Giants from Lilliput

Lilliput cover (Dec 1949) by Ronald Searle   Rupert Besley writes: Some years back (50, to be precise) I spotted a small selection of Lilliput magazines from 1941-51 in a junkshop in Leeds. I bought all nine of them and have returned to them regularly since. This era was still the heyday of line illustration, […]

Still Splitting Fog

Pandemic cartoon from Nebelspalter (1918) by Fritz Boscovitz. (The crowd is gathered round a sign saying, Flu – no assembly…’) Rupert Besley writes: As a student I had the good fortune several times to work abroad on holiday jobs in the north-east of Switzerland. Happy days. Swiss newspapers then were hard work to get through […]

How to illustrate your point…

Tim Ruscoe writes: “At simply-communicate we know that cartoons are magnets to draw our readers’ attention so we can land messages with impact. And Tim’s work is both funny and memorable – whenever an article is illustrated with one of his jokes it gets twice the attention.” Marc Wright, Publisher, simply-communicate.com A phrase originally used by […]

‘Women In History’ Cartoon Exhibition

Poster cartoon by © The Surreal MCoy The PCO is putting on an exhibition in collaboration with Idea Store at Canary Wharf to tie in with Women’s History Month. ‘Women In History’ is an exhibition of cartoons and caricatures based loosely around the theme and also looking more widely at issues affecting women. Our patron Sandi […]

NOT the National Portrait Gallery

Poster cartoon by kind permission of © Richard Jolley/ Private Eye magazine. PCO Chair human Clive Goddard writes: “No, its ‘Not the National Portrait Gallery’ but it is right on its doorstep in a brand new gallery space at Charing Cross Library. It is an exhibition full of irreverent, funny and, in some cases, downright disrespectful caricatures and […]

The Round-up

Our colleagues in the Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain (CCGB) have produced The Little Red Nose-E-Book Of Cartoons in aid of Comic Relief. It features 101 cartoons by CCGB members, including the gag above by Colin Whittock, who is also a Procartoonists.org member. The e-book costs just £1.59 (with all proceeds going to the charity) and […]

Ten things you might not know

about copyright

Our man Rob Murray attended a recent talk by Silvia Baumgart of Own-it, based at the University of the Arts London (UAL). Own-it advises creative practitioners and small businesses on intellectual property matters. Over to Rob: The session focused in particular on copyright and the increasing need for artists and illustrators to protect their work […]

Opinion: Illustration is easier than cartooning

When it was suggested by the editor that I should write a piece to the statement, “Illustration is easier than cartooning”. I thought he also ought to reverse the notion and ask an illustrator too. Trouble is, I’m not an illustrator so know little of their strange and arcane ways. Actually, that’s not entirely true. […]

A degree of ignorance about drawing

If you have been following this story you will be unsurprised that Bloghorn thinks comics, and cartooning in all its forms, are all too readily undervalued in the UK. It is more acceptable in the cultures of Japan, the US and across Europe to consider the narrative techniques and visual artistry employed by commercial artists […]