Here is another selection of cartoon previews from the Personal Bests exhibition, one of the headline events at this year’s Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival which starts on Thursday (April 14).

Personal Bests exhibition cartoon at Bloghorn © Steve Bright

Personal Bests exhibition cartoon at Bloghorn © Gerard Whyman

Personal Bests exhibition cartoon at Bloghorn © Cathy Simpson

Cartoon previews from the Personal Bests exhibition, one of the headline events at this year’s Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival which opens next week.

Personal Bests Exhibition at Bloghorn © Nathan Ariss Cartoon

Personal Bests Exhibition at Bloghorn © Bill Stott Cartoon

Personal Bests Exhibition at Bloghorn © The Surreal McCoy

An exhibition of Carl Giles cartoons has also opened at the town museum.

Carl Giles cartoon exhibition at Shrewsbury 2011 © Estate of Carl Giles

A cartoon exhibition looking at all aspects of married life – for better, for worse – opens at the Cartoon Museum in London this Wednesday (March 23). Cartoon above by Pak

As Prince William and Kate Middleton prepare to tie the knot on April 29, Marriage à la Mode: Royals and Commoners In and Out of Love promises “a bouquet of barbed wit” on the subject of marriage.

It will feature musings on matrimony from cartoonists past and present, including William Hogarth, who created a series of works that give the show its name, James Gillray, H.M. Bateman, Donald McGill, Carl Giles, Mel Calman, Ralph Steadman and Posy Simmonds.

The Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation, which runs the Bloghorn, is represented with cartoons by Steve Bell, Rupert Besley, Noel Ford, Martin Honeysett, Ken Pyne, below, Royston Robertson, and Bill Stott.

Despite being its inspiration, the royal couple are unlikely to give the show their seal of approval. As well as looking at some of the less successful aspects of marriage, some cartoons remind us of a certain royal wedding from 30 years ago that did not go too well, as seen in this 1995 Time magazine cartoon by Arnold Roth, right.

William and Kate may also not want to be associated with the work of Reg Smythe, who features in the exhibition and is famous for creating the less-than-idyllic marriage of Andy Capp and Flo.

Other cartoonists featured include Ros Asquith, Ian Baker, Biff, Nicholas Garland, Grizelda, Peter “Pak” King, David Langdon, Peter Schrank, Geoff Thompson, and Robert Thompson.

For more details visit the museum website. Marriage à la Mode runs until May 22, by which time those commemorative royal wedding tea towels may well be frayed at the edges.

An exhibition of cartoons by William Heath Robinson is being held in Pinner, in the London Borough of Harrow, where the artist lived and worked for ten years.

The show, called Machines and Inventions, after the elaborate and somewhat improbable contraptions for which Heath Robinson is famous, will be held at West House in Pinner Memorial Park from March 19 until April 17.

The Chris Beetles Gallery is putting on the exhibition, which features 80 cartoons. They will be added to a major exhibition of work by Heath Robinson to be held in May at Chris Beetles’ own gallery in St James’s, Central London.

The show reflects a very English response to progress, particularly the technological developments of the early 20th century. Exhibited for the first time is a group of cartoons from Railway Ribaldry, which was published by the Great Western Railway in 1935. It’s hard to imagine any of today’s railway companies being happy to laugh at themselves in the same manner. Right: A simple device for preventing railway policemen from being run down when walking on the line.

Heath Robinson and his family lived in Pinner from 1908 to 1918. The exhibition is being staged in conjunction with the West House and Heath Robinson Museum Trust, which has raised more than £1,400,000 to transform the building. As well as a gallery, it is used as a venue for conferences and as a memorial to commemorate the people of Pinner who died in the two world wars.

You can view Machines and Inventions, which is a selling exhibition, online at the Chris Beetles Gallery.

UPDATED: 9th March 2011

PCOer Robert Duncan writes to say;

Thanks Bloghorn. That other famous cartoonist Robert Duncan was also brought up in Pinner, and kissed his first girl in West House. Her glasses got in the way.

Angst, underlying sexual tension, passion and a rites of passage journey. You get it all on Bloghorn.

Valentine’s Day seems like an appropriate time to mention an exhibition of drawings created by a cartoonist out of love for his wife.

Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs Mole, which features cartoons by Ronald Searle drawn for his wife Monica during her chemotherapy, opens at the the Cartoon Museum in London this Thursday (February 17).

In 1969 Monica was diagnosed with breast cancer and given only a few months to live, but she was offered a course of experimental chemotherapy. Searle sought some way of supporting his wife during this time. “I have only my talent for drawing,” he said. “So I drew”.

He produced a series of 47 drawings, one for each treatment. As Monica lay on her sick bed in Paris the drawings transported her to the world of her alter-ego, Mrs Mole, who busily potters about a dream home in a Provençal village. “I would lie in bed, living the life he created in the pictures,” Monica said.

The complete 47 drawings, which were never originally intended for publication, will be on display. They follow Monica’s journey from 1969 to 1975, chronicling a story of survival against the odds.

The museum will be working with Breast Cancer Campaign, Breakthrough Breast Cancer, Macmillan Cancer Support and Wellbeing of Women. Information on cancer, the work of the charities and how people can support them will be available in the gallery.

The exhibition, which was previously seen at the Foundling Museum, as reported on Bloghorn last month, runs until March 20

The Chris Beetles Gallery is hosting a new Quentin Blake exhibition alongside its Illustrators 2010 show. Frabjous Beasts and Frumious Birds opens this Sunday (December 12).

Quentin Blake will be at the gallery between 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm to meet the public and chat about his work. Musical entertainment will be provided by the Jelly Rollers and the gallery promises other treats for all the family.

The exhibition of 75 new works, which runs until January 8, is now online at the Chris Beetles site. All the pictures are available to buy. Accompanying the exhibition is a 48-page fully illustrated catalogue.

Here are a few interesting cartooning links to start your week. First, PCOer Martin Rowson, cartoon above, writes in today’s Guardian about the strange place that cartoonists occupy in the British media, and their love-hate relationship with editors: Cartoonists in the twilight zone

But it’s all love from one former editor, David Yelland of The Sun, who calls cartoonists “unsung heroes” in a discussion about the Ink and the Bottle exhibition on the Radio 4 Today programme, with James Naughtie and the cartoon collector Brian Sibley: Listen to it here

And finally, alongside its huge Illustrators 2010 show, the Chris Beetles Gallery in London has a new exhibition opening tomorrow (November 30) all about Dan Dare. It ties in with a new book which tells the story of how Frank Hampson created the strip: Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future

Updated by MB : 2pm 29th November. Cartoonist Colin Shelbourn sends Bloghorn this BBC podcast interview with Gary ‘Doonesbury’ Trudeau.

An exhibition that is sure to bring some warmth and cheer to the winter opens at the Cartoon Museum in London on Wednesday 24 November.

Ink and the Bottle is billed as “a merry exhibition on the pleasures and perils of the ‘demon drink’ starting with a swig of gin from Hogarth and Cruikshank”. We move on to Gillray, Donald McGill, Heath Robinson and Giles before downing “a heady cocktail of contemporary cartoons”.

That includes a generous measure of PCO members, including Steve Bell, Andrew Birch, right, Clive Collins, Neil Dishington, Denis Dowland, Pete Dredge, Roger Penwill, Ken Pyne, Royston Robertson, Bill Stott and Mike Turner.

As if that’s not enough binge cartooning, there’s work by Sally Artz, Ian Baker, Hector Breeze, Dave Brown,
Chris Duggan, top, Grizelda, Andrzej Krauze, Matt, Tim Sanders, Ronald Searle, Gerald Scarfe, Silvey & Jex, Ralph Steadman, and Judy Walker.

If you fancy three more for the road, there are also contributions from the Viz cartoonists Graham Dury, Davey Jones and Simon Thorp, who are no strangers to creating characters that “like a tipple”.

Ink and the Bottle – Drunken Cartoonists and Drink in Cartoons runs until February 13. See the Cartoon Museum website for more details.

Cheersh!

The annual Illustrators show opens at the Chris Beetles Gallery in St James’s, London, this weekend, and runs until January 8.

The Illustrators 2010 showcases many of Britain’s best loved and most respected illustrators and cartoonists from the past two centuries.

Contemporary cartooning is represented by Mike Williams, above, Jonathan Cusick, below, and Ed McLachlan, all members of the PCO, which runs the Bloghorn, alongside Peter Brookes of The Times and Matt of the Daily Telegraph.

The Grand Weekend Opening is November 20 and 21, 10am-5pm.

Other highlights include work by John Tenniel, old and new drawings by Ronald Searle, plus Quentin Blake, H. M. Bateman, David Levine, Arthur Rackham, William Heath Robinson, E. H. Shepard and Norman Thelwell, among many others. There are more than 60 cartoonists and illustrators in total.

A 288-page catalogue with more than 500 full-colour images and accompanying essays is available from the gallery for £20 + p&p (£4 UK, £7 Europe, £14 rest of the world).

Cartoons and comics strips can often be seen in some surprising places, but probably none more so than this boating shelter in Battersea Park, London.

The comic artists Sean Azzopardi, Joe Decie, John Cei Douglas, Ellen Lindner, Douglas Noble and Paul O’Connell drew eight different short comic strips about a fictional 1974 rock concert in the park. These have been enlarged and pasted on to the shelter and can be read in any order.

Cartoons outside the printed page do have to compete with some “real world” factors though. And in this case it’s not graffiti, as you might expect, but a staggeringly large colony of spiders!

The boating shelter strips accompany the Hypercomics exhibition which is at the nearby Pump House Gallery.

The show features four rooms by four artists, Adam Dant, Warren Pleece, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, and Dave McKean, above.

It’s very much an experimental exhibition, with comic strip narratives spiralling off in all kinds of directions and intersecting with the building itself.

Like any experiment it’s not wholly successful, some of the strips are far to wordy to be exhibited on walls. But McKean’s room worked brilliantly and was the stand-out for me, telling a compelling story with beautifully drawn comic frames alongside sculptures, photography and masks.

Hurry if you want to see this show though: it finishes on Sunday, September 26: Hypercomics: The Shapes of Comics to Come.