Kal (Kevin Kallaugher), cartoonist for the Economist for the past 30 years, will be discussing political cartooning with Henry Naylor (former head writer for Spitting Image). The debate will be chaired by Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy and will be followed by Kal conducting a hands-on interactive cartooning demonstration.

Campaign cartooning: Discussing how the art of satire shapes the political landscape is on at the Congress Centre, 28 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3LS on Thursday 2nd October 2008, 7-8.15pm. The event is free, but to register for the event email campaigncartooning@stockholm-network.org.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent

With Hurricane Gustav battering the Gulf Coast many of the cartoonists covering the DNC last week crossed the country to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis Saint Paul, including Rob Rogers (who had to cut short his visit to the convention due to his father’s death), Walt Handelsman and al.com’s JD Crowe.

Other cartoonists covering the convention from home include Rob Tornoe (sketchbook), and Ron Rogers. The British media was again represented by Kal (sketchbook day 1, day 2, day 3 ) and Steve Bell (sketchbook days 4-8, day 9, day 10, day 11).

It’s British cartoon talent

Party political conference season is nearly upon us here in Britain, but in the US the Democratic Party have already finished their turn. The cartoonists were out in force both drawing and blogging in Denver, Colorado.

Cartoon blogs from the convention include Rob Rogers from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (convention blog), convention first-timer Walt Handelsman from Newsday, Jen Sorenson from the Charlottesville C-Ville and Denver local Ed Stein from the Rocky Mountain News.

Interesting to note that a number of US cartoonists have chosen not to attend the Convention in person, such as Dan Wasserman from the Boston Globe, Rob Tornoe from Politiker.com (sketchbook), Matt Davies from the Journal News, David Horsey from the Seattle Post-Intelligencier and Ron Rogers from the South Bend Tribune (sketchbook), instead chosing to work from their studios, well away from the media crush.

In the meantime from the British press we had Steve Bell from the Guardian (sketchbook day 1, day 2, day 3)and Kal from the Economist (sketchbook day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4) actually in attendance.

It’s British cartoon talent

As cartoonist-turned-comedian Phill Jupitus prepares to talk of his love of cartoons on the radio, PCOer Royston Robertson looks at some other celebrities who once wielded drawing pens

MEL CALMAN called his autobiography What Else Do You Do?, after the question that is so often put to cartoonists. In fact, there appear to be many cartoonists who not only did something else, but found that that occupation eventually made their name, to the point where the career in cartooning became a largely forgotten footnote.

It was only after the death of the comedian Bob Monkhouse that I heard that he had once been a cartoonist. And quite an accomplished one. He had worked for Beano publisher DC Thomson.

A cartoon by Bob Monkhouse of PCOer Noel Ford, along with a photo of Bob working on that very drawing. Noel, who once worked with Bob at the BBC, assures us that he really did look like that weird in the 1970s

At about the same time, I read an article about the novelist John Updike and how he had been obsessed with cartoons as a child. Updike also tried his hand at being a cartoonist before coming to his senses and deciding that writing was the better path to take. It was certainly the more lucrative.

Another writer who has dabbled with cartooning is Will Self. Some of his work can be seen in a compilation of his newspaper and magazine articles called Junk Mail. The drawing is crude but some of the gags are pretty good.

BBC 6Music presenter Marc Riley, formerly “Lard” of Mark and Lard fame on Radio One, and an ex-bass player with The Fall, is another ex-cartoonist whose drawing was somewhat on the crude side. You may remember his Harry the Head from Oink! Comic. He also appeared in photo strips in Oink! He was the guy with the big nose.

Another former cartoonist is broadcaster Andrew Collins, also an ex-New Musical Express journalist, EastEnders scriptwriter, Radio Times film writer and general overachiever. He chronicled his love of cartoons and half-hearted attempts to make a living drawing owls and wizards for puzzle magazines in Where Did it All Go Right and Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now, his bestselling memoirs of growing up in the 1970s and 1980s.

Talking of the NME, anyone who used to read the music paper in the early 1990s may remember a cartoon drawn in the style of Gillray called Dr Crawshaft’s World of Pop. But did you know that it was drawn by Arthur Mathews who went on to co-script the sitcom Father Ted?

So I suppose there’s hope for us all if we get disillusioned with the world of cartooning. Right, it’s time to get back to the drawing board/typewriter/record decks …

Comic Love is on BBC Radio Four at 10.30am on Saturday 19 July.

The PCO British cartoon talent

Clive Goddard is the PCO Artist of the Month for July 2008.

Clive’s work regularly appears in Britain’s satirical and current affairs magazines, Private Eye, The Spectator, Prospect and The Oldie. He has also drawn for The Times and the New Statesman.

He is, perhaps, best known for this work drawing and illustrating the Dead Famous series of books, for the children’s publisher Scholastic.

Bloghorn says click G for Goddard.

The PCO: British cartoon talent

Cartoonist Rupert Besley is the PCO artist for June. Click the image to enlarge. You can see Rupert’s other Artist of the Month images by clicking his name, under “Labels” below. And don’t forget to click B for Besley.

The PCO: British cartoon talent

Cartoonist Rupert Besley, the PCO artist for June has a history of producing large colourful cartoons on travel and tourism. Bloghorn says click B for Besley. Click to enlarge the image.
Get away and find British cartoon talent

A Giles cartoon published in the Sunday Express in 1967.
From the Culture Cartooned exhibition, courtesy of the British Cartoon Archive

The question “What is culture?” was raised recently in a high-profile promo campaign for the BBC’s re-launched Culture Show. An exhibition of cartoons from the 20th Century that takes a light-hearted look at culture may provide the answer. Or it might just be a good laugh.

Culture Cartooned is at the Royal Museum and Art Gallery in Canterbury until Saturday 26 July and includes original artwork and prints across a range of cultural themes, from the visual arts, ballet and cinema to sport and the Olympics. This is the broad variety of activity that comes under the government’s definition of “culture”.

Exhibition highlights include cartoons by Giles about Arts Council grants and sporting prowess; perceptive observations of museum and gallery visitors by WK Haselden and Keith Waite; Reg Smythe’s Andy Capp commenting on films; and the pocket cartoons of Mel Calman and David Austin. Some of the cartoons question what we mean by heritage, while others show our ambivalent attitudes to sport and sportsmen, or art and artists.

The show is at the Royal Museum and Art Gallery, Beaney Institute (first floor), 18 High Street, Canterbury. It is open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 4.45pm. Admission is free. Culture Cartooned is organised by Canterbury City Council in partnership with the British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent.

On the subject of the Culture Show, the extended version, screened on Friday night, included a great animated film by Johnny Kelly which will be of interest to cartoonists and anyone involved in any creative endeavour, as it’s called Procrastination.

Canterbury Royal Museum & Art Gallery

The Culture Show

The PCO: British cartoon talent

After a weekend exploring the subject of “Art” at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, it was good to see The Guardian dedicating several pages of its G2 Arts section to cartoons yesterday.

Hillary Clinton by Barry Blitt, from The Guardian

The paper carried an article looking at the work of cartoonists attempting to get to grips with depicting US presidential hopefuls Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain. Cartoonists were canvassed on how they approached their subject and the paper carried lots of images.

You can read the article and see the cartoons here:
National lampoon

UPDATED: Click image to enlarge

And here is some British cartoon talent

As well as the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, April also brings with it a long-awaited exhibition celebrating the life and work of the late Dave Follows. It takes place at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, from April 19 – June 29.

Dave, who died in 2003, left a significant legacy of artwork that spans three decades. His work appeared in newspapers, comics, and magazines all over the world, including the Sunday Times supplement Funday Times (weekly for 15 years), more than 20 local newspapers, such as the North Staffordshire Evening Sentinel (daily for 20 years), and Buster comic.

Dave lived in Stafford all his life. He had a special soft spot for the Potteries and its people. His daily cartoon strip May un Mar Lady, written in Potteries dialect, first appeared on July 8, 1985, in the Sentinel and was a local institution for nearly 20 years.

The exhibition, May un Mar Lady: Three Decades of Cartooning by Dave Follows, includes a huge selection of Dave’s original cartoons, a reconstruction of his work area, life-size cartoon figures, a May un Mar Lady pilot animation, and a preview screening of a documentary exploring the Potteries dialect in the context of Dave’s cartoons by the Stoke-On-Trent based film production company Inspired Film And Video.

British cartoon talent