by Blog Team
December 22, 2014 in Comment, General, News
Procartoonists.org member Chris Cairns features in a video looking back at this year’s independence referendum in Scotland. He takes us through some of his political cartoons as well as the process behind creating them and reflects on the referendum result and the future of the campaign.
by Blog Team
June 9, 2014 in Comment, General
Bill Stott from Punch: “Be positive! At least now we know that being able to fly has got nothing to do with having a pointy head!” Click image to enlarge
In a somewhat acrimonious departure, Richard Ingrams has resigned as editor of The Oldie. In this opinion piece, Bill Stott sees echoes from the latter days of Punch magazine and hopes that cartoonists will not see history repeat itself.
Whilst it might sound uncomfortably like a medical examination, there’s interesting stuff coming out of The Oldie right now. Quite a bit of bile. The departure of the multi-faceted, sometimes contradictory Richard Ingrams will be a huge loss, not only to The Oldie, but to gag cartooning in the UK.
Logically, bearing in mind the fact that his team apparently liked and respected him, the job should go to one of them and a cartoon-friendly status quo will spread a warm glow throughout Humourland. However, given James Pembroke’s apparent management style and his grasp of the purse strings, that may well not happen.
The Oldie’s predicament reminds me of the beginning of the end for Punch, a magazine strong on cartoons and humour but which never made a profit in its 500-year existence, unlike The Oldie which has loads of readers and does make a profit.
The similarity lies with “management”. Alan Coren, probably one of the best Punch editors, fell out with those who bought the mag and got sacked. He was locked out of his office, in fact.
After a few false starts, a new bought-in editor was presented to a restaurant full of cartoonists in thatLondon. He foolishly delayed them from getting at the free food and drink by climbing on to a rostrum to tell all hands about his vision for the new Punch. I seem to remember the sixth-form market being mentioned. Honest!
The new ed was apparently a very good manager. Quite soon after his appointment, which was made despite the existence of excellent candidates already on board, Punch ceased to be.
Could this happen to The Oldie?
Thanks Bill. We hope the answer to your last question is no! We will continue to follow developments at The Oldie, noting for starters that Mr Ingrams appears to have influential friends
by Blog Team
February 20, 2014 in Comment, General
Andy Davey talks to the editorial cartoonist Martyn Turner who has been drawing for The Irish Times for more than 40 years
© Martyn Turner. The cartoonist admits his drawings are very wordy.
Click to enlarge and read
Martyn Turner has just become eligible for his free bus pass. It doesn’t look as though he’ll be taking up the offer though. He asked his editor whether he wanted him to shuffle off to his beloved golf course and the answer came back “Not while I’m editor”.
Buoyed by this enthusiastic endorsement, he is going to stay put. Still, it’s surely time to take stock, as he has been doing this job for more than 40 years.
The Irish Times ran an article commemorating this anniversary a while back. Looking for comments to support the piece, they asked around and a deluge of testimonials arrived from all sources – politicians, former editors, fellow cartoonists from around the world, even hotel managers – and that’s before you get to the readers.
Everyone seems to have nice words to say about Turner. This may not be unrelated to the fact that he stands at 6ft 7ins and weighs in at 20 stone. But he’s also a Very Nice Chap.
If you look, you can see this in his cartoons. The caricatures are not like the graphic distortions of a Sebastian Kruger or a Gerald Scarfe. They are more like theatrical masks, giving just enough information to identify the character and make the point. He says they’re “not strictly caricatures, they’re a person representing that particular character. It’s not a personal attack”.
© Martyn Turner on the Sochi Winter Olympics. Click to enlarge
The artwork – though highly accomplished – doesn’t dominate the idea. The words are the thing. Maybe this befits a literary culture like Ireland’s. Tellingly, Turner says he thinks in words, “which is why my average cartoon has about 200 words in it”.
Turner’s longevity in the post is all the more surprising since he is English. Born and bred in urban Essex and East London (born in Wanstead, raised in Hackney and Chingford, to be precise). The son of East Enders, he won a scholarship to a private school, which he hated. That and his parents’ divorce turned him inwards and he says he sought refuge in outsider status, both socially and geographically.
He fled to first to Belfast to university and then south to become immersed in the venal horse-trading of Irish politics, which remains a mystery to most outsiders.
How does he do it, drawing four to five topical cartoons a week for 40-odd years? His wife of 46 years, Jean, claims that it’s because “he’s remained a child”. It’s not just Jean who says so – a guest psychiatrist on the Pat Kenny Show on Irish radio cast him as a “perpetual child who sees that none of the emperors have any clothes”.
He has a crack at politicians of all stripes. He has political conviction, but not one that fits into party politics. “I’m just an ageing hippy who thinks everyone should love each other and get on with it and be nice.”
He lives in semi-rural Kildare, although spends increasing amounts of time in France. His daily working practice is pretty idyllic. When in Ireland, he rises early, takes a dip at the local pool, returns to review the papers and listen to the news. Around lunchtime he distils an idea out of the noise.
When Martyn Turner started out he used to put his daily Irish Times cartoon
on the bus to Dublin, to be collected by a sub-editor at a bus stop
Like many a creative soul, he advocates letting the subconscious do the work. “The harder you think about something, the less likely you are to come up with something that isn’t what everyone else is thinking.”
He draws the cartoon in the afternoon and sends it over to the paper. The routine in the early days reinforces the image of delightful prelapsarian innocence and oddness we are encouraged to believe rural Ireland runs on. He used to put his cartoon on the afternoon bus into Dublin, handing it over to the driver who delivered it to a sub-editor waiting at the bus stop outside the Irish Times office. Nowadays it’s done by email, of course.
There’s no reason for him to stop now. Everyone seems to think his cartoons are an essential part of the paper, and of Irish politics. What’s more, he says he’s absurdly happy – “a round peg in a round hole” – and there is surely no better way to be.
You can see some of Turner’s recent cartoons here. He would also like us to know that his 19th “collection of cartoons and written bits” will be available in October.
by Blog Team
February 4, 2014 in Comment
© Bill Stott @ Procartoonists.org
Opinion: As regular readers will know, Michael Gove gets up Bill Stott’s nose
Hmm, he’s at it again, that Gove fellow. Wants to bring back writing lines, detention and – who knows? – six of the best, in the search for his notion of discipline in the classroom. He really hasn’t got a clue, has he?
What on earth have the wrong-headed, ignorant aspirations of this Mr Bean look-alike got to do with cartooning? Well, as I noted some time ago, one of the first things he did as Secretary of State for Education was to demote art and design and take it OUT of the core curriculum and put it IN to the hobby fringe.
And despite what Brian Sewell thinks, there IS a link between art education and cartooning.
Of course, a lot depends on the quality of the art education on offer. Given that Mr Beangove has already meddled with curriculum content and syllabuses – e.g. lots more Monarchs’ dates and burnt cakes in history – it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he didn’t make the teaching of perspective and Ostwald Colour Theory compulsory in any art and design still remaining in any school’s curriculum.
Shading would become compulsory, as would dividing up the human body into seven segments. And back would sweep still lifes: brown bananas, leathery oranges and putrefying apples. When colouring-in, pupils would have to keep to the lines.
If Michael Gove ever had an opinion about cartoons, they’d have to be clean, crisp and completely devoid of personality – rather like the anodyne niceness presently available as apps.
Thanks to Bill. To see work from people who paid attention in art class, and strictly no anodyne niceness, visit the Procartoonist.org portfolios
by Blog Team
January 31, 2014 in Comment, Events, News
© Jonathan Cusick @ Procartoonists.org
A collector of cartoons spoke some home truths at the recent private view of Bring Me Laughter. Kasia Kowalska writes.
In his speech opening the show, George Walker implored all those present to remember that he’s “not a Rothschild”. He was, undoubtedly, being modest as, together with his wife, Pat, he has dedicated more than 60 years to a collection that boasts drawings and cartoons by the great cartoonists of our age: Max Beerbohm, Phil May, H.M. Bateman, Heath Robinson, Ronald Searle and Trog, to name but a few.
© Jonathan Cusick @ Procartoonists.org
In this fine company one can also find several examples of George Walker’s own drawings and cartoons, which received a lot of attention on the night. Son of a miner, he recalls his father saying that ‘‘He thinks about nowt but actin’ and paintin'”. Although he left school at a young age to work in a local factory in Cumbria, George never let go of his passion for drawing and studied at Carlisle College of Art in his spare time.
The Walker collection includes several caricatures by PCO member Jonathan Cusick who attended the opening of the exhibition. Although Pat and George had commissioned him several times, this was the first time Jonathan had met them in person. ‘‘It’s a thrill to find my work amongst so many great names,’’ he said, selecting drawings by Heath Robinson, George Belcher and Pont as his personal highlights of the collection.
Jonathan Cusick. left. with George Walker and the piece that gave the exhibition its title. Photo ©Kasia Kowalska @ Procartoonists.org
Anita O’Brien, curator of the Cartoon Museum, said that George Walker ‘feels vindicated in the increasing attention which cartoon art has attracted in recent years: “There is some satisfaction in always having admired so-called ‘commercial’ art, for so long considered greatly inferior to ‘fine art’ and now commanding the respect that the best of it deserves.’’
Long may it continue.
Bring Me Laughter an exhibition from the private collection of George and Pat Walker is at the Cartoon Museum until 23 February.
by Blog Team
January 25, 2014 in Comment, General, News
© http://www.jesusandmo.net/
Hey. How ya doin’? can be offensive. Find out how and why might this might be so.
Readers will be unsurprised that we have been around such subjects before and won’t be surprised that the matter is also conflated with the local politics of the UK.
If you wish to offer a view please do, in the comments below.
Updated 29th Jan 2014: An interview on the issue conducted by Channel 4 News.
by Blog Team
January 6, 2014 in Comment, General, News
© Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons @ Procartoonists.org
Regular readers of this blog will be unsurprised to learn that automation has struck once more with Google receiving a patent for the ‘‘self-creation of comic strips in social networks and other communications’’.
The advertising giant is following in the footsteps of other digital toolmakers such as Bitstrips.
Digital automation of cartoon formats for display is inevitable in a time of growing digital processing power, and it means that now everyone can be a cartoonist.
Procartoonists.org believes that quality will out, however.
Booting up a PC © Colin Thompson @ Procartoonists.org
by Blog Team
November 19, 2013 in Comment, General, News
© Roger Penwill @ Procartoonists.org
The internet is a perfect medium for cartoons. Images can look much more striking on a backlit screen than they ever did in muddy print.
So the news that The Sun was dropping Andy Davey’s weekday editorial cartoon slot just as it finally attempted a serious transition to digital first publication is ironic.
I am a member of an endangered species … the cartoonists. In fact, my small colony is a sub-sub-species – the few who actually (well, as I write) make a living from the practice. The fact is that habitat change is threatening us.”
– Andy Davey in an article for E!Sharp magazine
(In a fitting footnote, E!Sharp magazine moved from print to digital with the loss of Davey’s regular cover illustration).
Newspapers have been shedding journalists, photographers and cartoonists by the hundredweight over the past few years, as their print revenues have shrivelled. Few papers have managed the transition to digital presence while finding an alternative online revenue stream.
Obfuscation about their digital revenue clouds the facts but the basic problem of converting casual digital readers into paying subscribers remains.
© Ger Whyman @ Procartoonists.org
Publishing companies have tried two basic strategies. News UK papers The Times and The Sun are now both largely behind subscriber paywalls, amid huge tidal waves of PR and free giveaways. This was a a principled decision (nobody should work for nothing) but a rather brave one in a world where news and information is now free, instant and ubiquitous. The results are presently understood to be mixed.
The other model is the new-media idea that you give away your content and hope that spin-off merchandising and advertising revenue will flood in on the back of your increased global readership. Online services can be developed for a motivated and loyal crowd of customers.
© Dave Chisholm @ Procartoonists.org
The Guardian has attempted to make itself into the best upmarket liberal global news brand in this fashion. The Daily Mail has morphed silently into a sort of daily global Hello! magazine, titillating the masses with its “Sidebar of Shame”, in the process becoming the most widely read digital newspaper worldwide.
Significantly, neither of these organisations have been over keen to reveal how much revenue this accrues and how it stacks up against their legacy costs of business.
But publishing companies and newspapers as product form only a small patch of land in the shrinking traditional habitat of the cartoonist. Magazines used to be a source of welcome revenue for scribblers. However, the rates of pay have been slashed over the years to levels of vanity publication. Regular readers and subscribers to this blog will also know about the direct-to-audience efforts that many cartoonists have made in recent years.
© Matt Percival @ Procartoonists.org
The traditional confidence in the utility of our skills leads the Guardian cartoonist and PCO member Martin Rowson to characterise our trade as parasites. Once the carrier dies, “like any hideous sensible parasite, we’ll just jump off on to the next host”.
And there is some truth in this.
In Georgian times, cartoonists plied their trade by selling prints of their work in coffee shops. The radical coffee shop died a death as the prim Victorians arrived. Consequently, cartoonists jumped on to new hosts ushered in by advances in print – Punch and similar magazines.
Newspaper circulation wars in the 1900s then saw a race to hire cartoonists, providing a very welcome long-lived carrier for us parasites. The chronic morbidity of printed newspapers means we have to find a new habitat.
Ed adds: And, of course, many of us are adapting successfully. If you have comments about any of themes in this piece please do add them in comments.
by Blog Team
November 12, 2013 in Comment, General, News
© Andy Davey @ Procartoonists.org
Following the news that one of the UK’s mass market national newspapers had removed its weekday editorial cartoonist we asked Andy Davey to write about the strange relationship that lies at the heart of such jobs.
For the UK cartoonist, working outside of the beneficence of a major newspaper brings benefits and troubles; editorial freedom and financial uncertainty. Creative freedom and money are rarely thrown together at the same artist.
In general, print editors and proprietors control content with an iron hand, especially when they are paying for it. Tabloid editors for example, are a clever bunch. They know how to run tight, focused media organisations. There is little or no room for a dissenting voice. The paper has to speak with one voice on a narrow range of issues.
Cartoonists are not hired to express their idiosyncratic views of the world, they are there to draw an on-message gag about something that is being highlighted in the day’s paper (preferably on the same page). Topics that are fair game are often defined and limited by who the paper “likes” (politicians or celebs they seek to cultivate) at any one time.
This can become wearing for the cartoonist who likes to come up with his/her own ideas – and that is pretty well all cartoonists (It is one of the key identifiers between cartoonists and illustrators – Ed).
The constraint of the ‘‘family paper’’, hard as it has sometimes been to believe in the era of phone hacking, also prevents anything too graphic from being published. Consequently, editorial cartoons in the tabloids can often look like sad toothless pastiches of the deferential 1950s.
Tabloid readers are conditioned to expect short, snappy articles and plenty of photos. The editorial pages, unlike the rather type-heavy pages in the broadsheets, are awash with images and banner headlines. Cartoons must fight to make themselves seen amid all this; even more so amid the flashing ads and animated pop-ups on the web versions.
A looser hand on the editorial tiller would allow stronger satirical graphic cartoons to attract the eye in traditional print and also in the relatively new digital environments.
Editor adds: Thanks to Andy to writing this. What do you think about editorial cartoons in the newspapers? Please free to dive into the comments below.
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PCO Cartoon Review of 2017
January 1, 2018 in Comment, General, News
Everyone else is doing it so we thought we’d have our own look back at the year…with cartoons by PCO members. The Big Issue drawing above by Andrew Birch manages to fit the whole year into just one cartoon!
© Ralph Steadman
We started the year with Trump’s bigly attended inauguration. Trump was undoubtedly (Mad) Man of the Year although he was closely followed by Kim Jong-Range Missile. This flattering portrait of Trump is by the inimitable Ralph Steadman.
© Steve Bell
At the beginning of the year Theresa May visited Washington to hold hands with The Donald. This cartoon from Steve Bell on the ‘special relationship’. You can see more of Steve Bell’s favourite cartoons of the year on the Guardian website.
© Wilbur Dawbarn
June saw Mrs M making another bad decision in calling a snap election. Who’d of thunk this would turn Jeremy Corbyn into a headline act at Glastonbury! This on the election race by Private Eye regular Wilbur Dawbarn.
© Andy Davey
The election didn’t go too well for Theresa. Here’s Andy Davey on the costly deal she was forced to do with the DUP (from The Indy). Unsurprisingly the figures weren’t heralded on the side of a bus.
© Jeremy Banx
Russian cyber interference in overseas elections has been a big story in 2017. This cartoon by FT cartoonist Banx. (although this could easily be a drawing of The Daily Mail newsroom)
© Martin Rowson
In June we had the terrible fire at Grenfell Tower. This is Martin Rowson’s response in The Guardian on the Government hiding from responsibilities.
© Zoom Rockman
…another illustration on Grenville Tower by prodigious talent Zoom Rockman taken from Private Eye. ‘Things That Wouldn’t Happen’. Would the House of Parliament use cheap cladding for the renovation work?
© Ros Asquith
The NHS is still desperately underfunded. This was a very funny cartoon by Ros Asquith after doctors warned in July about Government plans for ‘brutal’ NHS cuts.
© Dave Brown
October started with the awful mass shooting in Las Vegas – one of many atrocities in 2017. This was Dave Brown’s reaction in the Independent.
© Sarah Boyce
In a year where it seems every male in a position of power is a sexual predator an excellent cartoon from Sarah Boyce in Private Eye
© Will McPhail
Workplace equality has also been an issue throughout the year. This perfectly summed up in a Private Eye cartoon by New Yorker regular Will McPhail.
© Steve Bright
We couldn’t review the whole year without mentioning B****t. Here’s a fine summing up of how negotiations are going by Brighty in The Sun.
© Royston Robertson
…we have though restricted ourselves to just two on the ‘B’ word. This corker by Royston published in Private Eye.
© Matthew Buck
Ok, that was an ‘alternative truth’ we now have three ‘B’ word cartoons, this from Matthew Buck for Tribune.
© Guy Venables
…and on the same subject word(s) of the year was ‘Fake News’. This take on it from Guy Venables in the Private Eye 2017 Annual.
© Steve Jones
Trump has recently been denying global warming again because the East Coast has had a bit of a heavy cold spell. Here’s a strip on Trump’s view on climate change by Jonesy (from Resurgence & Ecologist magazine)
© Mike Turner
Finally, on a rather apocalyptic note to end the year, this is from Mike Turner in The Spectator.
Happy New Year from the PCO…although I suspect 2018 will be another year of global calamity and abject misery – at least we’ll have plenty to draw cartoons about.
Tags: 2017, 2018, Andrew Birch, Andy Davey, Banx, Big Issue, Birch, Brighty, cartoons, Dave Brown, Guy Venables, indy, Jeremy Banx, Jonesy, Matthew Buck, Mike Turner, New year, New Yorker, PCO, Private Eye, Private Eye Annual 2017, Procartoonists, Ralph Steadman, Review of the year, Ros Asquith, Royston, Royston Robertson, Sarah Boyce, Stev Bell, Steve Bell, Steve Bright, Steve Jones, The Guardian, The Independent, The Spectator, The Sun, Tribune, Wilbur Dawbarn, Will McPhail, Zoom Rockman 2 Comments »