"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

Another Pair of Underpants, an exhibition of cartoons by Tony Husband, is at Tom’s Chophouse, Cross St, Manchester, until November 10.

It features around 350 pieces — strips, topical gags and sports cartoons — along with a series of large photos of Tony at work by the photographer Wolfgang Webster.

Everything in the exhibition is for sale and the final day will see a charity dinner. Half of the proceeds will go to the Genesis Breast Cancer Prevention Appeal. Prints and originals are for sale, along with books and cartoon placemats.

Tony has been a regular contributor to Private Eye since 1985. He also draws sports cartoons for The Times and the Sunday Express and his cartoons have appeared in many magazines including The Spectator, The Oldie and Playboy.

The exhibition moves to Sam’s Chophouse, 8 South Parade, Leeds, on November 14, where it will run until Christmas. Tony plans to exhibit his cartoons again next year and tells The Bloghorn that the Groucho Club in London has expressed an interest in showing them.

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

Response to printed and digital cartoons is now pretty much instant as this tweet about a drawing by Peter Brookes of The Times shows.

What do people think of this cartoon in the Times?: http://lockerz.com/s/122196367

21st July 2011 10:12 am via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@KathViner

Katharine Viner

Peter’s colleague Morten Morland (a PCO member) had a swift response below

Hilariously ridiculous mini-outrage over Peter's cartoon in The Times today. Twitter seem to think NI bosses are telling him what to draw...

21st July 2011 11:32 am via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@mortenmorland

Morten Morland

The standard response of editorial cartoonists to feedback like this is

Hello @cathelliott @KathViner It's opinion. You may not share it. Offence tending to be in the eye of the beholder. End of. Surely? Rgds, MB

21st July 2011 10:20 am via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@mattbuck_hack

MattBuckHackCartoons

Or complete silence, but when the controversy crosses the oceans in seconds to other influential commentators…

Good God. Murdoch's troops no bounds RT @KathViner: What do people think of this cartoon in the Times?: http://bit.ly/oPeoYQ

21st July 2011 12:02 pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@jeffjarvis

Jeff Jarvis

This speed of interaction between opinion, response and offence  pose, in Bloghorn’s view both a challenge and an opportunity to makers of drawings. What do you think cartoonists should do in the social media era?Answers welcome in the comments.

Updated: 2pm

To ppl insinuating Murdoch's wishes are behind that cartoon - grow up. It's just a bit of Fleet St tribalism, though admittedly ill-advised

21st July 2011 2:02 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@alexwalters

Alex Walters

Further response from the internet

Updated: Wednesday 27th July – The Guardian is reporting a letter from seven UK academics complaining about the publication of this cartoon. Read the story here and please comment below if you would like.

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.

Blair cartoon from The Times by PCOer Morten Morland

The advent of statistics recording visits to web sites has allowed web publishers to see exactly which pages readers head for. Unsurprisingly, many have embraced this technology to show you – the reader – which pages are most popular.

So, I ask you to go to The Times website. Scroll down. No, you don’t have to get past the Great Pay Wall of Murdoch to do this – no small denomination payments are required. Look at the “Most Read” list of sections which are – as you might guess – the paper’s most popular click-through reads.

Of course, I don’t know when you’re reading this but I bet you that coming in the top three with a bullet will be “Cartoons”. I have checked assiduously for the past several weeks. “Cartoons” has been at or near the top spot for almost all of my visits (many times at Number One).

As I write, I am not chastened by the fact that nestling at number 2 is “Top Ten Chinos”.Well, a chap’s got to look the part while perusing the best of cartoon art online. Standards, you know. (Of course, if you want to actually look at the cartoons, you WILL have to pay at this point).

It’s a subject close to the hearts of us cartoonists. The popularity of The Times’ cartoons is, of course, not unrelated to the fact that they boast two fine cartoonists in Peter Brookes and Morten Morland, together with legend-inna-lifetime Gerald Scarfe at the Sunday title.

But it’s not just that. Readers love cartoons. We know that. It’s such a pity that this simple fact doesn’t prevent culls of cartoonists to cut costs at newspapers facing hard times. It seems counter-intuitive to us. For example the loss of almost all cartoon content from The Observer recently was mourned widely. So Bloghorn says hats off to the wildly good taste of Times readers.

Peter Brookes, political cartoonist for The Times, makes the art of political cartooning look easy. Watch a master at work in this short film. Absorb and weep, dear reader.

Bloghorn notes: As The Times have recently started charging to view its website, to view the above link you will have to register – prices are £2 for a weekly subscription or £1 for a day’s access. However, they are offering a free preview for a limited time – you can sign up here.

Alex Hughes reports.

You may have not noticed, but there’s been a general election in Britian recently. And a general election means it’s open season for the political cartoonists, so here Bloghorn presents a brief summary of the events of the last month or so in cartoon form, starting at the beginning of the election with Dave Brown of the Independent on the runners and riders and the Guardian‘s Martin Rowson on the approaching media obsession.
During the campaign The Guardian‘s Steve Bell talks about drawing at the manifesto launches, the Sky debate, and drawing Nick Clegg, Peter Mandelson and David Cameron (and the cartoon that came from this).

The TV debates may have changed the direction of the election, but they were seen differently by Tim Sanders in the Independent, Dave Brown, Peter Brookes of the Times, Steve Bell and Paul Thomas of the Daily Expesss,whilst Morten Morland of the Times produced a series of short animated responses to each of the debates (ITV, Sky, BBC).

The debates lead to widespread Cleggmania as seen by Stephen Collins in Prospect, Matt in the Daily Telegraph, Martin Rowson and Paul Thomas, and the inevitable media backlash as satirised by Peter Brookes and Dave Brown.

Gordon Brown made what was probably the biggest political gaffe of the campaign by calling a member of the public a “bigoted woman”; Peter Brookes, and Dave Brown, Mac of the Daily Mail, Paul Thomas provided their own takes on Bigotgate.

The election night itself inspired Tim Sanders and Matt, but as we now know it resulted in a hung parliament, as shown variously the Sun‘s Andy Davey, Dave Brown, Matt, Peter Brookes, Paul Thomas and Mac (and even a hung parliament themed game), Gordon Brown’s departure as seen by Nick Garland and eventually the Con-Lib coalition Christian Adams, Tim Sanders, Morten Morland and Martin Rowson.

Looking forward to the challenges for the new Government were Harry Venning’s Clare in the Community and Kal in the Economist, and looking back, Bloghorn‘s very own Matt Buck produced a series of  weekly despatches for the Guardian from the 1710 campaign as seen by Tobias Grubbe (2, 3, 4, 5).  The Times produced a 9 page comic summary of the election campaign available for download here (PDF, 7Mb).

(“Keep Calm and Cameron” cartoon by Nathan Ariss).

The Editor adds: We are bound to have missed many other great examples of cartooning so please do feel free to add things you have seen in the comments. Thanks.

The Beauty of Maps: Cartoon Maps – Politics and Satire is part of a season of map-themed documentaries currently running on BBC4, and features Frederick Rose’s famous octopus map of Europe and an interview with Times cartoonist Peter Brookes. Hurry though, the programme is only available on the BBC iPlayer until tomorrow…

News reaches Bloghorn of a couple of British cartoonists revealing the tricks of the trade. Firstly there’s The Times‘ Peter Brookes explaining how he’ll be caricaturing the party leaders in the upcoming General Election. On drawing the current Prime Minister:

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.

Peter Brookes has won Cartoonist of the Year at the British Press Awards. Brookes, who draws the daily comment cartoon for the Times newspaper as well as the Nature Notes feature for the Saturday edition, was presented the award by John Humphries at the Grosvenor House Hotel ceremony yesterday.

Thanks to the Press Gazette for the image above from their slideshow of the event.