfolio websites, through our social-media services, or via direct contact with our media team led by Pete Dredge.

Bloghorn on Twitter – Bloghorn at Facebook
(Editor’s note: these are subscriber services and require a sign up from the service providers to use them.)

Laughter and music has been ringing out on the streets of Shrewsbury today as the cartoon festival gets into full swing.

The market square has been abuzz with crowds who have come to see the cartoonists producing Big Boards, caricatures and “reverse” caricatures, with live bonus as an added bonus.

Political cartoonist Martin Rowson didn’t let a power failure at Birmingham New Street prevent him from attending the festival. He made one taxi driver very happy by getting a cab all the way to Shrewsbury. He gave a talk entitled Giving Offence: The Greatest Gift, the festival’s sole non family-friendly offering.

You can see lots more pictures, taken and tweeted throughout the day, at the Bloghorn Twitter feed.

The Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival is under way and recent volcanic news events are providing good material for cartoonists.

Three artists from Australia were invited this year, but only Jason Chatfield, above, was able to make it. Luckily Jason started travelling long before Eyjafjallajokull did its thing.

At the time of writing, 4pm on the Friday, the Big Boards in the market square are starting to take shape. Also to be found in the square are caricaturists and “reverse caricaturing” (you provide the face, seaside-board style, the cartoonists provide the body of your choice!)

Elsewhere there are cartoon exhibitions to be seen, on the theme of Magic, Myths and Mystery. And at the Darwin Shopping Centre, the HuMurals – a collection of single-panel cartoons that form a huge cartoon mural – are progressing.

The good people of Shrewsbury, who are no doubt used to the invasion of cartoonists as this is the 7th year of the festival, all seem to be joining in the fun – and there’s plenty more to come on Saturday and Sunday.

You can see lots more pictures, taken and tweeted throughout the day, at the Bloghorn Twitter feed.

The last-minute endorsements are flowing in for this weekend’s activities with the latest being Happy Barry [adopts advertising tone-of-voice] – the official beer of the cartoon festival [stops it]. Barry the Shrew does sterling work as one of the public faces of the festival and deserves a drink as a result.

Thirsty visitors and cartoonists will be able to enjoy a pint at pubs across town in between the events. The festival organisers would like to thank the Salopian Brewery for making it.

Bloghorn is looking forward to whetting his metaphorical foghorn when he gets there. The first person to say ‘‘This tastes funny … geddit?’’ has to get the next round in.

A new Foghorn magazine is published. Click the picture to subscribe to a beautiful print copy of your very own if you don’t already pay £30 for six issues a year. You can explore some free digital back copies here. This issue the cover artwork is by Alex Hughes.

What’s inside?

Spitting Image – Royston Robertson finds a cartoon namesake down under, and unearths some suprises.
Cool for Cats – Chichi Parish surfs the internet, stopping off to interview a cat-loving, Harley Davidson-riding nudist.
Yes, you read that correctly.
King of the Roundabout – Gerard Whyman gets behind the wheel for the first time in 21 years, and lives to tell us the tale.
Such Larks! – Foghorn’s resident Critic Pete Dredge takes on Lark Rise to Candleford.

Plus:
A four page preview of Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival featuring more cartoons than you can shake a stick at.
The Surreal McCoy – a full-page spread of artwork!
With Buildings in the Fog, The Foghorn Guide To, The Potting Shed and many more random acts of humour.

So, buy yourself a print subscription here

The 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning has been awarded to Mark Fiore of  sfgate.com, the San Francisco Chronicle Web site. This marks the first time the prize has been won by a cartoonist who only produces animated web-based cartoons. The Pulitzers, set up to honour excellence in American journalism have been awarded since 1917. The Washington Post have an interview with Fiore here.

In other US cartoon-related award news, the Will Eisner Comic Industry Award Nominees have been revealed. Thanks to Alan Gardner at the Daily Cartoonist for the tips.

BLOGHORN scrivener Mr Matthew BUCK is far too retiring to promote his new endeavour via this organ, lest he appear like Mr Jonathan WOSS endlessly plugging his good lady wife’s new MOTION PICTURE.

Hence, ’tis left to another to tell you about The Opinions of Tobias GRUBBE, by Mr Buck and one Mr Michael CROSS, which you can find on-the-line, as ’twere, at The Guardian news sheet.

‘Tis amusing and not a little TOPICKAL.

Bill Stott writes for Bloghorn about different sorts of cartoonist:

The UK boasts quite a few inventive, informed and highly skilled political cartoonists many of whom don’t fool easily and must be the bane of leader writers’ lives in their ability to prove that the picture is often worth more than words.

However – don’t you love the word  cartoonist? It usually presages a disagreement, and here is a head above the parapet.

Peter Brookes, of the Times, was recently named “Cartoonist of the Year” [read it here - Ed]. I wouldn’t have started digging this hole if the title had been “Political Cartoonist of the Year” because that is essential and its remit is admirably fulfilled, not least by Mr Brookes. But political cartooning is only part of the whole picture of cartooning.

The vast majority of cartoonists in the UK are not political cartoonists. Logic suggests that, because this majority has not just politics to lampoon but the whole of life as we know it, Jim.

So, I think there’s a problem. The usually non-political joke or gag cartoonist is disappearing fast from newspapers. Quite a few publications are buying in cheap syndicated stuff which struggles to be relevant. Recently a long-established Welsh newspaper dropped its regular gag and used a Canadian cartoon poking fun at Obama’s healthcare reforms instead. Cheaper, but hardly relevant and deeply unfunny to boot.

Stalwart magazines like Private Eye, the Oldie, Prospect and the Spectator do what they can, but they can only run so many cartoons. The UK’s never been big on nationally recognised cartoon users and nowadays Punch, and more recently Readers’ Digest, are either memories or at risk.

The cavalier way newspapers and many magazines presently ignore good joke cartoons makes the political cartoonist into a sort of protected species, and suggests that editors only think a cartoon is funny or useful if its got a very direct political subject.

So, long live our superb political cartoonists. Long live awards for our political cartoonists. But call the award “Political Cartoonist of the Year”. Otherwise folk might get the idea that political cartooning is THE only cartooning form.

Bloghorn agrees that variety is key to good cartooning. After all, it’s drawing life, innit? This also applies to where cartoons are seen and it doesn’t just have to be on pieces of dead tree.