"Tell me about your Big Society ..."

Hard Times, a new exhibition by the Times cartoonist Peter Brookes, opens at the Chris Beetles Gallery in St James’s, London, today and runs until November 5.

The selling show features more than 120 of Brookes’ most recent editorial cartoons from The Times, and ties in with the launch of his new book, also called Hard Times.

To see the exhibition online, go to www.chrisbeetles.com

The Bloghorn is made on behalf of the UK’s Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation

As the pencil of 2010 contacts the eraser of 2011, Bloghorn thought it was time to record some of the year’s highs and lows – and to speculate about the new year.

But first, news of a PRIZE competition which will be coming on Bloghorn over the New Year Bank Holiday weekend … so watch this space.

© Ray Lowry cartoons The Clash

You can explore our full monthly archives of stories from the world of UK cartooning in 2010 at: January - February - March – April – May - June – July – August – September – October – November and December.

Team Bloghorn with the banner at the 2010 Battle of the Cartoonists

As you can see it’s been a packed show, featuring a fantastic Ray Lowry retrospective, above, at the Idea Generation Gallery, mixed with the odd rotten moment like losing Les Gibbard. We have had the fantastic highlights of our traditional events such as the Big Draw and Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival and, happily, the late great Alan Coren rose from the grave and provided  a shot of welcome wisdom.

After that we played Draw and Fold Over before reading a freshly minted copy of Foghorn magazine. What? You haven’t yet subscribed to six issues a year for only £20? Kindly do so here, now.

The promised appearance of The House of Illustration in London has long cheered many as this will be a sister organisation to our long-time favourite The Cartoon Museum, which lies close to the proposed new attraction at King’s Cross in London. The £6.5m fundraising target is stiff but site building has started and you can read more about the full plans here. Meanwhile, the crew at The Cartoon Museum excelled themselves with a fine range of shows and events, excelling with a fantastic Ronald Searle display as the man reached his 90th birthday.

What’s the difference between cartooning and illustration Bloghorn hears you ask?

Try these definitions from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, although we thinks Searle shows the interchangeability of the terms about as well as anyone.

Car-toon – noun
From the Italian cartone pasteboard, cartoon, augmentative of carta leaf of paper.

Ill-ust-rat-ion noun
Something that serves to illustrate: an example or instance that helps make something clear : a picture or diagram that helps make something clear or attractive.

Wikipedia has a definition here for print media which references Punch, the magazine which our former patron Alan Coren used to edit.

Happily, the past year has also seen terrific development in the way cartoons are being used in media and the possibilities, and markets will grow in the new year. We’ve got evidence below from The Times and its current TV advertising. You can find a link to the cartoon they are promoting lower down this article …

Of course, we work on non-mobile television too, check out the titles to the new BBC adaptation of Just William and bow to the pen of cartoonist Ed McLachlan.

You’ll find a fantastic selection of the UK’s finest cartoonists working in all forms of the art at our UK Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation portfolio site which we will also be updating during 2011.

On the site the new and less-and-less unusual Government can expect its usual share of drawn innovation and horror – try Strictly Coalition for a start. In similar fashion, we wrote disobliging things about some parts of the Arts Council England because they sometimes deserve it.

© Jonathan Pugh of The Daily Mail

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Forza Cartone!

Bloghorn is written, edited and maintained by Matthew Buck, Royston Robertson and Alex Hughes,  on behalf of the UK Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation. You can contact the team here.

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