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Shropshire Live talks Shrewsbury

April 3, 2013 in Events, News

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival by Wilbur Dawbarn

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival © Wilbur Dawbarn @ Procartoonists.org

The website Shropshirelive.com has a detailed preview of the 10th Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, which takes place this month (19-21 April).

The piece gives another outing to this fine cartoon of The Square in Shrewsbury during the cartoon festival by Procartoonists.org member Wilbur Dawbarn, which originally appeared in The Oldie magazine.

The Round-up

November 9, 2012 in General, Links, News

 

© Bruce Eric Kaplan/The New Yorker @Procartoonists.org

Bruce Eric Kaplan, the cartoonist and TV writer who signs his distinctive New Yorker cartoons as BEK (above), tells Co.Create about how day-to-day frustrations lead to many of his best ideas. Read the interview and see a selection of BEK’s work here. (Thanks to cartoonist Mike Lynch for the link.)

British comics artist Lew Stringer alerts us to some tweaks that have been made to The Beano this week – including a new run (geddit?) for Billy Whizz by Procartoonists.org member Wilbur Dawbarn. Wilbur had previously offered a teaser on his own blog.

Political cartoonist David Trumble looks back over several cartoons he devised to comment on the various possible outcomes of the Obama/McCain US presidential election four years ago, and offers his take on this week’s Obama/Romney vote. See them all here.

Also to coincide with polling day in the States, The New Yorker offers a selection of its election cartoons.

And finally, a striking and appropriate design has been chosen for the planned Comics and Animation Museum in Hangzhou, China. Take a look.

Personal Bests: Drugs

August 10, 2012 in General, News

Personal Bests on Drugs © Wilbur Dawbarn @ procartoonists.org

© Wilbur Dawbarn @ procartoonists.org


Happily it seems to have been a Games without many obvious drug scandals, but that may just mean they haven’t been caught yet.

More Personal Bests to be found here.

The Round-Up

June 1, 2012 in General, Links, News

© Alexander Matthews and Wilbur Dawbarn / The Phoenix

Alexander Matthews and Wilbur Dawbarn, both Procartoonists.org members and known for gag cartoons as well as comic strips, are collaborating on “Useleus”, a new series for the weekly comic The Phoenix. Alex writes the strip, while Wilbur provides the artwork, above. The strip will tell the story of “by far the most rubbishest warrior in all of Ancient Greece”. You can find out more here. Meanwhile, Alex is also working on a new strip for the Dandy, called “Grrrls!”, as alluded to on his blog.

Vanity Fair conducts an interview with Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker, about that most prevalent of cartoon cliches:  the desert island.

Tom Richmond, cartoonist for MAD Magazine, has been awarded the top honour of Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year at the Reuben Awards. Read more here.

And finally, don’t make him angry, it’s his birthday. Time magazine looks back at 50 years of the Incredible Hulk in this slideshow.

 

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by Royston

Cartoons kick over the statues at V&A

October 19, 2011 in Events

Private Eye: The First 50 Years

After much media hoopla, Private Eye: The First 50 Years opened at the Victoria & Albert museum in South Kensington, London, yesterday. The exhibition will run until January 8.

The free exhibition explores the wealth of artistic talent that the magazine has showcased since 1961 and features original artwork for some of the funniest Private Eye cartoons.

Cartoonist Nathan Ariss attended the private view. He writes:

“According to one insider it was ‘the most fun’ the reverent halls had witnessed in decades. Yes, the PE PV at the V&A was AOK, and deemed a rather fine night indeed.

“A [insert collective noun here] of cartoonists were interspersed with some serious marble statues and seriously well-off people and then somewhat embarrassed by a warm and gracious speech from the Editor, [Is this guy after an OBN? – Ed], Ian Hislop, who paid full tribute to the importance that cartoons have played in the magazine’s success.

“I imagine the exhibition will be equally as enjoyable as all the sparkling repartee and champagne on the night itself, but I’m afraid I became somewhat tired and emoticon as the night wore on. Thankfully the exhibition is still on until the new year.”

National Association of Builders Convention by Ken Pyne

National Association of Builders Convention by Ken Pyne

Many cartoonists started their careers at the magazine, and they can be seen in this show, including Gerald Scarfe, Ralph Steadman, Willie Rushton, Barry Fantoni, Nick Newman and Michael Heath

There are lots of cartoons in the show by members of the PCO, which runs the Bloghorn, such as Andrew Birch, Wilbur Dawbarn, Neil Dishington, Pete Dredge, Len Hawkins, Martin Honeysett, Tony Husband, Ed McLachlan, Alexander Matthews, Ken Pyne, above, Royston Robertson, Mike Turner, and the PCO patron Bill Tidy.
Private Eye editor's office

The cartoons are in themed sections, on politics, royalty and social observation. There are single-panel cartoons, long-running strips and caricatures.

Hislop has chosen 50 of the best front covers, one from every year the magazine has been published. The exhibition also evokes the atmosphere of the magazine’s Soho office, with a recreation of the Editor’s desk, right, and a messy production table.

Here’s a round-up of some of the many Private Eye: The First 50 Years features you can currently see on the net:

A behind the scenes look at the production of the Eye, including a video of how a Ken Pyne cartoon progresses from idea to page, can be seen on the V&A site.

The Private Eye blog has a piece on putting the exhibition together.

Fifty years of Private Eye as seen by The Wall Street Journal

… and by Creative Review.

Ian Hislop takes the BBC’s Will Gompertz on a tour of the exhibition. The site also has political leaders and pundits giving their views of Private Eye

And finally, to coincide with the 50th celebrations, the Chris Beetles Gallery has an online exhibition selling artwork by Private Eye cartoonists.

Rising from the ashes

March 18, 2011 in News

Remember the DFC, the short-lived subscription-only comic weekly? Well, it looks like it might be returningsort of.

Many of the DFC’s former artists and writers including Philip Pullman, Laura Howell, Gary Northfield, Garen Ewing, and the PCO‘s own Wilbur Dawbarn attended what may have been the launch party for The Phoenix in Oxford.

Although details are a little sketchy, it appears this isn’t strictly a re-launch but a new comic edited by the DFC’s former editor Ben Sharpe. Or, as Lew Stringer puts it in Blimey!

So, a new comic with the same editor as The DFC which held a party to announce the new comic, attended by many ex-DFC contributors, and allegedly also involving Will Fickling who was previously involved with The DFC. Other than that, not a revival of The DFC.

DFC or not, it appears that the new comic is expected to launch in early 2012. You get more information by signing up for their mailing list at www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk, or by following editor Ben Sharpe on Twitter.

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by Royston

Cartoonist patches things up

February 22, 2011 in News

Sometimes cartoonists find that their lovingly crafted drawings don’t look quite as intended when they appear in print.
Mr Meecher cartoon by Wilbur Dawbarn

When PCOer Wilbur Dawbarn opened the current issue of The Dandy, he was slightly confused by one of the frames in his strip “Mr Meecher, the Uncool Teacher”, above.

It seems that a Mr Meecher from a previous issue, the one on the left, made an unscheduled appearance, along with two speech bubbles from the old strip. There must have been a few confused young readers.

No-one at The Dandy seems to know exactly how this happened. But a solution can be found at Wilbur’s blog. Just as you can download “patches” to fix errant computers, so he has created a Mr Meecher patch, which is available to download.

Unlike computer patches though, this one requires a pair of scissors and a Pritt stick …

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.

Foghorn magazine – Issue 48

December 16, 2010 in News

Just in time for Christmas, the latest issue of Foghorn, the cartoon magazine of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation has been published. Featuring a festive cover by the PCO’s The Surreal McCoy, the magazine is available to subscribers for the very merry price of £20 for six full colour issues – all delivered down your chimney (or through your door).

What’s inside?

Ian Ellery treats us to a very Stanley Unwin Chrimbletide
A short history of the Christmas card by Chris Madden
Nathan Ariss relates some seasonal thespian tales of Mason Ayres
Mike Williams tells of his first taste of Punch
The partridge gets well stuffed by Neil Dishington
And  you’ll find a full page of Wilbur Dawbarn cartoons!

Plus…

…all the regular features - Buildings in the Fog, The Critic, The Foghorn Guide to…, The Potting Shed, Andy Davey‘s ‘Foggy’ strip and many more random acts of humour crammed in wherever we could find room.

You can read older issues of Foghorn online here, right up to our most recent issue.

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Workshops at Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival 2010

May 5, 2010 in Events, News

The Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival doesn’t actually finish at the end of the weekend.

Exhibitions continue in venues across the town and organisers run workshops for people keen to explore the skills of drawing and communication.


Cartoonist Wilbur Dawbarn ran one of these events and here are photos from his workshops. Bloghorn thanks Shropshire Council’s event development team for passing these along to us.


Some of the work produced will be displayed at the town’s Wakeman School and Arts College at the end of June.

An informant tells Bloghorn that Wilbur let slip he sometimes “meditated” on a subject for a cartoon while having a lie-in in the mornings. One of the older ladies immediately produced a cartoon of him lounging in bed – you can see it below.

"It's nice to finish the day's work before breakfast!"

Bloghorn thinks: If only…