The National Campaign for Drawing’s annual event, The Big Draw, is upon us again.

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

Cartoon by Andy “Gilby” Gilbert. Click to enlarge

PCOer Andy Gilbert has been invited by Derby Museum and Art Gallery to exhibit his new collection of worked entitled “Who’s Laughing Now?”

Andy produces artwork for Rainbow Cards and much of this exhibition will highlight the gentle humour that he produces for their range. The exhibition is at the Silk Mill Museum, Derby Museum and Art gallery, from September 20 until November 2, 2008.

It coincides with the Big Draw campaign which runs throughout October. Andy will be appearing at the exhibition on Saturday 4th October from 10am to 4pm where he will be running his cartooning workshops.

Entrance to the exhibition and cartooning workshops is free. The opening times are: Monday 11am-5pm; Tuesday to Saturday 10am-5pm; Sunday 1pm-4pm. For further information, you can contact the Silk Mill on 01332-255 308.

The PCO: British cartoon talent

Breaking News on Bloghorn…

The PCO team for this year’s London Big Draw event is confirmed. Team skipper, Pete Dredge (Private Eye regular) will be leading Robert Duncan (Not particularly orange cards), Kipper Williams (The Guardian) and Royston Robertson (Prospect, Readers Digest, Private Eye) into the suitably absurd Battle of the Cartoonists.

The 12 feet long, two-hour epic PCO banner from 2007, hung up, or out, to dry.

You can find details and a report from Bill Stott on the 2007 event here.

PCO members will also be running workshops throughout the day, featuring the many coloured skills of Tim Harries, Chichi Parish, Matt Buck, Andy Davey and Paul Hardman among others.

We will be publishing more details in the run up to the big day on Saturday 18 October.

It’s British cartoon talent

PCOer Royston Robertson says we cartoonists need to lighten up about media coverage of our profession

There’s no doubt that cartoons are enjoying an unusually high profile in the British media at the moment.

We’ve seen acres of coverage for the launch of new kids’ comic The DFC (left), the 70th anniversary of The Beano and Phill Jupitus’s comic strip programme on Radio Four. There has even been a graphic novel serialised in The Times.

So, are cartoonists happy about this? Not a bit of it.

I agree with Neil Dishington, who wrote on this blog yesterday that the Phill Jupitus thing was nothing special, but is that because we’re cartoonists and therefore he’s preaching to the converted? I think it’s likely that many listeners would have found Jupitus’s sincere enthusiasm about comic strips quite infectious.

Isn’t it a good thing that shows like these exist? Is it not the case that the only thing worse than the media talking about cartoons is the media not talking about cartoons?

But they misrepresent cartooning, some cartoonists cry, it’s obvious they don’t know what they’re talking about. Well, maybe. I’m sure I heard James Naughtie talking about “animators” at The Beano on the Today show on Monday, but is there a single profession that doesn’t think it is often misrepresented by the media? I know journalists who think the media misrepresents them.

Another common complaint is that any media obsession with cartoons is just a passing fad. Again, that may be true, perhaps they’re using cartoons to cheer us up amid all the credit crunch stuff, but then that is the role of most cartoons. And let’s not forget that the media treats many subjects in a faddish way before moving on to the next thing.

And as for the grumbling over celebs such as Jupitus drawing cartoons, cartooning has always been something where everyone wants to have a go. That’s because it’s fun. We often encourage that attitude, at events such as The Big Draw and the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival.

All you can do is keep on doing good cartoon work and hope that those who commission cartoons for publication will realise that it is best to go to a professional.

The PCO: Professional cartoon talent

Bloghorn has received some anonymous feedback to our activities at the recent Big Draw in Covent Garden. Thanks to the middle person concerned for passing it on. Bloghorn is most grateful.

Team PCO hard at work – from the left, Alex Hughes, Neil Dishington, Bill Stott(c) and Roger Penwill

The task the teams were given in the Battle of the cartoonists was to ’create the most sensational banner’ to a theme of High-Life, Low-life.

Select (publishable) and verbatim quotation from our anonymous correspondent follows;

The PCOs initially lacked the studies panache of Martin Rowson’s colouring and the sharp wit of Private Eye. Their drawings appeared in a vague and piecemeal way but there was much interaction between the evident team leader and his team, which definitely paid off. The skillful use of colour enhanced the drawings and gave the different styles of drawing a coherence, which added to the banner’s effectiveness. The layout and style was that of a comic which gave it integrity and a strong identity. I think this was the best!

Anonymous concludes;

A banner, by its very nature has a function as a standard or ensign denoting identity aand this is where the PCO and Private Eye romp ahead [of The Guardian and the Independent]. Their banners reflected the identities of their organisations very clearly. Of the two, the PCO banner had the greater visual coherence and presence. I would have marched under it and it should have won.

The finished PCO banner hung up, or out, to dry.

Thankyou, Mr or Mrs or Ms, anonymous.

British cartoon talent

October was a mixed month for the PCO, we received an official vote of thanks for our work at The Big Draw which we attended during October – and also some anonymous comment. The official feedback ran something like this;

“We’ve received nothing but praise from our partners, sponsors and the public. Our hosts reported that this was by far and away their best event of the year.” And as the hosts were the management company who run Covent Garden in central London, we were quite pleased about it. Bloghorn is still digesting the anonymous comment but promises to post something about it soon.

Much less happily, we also had to hear about the death and burial of Alan Coren, one of our founding patrons and a man who had always enjoyed and promoted the art of visual joke-making.

Caricature by John Roberts.

You can listen to a News Quiz tribute to Alan here and PCOer Ken Pyne is also quoted in the local Cricklewood news coverage of Coren’s passing – alongside an obituary cartoon.

British cartoon talent

The PCO ran a lot of workshops at the Big Draw and Tim Harries, who was bravely in the heart of the action, on both Saturday and Sunday, has this report;

Bigging it up with Mr Blake; Quentin advertises the art while the PCO did the serious PR

I’d seriously under-prepared for this year’s Big Draw. The marquee where our workshops were taking place displayed admirable tardis-like properties, with seating for what appeared to be about 60 people, but actually managing to contain around twelve thousand scribbling children and parents at any given moment.
I’d optimistically brought along 50 worksheets which were used in the first thirty seconds. I briefly contemplated hiding behind the flipchart, but luckily someone somewhere found a photocopier, which I suspect had a nervous breakdown before the weekend was over, such was the sheer amount of paper we went through.
Tim Harries reveals his inner torment while Royston Robertson just laughs at him
The workshops went brilliantly for all involved, and tended to run over into each other, with several things going on at the same time. It felt organised and wonderfully chaotic at the same time. At any given time, I could see caricatures being drawn, the huge chalkboard being used for a spot of reverse caricaturing, and comic strips, cartoons and funny faces being produced on any available workspace.
Anne and Andy Gilbert hard at work enlightening the tiny masses in one of their Saturday workshops
As the day(s) went on, the whole marquee became a gallery with the finished art hanging from the walls and frame. It just needed the music from Vision On to make it perfect. Thanks to all the cartoonists, helpers, and of course enthusiastic public who attended the cartooning marquee. Same time next year…

British cartoon talent

Team PCO at work-the picture gives some idea of the up and down nature of the artist-watcher relationship inside Covent Garden’s covered market.

Eventual winners – Team Guardian at work. From left from right, Steve Bell, Tim Pond, Andy Davey and Martin Rowson.

Three-quarters of team Independent. From left to right, Tim Sanders, Lucy Rogers and Matt Buck, regrettably, the multi-skilled Dave Brown has managed to get himself off camera.

Private Eye worked in a lot of detail
Many thanks to PCOer Chichi Parrish for the further photographs.

British cartoon talent

Apart from the Big Draw workshops, which we helped to provide for the general public, there were also some feature events in which our members took part.
One of these was the Battle of the Cartoonists in which four teams of artists had to make a huge piece of banner artwork in under two hours. The theme, which was given by the Campaign for Drawing, who organised the festival, was High life and Low Life.
Cunningly, the organisers and the Covent Garden management, Capital and Counties, arranged for the four teams from the PCO, the Guardian The Independent and Private Eye to do this in the sunken courtyard of the indoor Market. This meant that while the teams drew away down below, hundreds of spectators could watch it all happen from above. And for evidence of life down below, here’s a picture of the PCO team hard at work. from left to right Alex Hughes, Neil Dishington, Bill Stott and Roger Penwill.

Bloghorn will be publishing Bill’s full story of the day tomorrow. Bloghorn should also thank Ger Whyman for his usual excellent array of photographic imagery, the foghorn is duely grateful.

The best British cartoon talent

The PCO put itself on show at the weekend at the Big Draw. A big thank you to all the members who helped run the workshops that filled large parts of Covent Garden market over last weekend. Particular hat-tips to Anne and Andy Gilbert and Tim and Nikki Harries who man and womanfully worked the crowds and encouraged our future readers to develop their natural love of drawing and jokes. Other names and faces of PCOers fighting the good fight were Chichi Parrish (who also ran a workshop), Ger Whyman, Royston Robertson, Andy Davey, Terry Christien and Matt Buck.*
Our big banner team fought their corner in the gladiatorial battle of the cartoonists and there will be a full report from Team Captain Bill Stott following this message. They also crossed swords with the Beeb’s former political editor, Andrew Marr, but more of that anon.

Bloghorn says watch this space…

The best British cartoon talent

* Please tell me if I lost anyone in the crush!