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Counting days to cartoon festival

March 19, 2013 in Events, News

Time cartoon by Pete Dredge

© Pete Dredge @ Procartoonists.org

Cartoonists are sharpening their pencils as it is a month today until the tenth Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival.

The big weekend for the festival, when live drawing events will take place, is 19-21 April. For the first time there will be a full programme of events on the Sunday.

Before that, the main festival exhibition, on the theme of “Time”, will open on 2 April at the Upper Floor Gallery in the town’s Market Hall. The above cartoon was submitted for the exhibition by Procartoonists.org member Pete Dredge.

The exhibition runs until 6 May and will then appear at the Qube Gallery in Oswestry. We will have more detail nearer the time. You can also visit the official website and follow the hashtag #shrews13 on Twitter.

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by Royston

Dutch success for cartoonists

February 4, 2013 in Events, News

 

Pete Dredge birdbox cartoon

© Pete Dredge @ Procartoonists.org

The Procartoonists.org members Pete Dredge and Graham Fowell have been singled out in the “Special Mention” category at the 18th Dutch Cartoon Festival. The theme of the exhibition was “Prejudices and Stereotypes”.

Pete told us: “I hadn’t entered one of these competitions for many years, probably over 30, so after the promptings of our Feco [Federation of Cartoonists' Organisations] officer, The Surreal McCoy, I thought, ‘Why not give it a go?’ Just missed out on the prize money, but delighted to make the Special Mention stage.”

Graham Fowell shepherds cartoon

© Graham Fowell @ Procartoonists.org

Graham added: “It is a lovely event – I have been a regular attendee for the past few years. The festival is now permanently held in Bergen op Zoom, a lovely little town in the south of Holland with a beautiful medieval town square.”

The full list of winners can be seen here. We send our congratulations to Pete, Graham and all the winning cartoonists.

Cartooning: Can I have that idea please?

August 9, 2012 in General, News

One of the prices for the skill of visual thinking is that sometimes other people admire them to the point of purchase, but not for direct attribution.

Private Eye Olympics cover @procartoonists.org

Private Eye Olympics cover 9th August 2012 @procartoonists.org

The picture above of the cover of the most recent issue of  Private Eye magazine is an example of this. But, er, exclusively, we can reveal the original cartoon behind the mass-market cover page printing.

Olympic_Martian_invasion_on_BBC © Pete Dredge @ procartoonists.org

© Pete Dredge @ procartoonists.org

Bright ideas, we’ve often got ‘em.

Putting on one’s top hat

June 6, 2012 in Events, General, News

Cartoonists have to be resourceful creatures because of the range of jobs they are asked to undertake. Procartoonists member Pete Dredge explains more:
At the start of the year I had a call from an agency requiring a witty cartoon to publicise a client’s beer festival. This was no ordinary beer festival…
Procartoonists.org  Peter Dredge Ascot Beer Festival

© Pete Dredge

Their budget was reasonable, roughs were presented and the job was completed and fee paid on time. There was also some throw away line about sending me some comp tickets for the October beer festival and also tickets for a June race meeting.
I had forgotten all about it  when, a few weeks ago, an invite to lunch with Ascot’s chief executive arrived, along with two passes for the Royal Enclosure on Royal Ascot Ladies Day. I had hardly time to get the eBay account online before the better half had bought the hat, chosen the outfit and matching accessories and booked the day off work. There was no way back. A visit to Moss Bros soon followed for suiting and booting (and top hatting). With a bit of luck there may be something left from the original fee to place an each way bet.
Procartoonists.org  Kate Scurfield on AScot Race Day

© Kate Scurfield

Pete was also in good company as the event has a fine tradition of using cartoonists to promote their day.
They had used Mac, Peattie & Taylor (“Alex”) and our very own Kate Scurfield in previous years, all hard acts to follow.

Private Eye gets services to cartooning award

December 7, 2011 in Comment, Events, News

Nick Newman Private Eye

Private Eye was presented with the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation Award for Services to Cartooning last night.

A small delegation from the PCO descended on the Eye’s Soho offices to present the award to Nick Newman, cartoonist and writer at the magazine, above, on behalf of the Editor, Ian Hislop.

Accepting the award, Nick said that the Eye had always been a staunch supporter of cartoons, from the early days when it would run two or three Willie Rushton cartoons to the present day which sees dozens of gags and strips in each issue.

Noting that the PCO gave the Award for Services to Cartooning last year to the Church Times, he added: “Obviously the Church Times is a much more humorous magazine …”

Pete Dredge, PCO member and regular Eye contributor, handed over the award, which he described as “a stylish, crystal-fashioned engraved paperweight recognising Lord Gnome’s 50 years of supporting the best of British cartooning and cartoonists”.

PCO Award for Services to Cartooning

He told the Bloghorn: “It is understood that the paperweight will be on display amongst the Eye’s other trophies, rather than holding down the ever-growing pile of cartoon submissions on the Editor’s desk.”

The PCO thanks the Eye for accepting the award, and appreciates the fact that the Ed did not say “Sorry not to use. Thanks for sending.”

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival 2011

April 14, 2011 in Events, News

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival kicks off tonight with a drop-in cartoon workshop at the Bear Steps Gallery at 4.30pm, and a talk by Dr Nick Hiley from the British Cartoon Archive on the cartoons of Carl Giles at Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery at 7pm, tickets £5.

In the meantime, the exhibition Personal Bests opened on Monday (also at the Bear Steps Gallery) and features cartoons on the Festival’s Olympic theme, including these:

Bloghorn Shrewsbury 2011 Olympics cartoon © Pete Dredge

Bloghorn Shrewsbury 2011 Olympics cartoon © Chichi Parish

Bloghorn Shrewsbury 2011 Olympics cartoon © Noel Ford
Bloghorn Shrewsbury 2011 Olympics cartoon © Royston Robertson

 

Come back to Bloghorn for coverage of the festival as it happens, or follow the hashtag #shrews11 on Twitter.

 

From Herriman to Holte: Another ten great cartoonists

January 19, 2011 in Comment

The cartoonist Gerald Scarfe has made a list of his ten favourite cartoonists, for the Daily Mail website. It includes some inarguable choices as well as some surprising ones.

Ronald Searle, widely regarded as Britain’s best living cartoonist, is on there. There are also choices from the worlds of fine art, such as Picasso, and film-making, which is represented by Walt Disney, more for his skill at getting great work from others than his own drawing talents.

We asked members of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation, which runs the Bloghorn, to name their favourite cartoonists not on the Scarfe list. It’s not a poll, or a “top ten”, just an informal list of another ten great artists, and it shows the wealth of variety and creativity to be found in the world of cartooning.

Hector Breeze cartoon

1. Hector Breeze (Born 1928). Picked by Pete Dredge: “A master of the pocket cartoon. Out of the mouths of his mundane, benign, chunkily drawn characters comes the sharpest of captions.”

Robert Crumb cartoon

2. Robert Crumb (Born 1943). Picked by Royston Robertson: “He has been satirising the way we live since the 1960s with his dense, inky, cross-hatched drawings, displaying human folly in all its gory glory. Not for nothing was he described by the art critics Robert Hughes as ‘the Bruegel of the last half of the 20th century’.”

George Grosz painting

3. George Grosz (1893-1959). Picked by Matt Buck and Andrew Birch (both blatantly ignoring the brief of people not on Scarfe’s list, Bloghorn notes!) Matt says: “Grosz drew with an unsparing eye and produced powerful reflections of what people do rather than what they say they do.” Andrew adds: “For me German Expressionism was one of the most important art movements of the 20th century, whose brutal and honest line laid the foundation for many later cartoonists like Steadman.”

Heath Robinson cartoon

4. William Heath Robinson (1872-1944). Picked by Rupert Besley: “He was an original, creating a wonderful, instantly recognisable world of his own. He satirised the growth of mechanisation, but did so in a gloriously enjoyable way that always kept the human at the centre of it all. Which other cartoonist has added his name to the language and booked his place in every dictionary?”

George Herriman cartoon

5. George Herriman (1880-1944). Picked by Wilbur Dawbarn: “From the gorgeously scratchy line work and absolute poetry of the writing in the early years, to the sheer majesty of composition in the latter years, Herriman’s Sunday Krazy Kat pages are, to my mind, some of the finest examples of comic art ever penned.”

Holte cartoon

6. Trevor Holder, aka “Holte” (Born 1941). Picked by Roger Penwill: “Glorious technique, a master of expressive line and a very funny, wicked sense of humour. Some of his cartoons are timeless classics.”

Kliban cartoon

7. Bernard Kliban (1935-1990). Picked by Chris Madden: “I came across a book by B. Kliban: Cat Dreams. I’m not sure what they’re about. I’m not even sure if they’re funny (do cartoons actually have to be funny?) But they’re brilliant. Apparently he grew to detest drawing cats in the end, but they were what everybody wanted. Beware success.”

David Law cartoon

8. David Law (1908-1971). Picked by Steve Bright: “Beautifully fluid and loose line, amazing perspectives and angles, and the master of life and motion in all that he drew. Law inspired millions of kids to pick up a pencil through his marvellous work in the Beano, Dandy and Topper.”

Phil May cartoon

9. Phil May (1864-1903). Picked by Mike Turner: “A breakthrough in culling captions down to a minimum. Great art, brilliant caricatures, sheer good humour relating to ‘the man in the street’ or the ‘man on the horse-drawn omnibus’

Bill Tidy cartoon

10. Bill Tidy (Born 1933). Picked by Bill Stott: “For his excellent gags and consummate drawing, especially in his history-based stuff.”

What do you think of the list? Got a favourite cartoonist you’d like to add to it? Let us know in the comments below.

Raise a glass to new cartoon show

November 22, 2010 in General, News

Cartoon by Chris Duggan

An exhibition that is sure to bring some warmth and cheer to the winter opens at the Cartoon Museum in London on Wednesday 24 November.

Ink and the Bottle is billed as “a merry exhibition on the pleasures and perils of the ‘demon drink’ starting with a swig of gin from Hogarth and Cruikshank”. We move on to Gillray, Donald McGill, Heath Robinson and Giles before downing “a heady cocktail of contemporary cartoons”.
Cartoon by Andrew Birch
That includes a generous measure of PCO members, including Steve Bell, Andrew Birch, right, Clive Collins, Neil Dishington, Denis Dowland, Pete Dredge, Roger Penwill, Ken Pyne, Royston Robertson, Bill Stott and Mike Turner.

As if that’s not enough binge cartooning, there’s work by Sally Artz, Ian Baker, Hector Breeze, Dave Brown,
Chris Duggan, top, Grizelda, Andrzej Krauze, Matt, Tim Sanders, Ronald Searle, Gerald Scarfe, Silvey & Jex, Ralph Steadman, and Judy Walker.

If you fancy three more for the road, there are also contributions from the Viz cartoonists Graham Dury, Davey Jones and Simon Thorp, who are no strangers to creating characters that “like a tipple”.

Ink and the Bottle – Drunken Cartoonists and Drink in Cartoons runs until February 13. See the Cartoon Museum website for more details.

Cheersh!

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by Royston

Bloghorn victorious in Battle

September 14, 2009 in General

bigdraw2009_2
After several years as the plucky underdog, the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation’s team, this year rebranded as Team Bloghorn, has finally emerged victorious from the annual Battle of the Cartoonists.

Our team came joint first with Private Eye in the Big Draw event in which four teams completed a large banner on the theme of “Now We Are Ten”, celebrating a decade of The Campaign for Drawing. They faced stiff competition from teams from The Sun and The Independent.

bigdraw2009_1
A banner year: The Bloghorn team was made up of, left to right, Andy Bunday, Clive Goddard, captain Pete Dredge, holding the cup, who oversaw proceedings, and Nathan Ariss

bigdraw2009_4
Work in progress: Clive and Pete get drawing. Click here, to see the full, completed banner

In a post-match interview, Pete told the Bloghorn: “Justice and victory at last for the PCO’s Battle of the Cartoonists’ team, albeit jointly with the Eye (Shurely shome mistake – Ed). What seemed like a clear-cut decision was mysteriously drawn out into a “cheer-off” head-to-head. And even then our clearly louder decibel reading was insufficient for us to be declared outright winners. A big draw indeed!”

bigdraw2009_5
Joint winners: The Private Eye team, left to right, Simon Pearsall, Richard Jolley and Ken Pyne, also a PCO member, with MC Andrew Marr, who is a patron of the PCO

But the event is not just about the glory of winning. PCO members Tim Harries, and Cathy Simpson were on hand to run drawing workshops for children and adults at the event, which took place at the Idea Generation gallery in Shoreditch, London.

bigdraw2009_6
Drawn to it: Cathy Simpson hosted a workshop for children

The workshoppers were ably assisted by The Surreal McCoy. All photographs here are by Gerard Whyman, who was on hand as the official PCO photographer.

Cartoon Pick of the Week

April 17, 2009 in Links, News

Bloghorn spotted this great work during this week ending the 17th April 2009.

One: Zapiro in South Africa’s Mail and Guardian on Nelson Mandela’s shoes.

Two: Pete Dredge in the Spectator on smoking confessions.

Three: and finally, Harry Venning’s Clare in the Community in the Guardian on youth slang.

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