Next Wednesday, March 3, sees the 90th birthday of the hugely influential British cartoonist Ronald Searle. To celebrate, two exhibitions of his work will open on that day.

The creator of St Trinian’s (above, from Lilliput magazine) and illustrator of the Molesworth books, who has lived and worked in France since the 1960s, will be celebrated in shows at the Cartoon Museum and the Chris Beetles Gallery in London.

Ronald Searle – Graphic Master, an exhibition of cartoons, illustrations and reportage from across the world is at the Cartoon Museum until July 4. This exhibition shows 140 works from across his 75-year career, from his early cartoons for the Cambridge Daily News in the 1930s to political cartoons for Le Monde in the 2000s.

Some of his drawings recording life and death in Japanese prisoner of war camps, works which he famously hid from his captors, are included in the exhibition. Searle later produced reportage cartoons for American magazines such as Life. In 1961 he drew the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, above.

For more details on the show, visit the Cartoon Museum website.

The retrospective exhibition at Chris Beetles Gallery, called Happy Birthday Ronald Searle, runs until April 3. It features more than 200 cartoons and illustrations, all for sale, again covering all aspects of Searle’s career, including work from Punch and the News Chronicle, reportage, and adverts.

There are also by loans from private collections, which include work for Life drawn during the Nixon/Kennedy presidential campaign of 1960. The exhibition can be viewed at the Chris Beetles website.

To whet your appetite, The Times ran a very long and informative interview with Searle at the weekend: read it here. The Searle tribute site Perpetua is also well worth a look.

Cartoons by the likes of Ed McLachlan, above, Matt, Nick Newman, Mac, and Tony Husband, can be acquired at a bargain price in the Chris Beetles Gallery’s Sale 2010 which opens in London this weekend.

For more details on the Sale, which also includes illustration work and watercolours, visit the Chris Beetles Gallery website.

Most cartoonists have wondered how they can bypass traditional publication and get their work direct to a paying audience, particularly if they have ever seen rejected drawings and jokes appreciated by the general public.

PCOer Clive Goddard has joined forces with cartoon-merchandise producer Steve Willis to come up with an ingenious solution: a cartoon market stall.

They brushed up on their cheeky stallholder banter and took a spot at Oxford Castle Market this weekend, selling cartoon T-shirts, cards, mugs, key-rings, books, original art and other merchandise. Steve told the Bloghorn: “We certainly felt it was worth continuing. We’ll be at Oxford Castle Market on Saturdays for the foreseeable future.”

The pair are now set to offer free space, for a commission, to a caricaturist sitting adjacent to the stall, as there are always plenty of tourists seeing the sights of Oxford passing by.

Bloghorn wonders how long it can be before we see a cartoon market stall on EastEnders. It would cheer up Albert Square no end.

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.

Cartoonists Matt Pritchett and Nicholas Garland of The Telegraph are having a short exhibition in central London at the start of next month. It is being organised by art dealer John Rae-Smith.

A sneak preview of more ‘Art’ from the upcoming Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival. This piece is by PCOer Wilbur Dawbarn.
British cartoon talent

PCO member Lee Healey caricature of kate Moss and pete Doherty
Cartoonist & illustrator Lee Healey, is a freelancer with over 17 years experience. Lee’s art has appeared in many magazines and comics, including Viz, Maxim, and The Dandy. Other clients have included the CBBC channel, Roy Chubby Brown,and video artist Mark Leckey. Lee prides himself on his versatility, and is able to turn his hand from simple cartoons to cartoon, comic or strip illustrations. Like many modern cartoonists, Lee completes, and delivers, his work digitally. Bloghorn says click H for Healey
British cartoon talent

Foghorn, the full colour magazine of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation is in production right now and is due to land on the desks of some lucky art buyers soon. This all new exciting flood-proof issue will include articles from PCOers Martin Honeysett, Martin Rowson, Roger Penwill and Pete Dredge alongside the usual top jokes and regular features. This edition’s cover cartoon is by Mr Ross Thomson – click T for Thomson.
21st January 2008
British cartoon talent

Bloghorn defies anyone to argue convincingly that the entries for the ‘art’ slot in Trafalgar Square from both Tracey Emin and Yinka Shonibare aren’t really cartoons on a grand scale. This link to the shortlisted lineup comes courtesy of The Guardian newspaper.
8th January 2007
British cartoon talent

The profession and craft of cartooning (from gag drawings and pocket-sized newspaper jokes to comics strips and magazines, from editorial drawings and commercial advertising to digital monitors and billboards) has suffered some economic blows over the past decade. These have often been connected to the decline in the fortunes of the print industry.
But, despite this, the PCO is sure that – though undervalued by some in the UK – intelligent drawing remains an art-form which people continue to love to see and read. The map below, bears this knowledge out, as it shows you the locations of some of our many digital visitors this week.

We want to put our art in front of those people in a more direct way than we have previously done and we are, as an organisation, set up to promote and advertise the best of the active UK cartoon art world.
We seek to reach the three major constituencies which support our art form – editors of media outlets, both traditional and digital, art buyers in commercial companies and the reading public. We are doing this through three channels – the internet, our own printed magazine, The Foghorn, and at large public events like the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival and The Big Draw. We also help to make and run bespoke, or single-issue, cartoon exhibitions like this one, which are often on tour and shown in major cities in the UK and Europe.
As you’d expect, we have excellent connections in the world of art and business and work closely with the national Cartoon Museum, the Cartoon Hub at the University of Kent, the Political Cartoon Gallery and other interested galleries and arts bodies, including the cartoonists’ social clubs, the British Cartoonists’ Association and the Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain. We,in our own way, cover the UK. We also have excellent links abroad through our collaboration with European cartooning organisations inside Feco. If you are curious about our work and what it can do for you, you can contact us from our main portfolio site which lives here.

Andy Davey – Chairman of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation

British cartoon talent