Herne Bay Cartoon Festival 2019 – Bumper bonus photo album!
August 9, 2019 in Events, General, News
The traditional festival team photo at the start of the day.
Last Sunday saw the annual live drawing event on the Herne Bay pier as part of the Cartoon Festival which this year was themed around the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Our chief PCO paparazzo Kasia Kowalska was dispatched to record that one small step for cartooning kind.
We open with some seaside postcard humour as The Independent’s Dave Brown displays his Boris (ooh err missus)
An effigy of him would be set upon by angry crowds later in the afternoon (Boris, NOT Dave Brown)
Cheeky painting by Martin Rowson.
Christopher Burke resurfaces the moon.
Kathryn Lamb’s big board lift off.
Sarah Boyce embarks on her premier Herne Bay space mission.
James Mellor, another big board debutant, tackles Earthexit.
Guy Venables also dipped his toenails into the Herne Bay Cartoon Festival for the first time.
Festival veteran – but still VERY young – Zoom Rockman drawing Skanky Seagulls.
My only criticism of the festival this year was that some of the boards had HUGE holes in them! I’m impressed by the way Des Buckley got round this by incorporating them into his drawing.
Royston Robertson showing that two heads are better than one in solving a nation divided (Photo trickery by Royston)
Nathan Ariss and Sarah Mann on the moon selfie. Ideally there should’ve been another hole for people to put their camera arms through.
Tim Harries questions the theory of spatial dimensions and relativistic physics.
The Surreal McCoy cunningly saves the moon theme for the final frame..
The FT pocket cartoonist Jeremy Banx doing a VERY large pocket.
PCO Treasurer Amy Amani and our Chair-moon (gerrit?) Clive Goddard proving their business acumen – get your board done and flog stuff.
Steve Way was quick off the launch pad in an attempt to be ready for kick off in the Charity Shield cup final.
Pete Dredge and Alex Hughes filling in their festival expenses forms while pretending to do some caricaturing.
Andrew ‘Dancing’ Shoes’ Birch, about to launch.
The man couldn’t stop dancing. Here he is on set at the fake moon landing location shoot pictured with dance partner local artist Gill Wilson.
Cecil B DeMarshall directing his movie epic (you can tell I haven’t got much real work on at the moment) aided by clapper board intern Ace Rockman and in the background festival organiser and soundtrack penny whistle foley artist Sue Austen.
Martin Rowson summoning the gulls to eat chips out of his balloon filled Boris…the lack of takers proving the seagulls of Herne Bay have their limits.
In scenes resembling Zombie Apocalypse members of the public then set about tearing apart the defenceless Mr Johnson!
In cahoots with festival honcho Steve ‘The Dry Iceman Cometh’ Coombs, Rowson then tried to entice the gulls into eating his Dominic Cummings saveloy.
Cummings was eventually devoured by festival regular Teddy the dog.
The customary end of day cartoonists carousel ride. Dredge, Rockman & Banx (sounds like a local accountancy firm)
Chris Burke, Dave Brown, Alex Hughes and Royston Robertson on their mounts.
That man Birch again plus Steve Coombs and Nathan Ariss in traditional cartoonists stetsons.
An out take from the earlier group shot where we tried to get Señor Birch to stand still for a second.
…not easy.
All photos by and copyright of Kasia Kowalska unless otherwise stated.
Latest Blog
by Glenn Marshall
What’s your favourite cartoon book?
March 2, 2019 in Comment, General
We’ve been talking in the inner sanctums of the PCO forum about favourite books on cartoons/cartoonists. Here I share some of our choices:
Steve Jones (Jonesy)
I could easily have gone with Sempe, Stauber or Ungerer – Steadman, in particular, was a really close call – but Matt Jones’ mighty labour of love blew me away. Ronald Searle should be worshipped as a god.
Pete Dredge
Apologies for blatant trumpet blowing and self promotion. It was a long time ago (1982). It won’t happen again. When my cartoon career first took off in 1976 I had quite a purple patch (now a long distant memory!) where everything I touched seemed to turn to gold (plate)! Today I’m scratching around (does the Weekly News still take gags??) but I can look back at those early successes with a nostalgic eye and be somewhat grateful that there was a thriving market where a half decent cartoonist could get his/her foot on the ladder.
To be included in that list of Hitler’s favourite (mainly US) cartoonists still gives me a thrill. Whatever happened to those other guys?
Here’s a sample page from that tome:
Rupert Besley
No question which for me. It’s the book I grew up with and where I first discovered the joy of cartoons. Four books actually (Down With Skool!, How to be Topp, Whizz for Atomms & Back in the Jug Agane). My father was a headteacher and a new volume arrived each Christmas, to be fought over by the rest of the family for the rest of the year. The cover below is from a later omnibus edition.
The Willans/Searle collaboration was that rare thing in books, a perfect meeting of brilliant minds, with text and illustrations equally superb, each enhancing the other. And just as funny 60 years on.
Wilbur Dawbarn
A Searle book was the first thing to come to my mind, too. We could probably do a blog post purely on Searle books!
To throw in something different, then, here’s a collection of the also brilliant but considerably underrated Rowland Emett. What I love about Emett is the way he caricatured not just people, but trains and other vehicles, buildings, trees… everything! An absolute master of composition and chaos. Richard Ingrams once told me he didn’t like Emett’s stuff, it was ‘too spidery’, I think he said. The utter heathen.
Cathy Simpson
The Complete Molesworth is a strong contender, but perhaps ‘Bert Fegg’s Nasty Book for Boys & Girls’ does it for me. A friend gave me a copy of it when I was 16, and it was the first time I’d come across the work of the sorely-missed Martin Honeysett.
Roger Penwill
Russell Brockbank was a very early influence. He had a cartoon in the back of the weekly The Motor in the 50’s and 60’s. I read that mag every week as I was keen on cars (Dad worked for Ford’s) and loved the weekly dose of Brockbank humour. Over The Line is a typical collection, published in 1955.
Matthew Buck
Always enjoyed Philip Thompson and Mel Calman’s work together over many years.
Guy Venables
This was bought for me on Christmas 1981 and the foreword is by Tom Wolfe. It is a definitive collection of the finest satirical cartoonists from all over the world covering from the 60s to the 80s. Bletchman, Booth, Descloozeaux, Feiffer, Francois, Flora, Gorey, Koren, Bill Lee, Le-Tin, Levine, Mihaesco, Myers, Osbourn, Rauch, Roth, Searle, Steadman, Sempe, Sorel, Ungerer and Wilson. The young cartoonists brain couldn’t want a better introduction to satirical cartooning than this book which explained to me the sheer width of styles and scale of ambition ideas and narratives could have. If you haven’t got it, you should get it. Without it I probably wouldn’t have become a cartoonist.
Glenn Marshall
I could quite easily have plumped for the wonderful ‘Ronald Searle’s America’ book already chosen by Jonesy but instead I’ll pick this one on Timothy Birdsall (who Searle was a fan of) given to me by a friend. Shamefully I didn’t know his work at all, which appeared in Private Eye, The Spectator and The Sunday Times. He was more widely known for his regular appearances drawing live on the BBC show ‘That Was The Week That Was’. Here he is explaining how political cartoons are made.
I love his smudgy and yet detailed style. Sadly he died tragically young aged just 27 in 1963.
There should be a few suggestions here to send you scurrying to eBay but what are your favourites? Let us know in the comments section below.
Tags: Cathy Simpson, Geoffrey Willians, Glenn Marshall, Guy Venables, Jonesy, Man Bites Man, Martin Honeysett, Matt Buck, Matt Jones, Mel Calman, Pete Dredge, Private Eye, Roger Penwill, Ronald Searle, Ronald Searle's America, Rowland Emett, Rupert Besley, Russell Brockbank, Steve Jones, That Was The Week That Was, The Complete Molesworth, The Spectator, Timothy Birdsall, Wilbur Dawbarn 3 Comments »