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

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

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!

This terrific photograph of Margaret Thatcher by Roger Bamber* is a part of an excellent show on political imagery at the Design and Copyright Society in London. PCO members Ken Pyne, Mark Nesbitt, Andy Davey, Terry Christien and Matt Buck all have work in the show. The Kowalsky gallery is at 33 Great Sutton Street, London and the show is on until the end of January. Full details are on the gallery page at their website.

* Maggie Gets Her Hands Dirty, May 1983 by Roger Bamber.© Roger Bamber 2007.

Interestingly, the photo never saw the light of day after Roger took it, as Mrs T was campaigning in the 1983 election campaign at the time, and the image of her holding a pile of crap was thought rather too unfortunate to be publishable. Clearly, spin did not begin in 1997.

While we are talking exhibitions, the PCO is also going to be well represented at the annual Big Draw in Covent Garden this weekend, on October 13th and 14th. There is a massive amount of drawing and joke related activity going on, over both days, and the PCO is heavily involved. Do come along and enjoy yourselves.

The best British cartoon talent

Coming soon PCO Procartoonists at London’s Big Draw. Get the details here and here.

The PCO will be fielding a team of cartoonists at this year’s Big Draw event on Sunday October 14th.

Part of the annual festival of drawing is being held in London’s Covent Garden this year and the PCO team have been invited to participate in the ‘Battle of the Cartoonists’ where professional artists bid to outdo each others’ creations in an art time-trial. Our competition is going to include cartoonists from The Guardian and Independent newspapers and Private Eye magazine.

The Big Draw is one of the activities of the national Campaign for Drawing.

Here is a picture of last year’s event at Somerset House which took place when the PCO was little more than a twinkle in the eye of some cartoonists…

In the run-up to this year’s big day, Bloghorn will be posting a few more photographs and we’ll obviously, also be reporting on our activities after the event itself.

Bloghorn must thank PCO member Gerard Whyman (Ger) for the photographs of last year’s event and recommends clicking a W for Whyman here