With Gordon Brown I’ll start with the hair, increasingly grey and much more coiffured these days. Then come the heavy, angry eyebrows above creased eyes, one unsighted because that is the unfortunate reality. The nose is short and stubby, with a flat base. The fleshy-lipped mouth is open in that odd gurning movement he makes with his jaw as he speaks. The ears are large, round and red. There are deep marks on the cheekbones that, with the bags under his eyes, give him that knackered, saturnine look, particularly when I add a blue-grey wash for five o’clock shadow. Sometimes I think I’ve just drawn Nixon.

Secondly, from the other end of the British cartooning spectrum we have Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons demonstrating, with video, how he goes about drawing a character digitally using a Wacom Cintiq tablet and Manga Studio software.

Of course, if you would like to see cartoonists demonstrating their skills in the flesh, we would heartily recommend you head to this years Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, 22nd to 24th April 2010. But, if you can’t make it in person, we’ll be providing full coverage here on Bloghorn.

The cover of The New Yorker magazine was drawn by Jorge Colombo’s finger which manipulated an iPhone application in the fashion shown above. Good on them and him.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent
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One thing that all cartoonists are very aware of is that the face of publishing has changed. Much of it has been a little scary for established old-media cartoonists, but one of the undoubted benefits of the new trends has been on-demand printing.

While there’s still a need for hard copy (books for fireside, on train, lining impressive bookshelves, in tent up mountain etc), self-publishing sites provide the bridge between the mature and the new by converting digital files into comforting, heart-warming, cuddly books to be held and cherished.

An example, I hear you ask? Oh, if you insist. You could, for example, check out a short cartoon booklet called Bush Combat by UK cartoonist Andy Davey (see it here). This was published, like fellow PCO cartoonist Ger Whyman’s book on the self-publishing site, Lulu.

The book covers the pugilistic adventures of the boy George Dubya, from early spats with the UN, through the horrors of Iraq, right up to his search for a legacy in the Middle East. The time seemed right; it is meant as a last post to his disastrous tenure in the White house. The editorial cartoons all have brief explanations for those with medium-term memory loss; they were mostly published in The Guardian, The Times and The Independent over the last six years. Some are previously unpublished. It’s long on pictures and short on text, so even Dubya himself could order one and understand it … possibly.

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

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent

And PCO members will be working at this weekend’s opening events for the month-long festival. Much of this weekend’s activity will be taking place at University College in central London (UCL). There is an enormous range of activity for the opening weekend. You can find details on how to get there here.

PCO member Patrick Blower explains more about Saturday’s digital cartoon masterclass:

The event cartoonists be drawing cartoons on digital tablets and projecting the resulting film of their work onto walls and large screens. We will be running hourly cartoon master classes – on the hour – from 11am. And when the cartoonists aren’t talking, or drawing, we will be encouraging visitors, of all ages, to have a go too. In fact, we will be encouraging visitors to help invent a monster each. These will be turned into an ongoing slide show through the day as the gallery develops.

Simon Gould, UCL’s curator of Drawing on Life, the national launch for The Big Draw added;

We are really looking forward to a jam packed day of all kinds of drawing and are thrilled that cartoonist Patrick Blower, one of UCL’s illustrious alumni, will be taking such a prominent position. His cartooning master classes will definitely be a real highlight for children and adults alike.

There are many hundreds of local events in towns across the country too. There will be one going on near you and you can find it on this page. London will also host another large set-piece event at London’s St Pancras station during mid-October – it’s called Transports of Delight.

There will be further PCO participation in the battle of the cartoonists on Saturday October 18th. We will be writing more about that event in the next few weeks.

The Big Draw

PCO: Great British cartoon talent