Cartoon workshops at the Shrewsbury festival

Tim Harries running a cartoon workshop Click image to enlarge

Cartoon workshops are a key part of the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival, and PCO members Tim Harries and Andy Gilbert will be running two of them.

Tim will host a workshop called Create a Comic Strip on Saturday (April 19) at Shropshire Wildlife Trust, 2pm–4pm. This is aimed at children aged 8 to 12 and families.

Andy’s workshop is called Animal Antics and is aimed at younger children, ages 6 to 11. It’s designed to help them to draw cartoon animals. This workshop is also on Saturday, from 10.30am - 12.30pm, and is held at Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery.

Both are drop-in workshops and are free, with no need to book. Children must be accompanied.

There are other workshops at the festival plus a Cartoon Clinic, where budding cartoonists of all ages are invited to bring their work for a critique and some tips from the professionals. See the events section of the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival website for more details.

British cartoon talent

How big is your pencil?

Bloghorn noticed yesterday that artist David Hockney has donated his largest ever painting to the Tate Britain museum in London. The enormous picture is called "Bigger Trees Near Warter" and he's made a pun in the title. It's a play on words with a small village in East Yorkshire. This art behaviour is bit like that made, day-to-day, by cartoonists.

Some of our own oversized art talents will be big boarding at the Shrewsbury cartoon festival in a couple of weeks time. The picture here should help explain exactly what they will be doing and Bloghorn will be publishing the full list of the participating PCO cartoonists soon.

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival Big Boards

British cartoon talent

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival: A family thing

The Guardian's Family section yesterday listed the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival as one of its Things to do with your family ...

The paper admits, however, that the talk by its own Steve Bell may not be suitable for all ages!

British cartoon talent

PCO Procartoonists - What we do

The profession and craft of cartooning (from gag drawings and pocket-sized newspaper jokes to comics strips and magazines, from editorial drawings and commercial advertising to digital monitors and billboards) has suffered some economic blows over the past decade. These have often been connected to the decline in the fortunes of the print industry.
But, despite this, the PCO is sure that - though undervalued by some in the UK - intelligent drawing remains an art-form which people continue to love to see and read. The map below, bears this knowledge out, as it shows you the locations of some of our many digital visitors this week.

We want to put our art in front of those people in a more direct way than we have previously done and we are, as an organisation, set up to promote and advertise the best of the active UK cartoon art world.
We seek to reach the three major constituencies which support our art form - editors of media outlets, both traditional and digital, art buyers in commercial companies and the reading public. We are doing this through three channels - the internet, our own printed magazine, The Foghorn, and at large public events like the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival and The Big Draw. We also help to make and run bespoke, or single-issue, cartoon exhibitions like this one, which are often on tour and shown in major cities in the UK and Europe.
As you'd expect, we have excellent connections in the world of art and business and work closely with the national Cartoon Museum, the Cartoon Hub at the University of Kent, the Political Cartoon Gallery and other interested galleries and arts bodies, including the cartoonists’ social clubs, the British Cartoonists’ Association and the Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain. We,in our own way, cover the UK. We also have excellent links abroad through our collaboration with European cartooning organisations inside Feco. If you are curious about our work and what it can do for you, you can contact us from our main portfolio site which lives here.

Andy Davey – Chairman of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation

British cartoon talent

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival and the UK Cartoon Museum

The curator of the UK's national Cartoon Museum Anita O'Brien has contributed an exhibition to the Shrewsbury festival this year. This cartoon from Steve (Bestie) Best is one of the many on show now. You can click the cartoon to see a larger version.

British cartoon talent

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival: another preview

Art critic cartoon by Chris Madden

Another sneak preview of submitted work for the "But is it Art?" show at the forthcoming Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival. This cartoon is by Chris Madden. Bloghorn says click M for Madden.

British cartoon talent

The cartoonist in 2009

Preparations for the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival 2009 are well under way.

This year's festival theme is The Science of Nature to coincide with the town's year-long celebration of Shropshire lad Charles Darwin’s birth. This year also coincides with the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book On the Origin of Species.

The Guardian’s Steve Bell will be exhibiting his unique take on “Anthropomorphism”; expect monkeys, Dubya, penguins, Blair, Brown and more.

There will be an exhibition of historical science cartoons from the nineteenth century that Darwin himself is likely to have have seen. These have been borrowed from collections at the University of Kent at Canterbury, the British Museum print room and the National Cartoon Museum. Curation is by Adrian Plant at the Shrewsbury Museum and is underway now.

And there will be a visiting exhibition from internationally regarded Czech cartoonist Miroslav Bartak who draws jokes from the miracles of modern science.

A spokescartoonist for the organising committee offered Bloghorn this quote:

"The funding is, as ever, as tight as grandma on the absinthe, but the all-hands-to-the-wheel attitude of the stout yeomanry on the ground will bring a fat ray of sunshine into next April’s showers. The festival weekend is the 24th-26th April 2009 although the exhibitions will run through April."

Bloghorn would like to urge any commercial enterprise interested in associating their name with the potent mixture of large crowds, extreme levity and high seriousness to contact the organisers from here.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent
Subscribe to The Foghorn - our print cartoon magazine

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival

Cartoon by PCO member Royston Robertson (after Damien Hirst) submitted for the "But is it Art?" exhibition

The Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival is fast approaching. The 2008 event takes place on the weekend of April 18-20.

The theme this year is "Art" and one of the highlights will be an exhibition of new work by festival cartoonists, including many PCO members, entitled "But is it Art?" which will run from March 30 until April 26.

British cartoon talent

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival is a big hit

Bloghorn would like to offer some applause to the official organisers and sponsors of the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival, as the main event weekend has just passed by. More than 40 cartoonists attended and with a little light herding they provided the public with a large range of activities over three days and at numerous venues.

We shall be publishing some reports on those activities and celebrating some of the art and entertainment from the Shrewsbury festival here on Bloghorn.

British cartoon talent

Cartoon exhibition: Dave Follows

As well as the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, April also brings with it a long-awaited exhibition celebrating the life and work of the late Dave Follows. It takes place at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, from April 19 – June 29.

Dave, who died in 2003, left a significant legacy of artwork that spans three decades. His work appeared in newspapers, comics, and magazines all over the world, including the Sunday Times supplement Funday Times (weekly for 15 years), more than 20 local newspapers, such as the North Staffordshire Evening Sentinel (daily for 20 years), and Buster comic.

Dave lived in Stafford all his life. He had a special soft spot for the Potteries and its people. His daily cartoon strip May un Mar Lady, written in Potteries dialect, first appeared on July 8, 1985, in the Sentinel and was a local institution for nearly 20 years.

The exhibition, May un Mar Lady: Three Decades of Cartooning by Dave Follows, includes a huge selection of Dave’s original cartoons, a reconstruction of his work area, life-size cartoon figures, a May un Mar Lady pilot animation, and a preview screening of a documentary exploring the Potteries dialect in the context of Dave’s cartoons by the Stoke-On-Trent based film production company Inspired Film And Video.

British cartoon talent

Cartoon workshops: inky fingers and flying pickles

Workshops and cartoon "clinics" were a major part of the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival as usual this year, and PCO members Andy Gilbert, Paul Hardman and Tim Harries were at the forefront, helping members of the public to develop their cartooning skills.

Here's Tim Harries on how he ran his "Create a Comic Strip" workshop:

"I explained the mechanics of producing a three panel strip, from character design, story refinement to actual drawing techniques. This was all duly noted and I suspect roundly ignored by several of the more boisterous participants, judging by the finished strips. I'm not complaining mind you, invariably the strips produced that day were energetic, great fun and frankly bonkers.

"Children have a terrific ability to just get on with the business of drawing, unencumbered by any doubts regarding their artwork. The young chap finishing off his 12-panel creation Bob the Flying Pickle was in no doubt that Bob was indeed a pickle that flew. More critical eyes would have perhaps renamed him 'Bob the wobbly squiggle' but that's missing the point. Fun was being had, ideas were being explored and pickles were indeed flying. And you can't say fairer than that."



Photos by Gerard Whyman.

Click here for British cartoon talent

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival - Ralph Steadman on Martin Amis

Among the exhibits in the caricature show at this year’s Shrewsbury cartoon festival is this drawing of author Martin Amis by Ralph Steadman.
British cartoon talent

Shrewsbury international cartoon festival - and other events

"But is it Art?" by PCOer Nathan Ariss – another contribution to Bloghorn's sneak preview of a major exhibition which opens in less than a month's time and is part of this year's Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival.
In other news, PCOer Clive Collins, a previous cartoonist of the month here, alerts us to a one-off event at the Barbican centre in central London where former Punch cartoonist and Oscar winner Bruce Petty is showing his film called Global Haywire. Clive describes Australian Bruce's work as in the "zany, big explosive cartoons vein". Sounds good to us. You can find out more about Petty's film here.

British cartoon talent

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival

PCO cartoonist William Rudling on the joy of painting.
This is another sneak preview of submitted work for the Is it Art exhibition from the forthcoming Shrewsbury cartoon festival.
British cartoon talent

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival: Six exhibitions open to the public

Six exhibitions of high-quality cartoon and comic art opened at the Shrewsbury festival yesterday evening. All free to enter and available to all, are the But is it Art? cartoon show and a one man show for Dave Brown of The Independent. The national UK Cartoon Museum has lent a collection for display and there is also a caricature show and contributions from cartoonists and artists from both Belgium and America.

British cartoon talent

Cartooning in the media: It's not all bad news

PCOer Royston Robertson says we cartoonists need to lighten up about media coverage of our profession

There’s no doubt that cartoons are enjoying an unusually high profile in the British media at the moment.

We’ve seen acres of coverage for the launch of new kids’ comic The DFC (left), the 70th anniversary of The Beano and Phill Jupitus’s comic strip programme on Radio Four. There has even been a graphic novel serialised in The Times.

So, are cartoonists happy about this? Not a bit of it.

I agree with Neil Dishington, who wrote on this blog yesterday that the Phill Jupitus thing was nothing special, but is that because we’re cartoonists and therefore he’s preaching to the converted? I think it’s likely that many listeners would have found Jupitus’s sincere enthusiasm about comic strips quite infectious.

Isn’t it a good thing that shows like these exist? Is it not the case that the only thing worse than the media talking about cartoons is the media not talking about cartoons?

But they misrepresent cartooning, some cartoonists cry, it’s obvious they don’t know what they’re talking about. Well, maybe. I’m sure I heard James Naughtie talking about "animators" at The Beano on the Today show on Monday, but is there a single profession that doesn’t think it is often misrepresented by the media? I know journalists who think the media misrepresents them.

Another common complaint is that any media obsession with cartoons is just a passing fad. Again, that may be true, perhaps they’re using cartoons to cheer us up amid all the credit crunch stuff, but then that is the role of most cartoons. And let’s not forget that the media treats many subjects in a faddish way before moving on to the next thing.

And as for the grumbling over celebs such as Jupitus drawing cartoons, cartooning has always been something where everyone wants to have a go. That's because it's fun. We often encourage that attitude, at events such as The Big Draw and the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival.

All you can do is keep on doing good cartoon work and hope that those who commission cartoons for publication will realise that it is best to go to a professional.

The PCO: Professional cartoon talent

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival video report from the Shropshire Star

Here is a link to a nice video report on part of the cartoon festival. This was produced by journalist Richard Tisdale who works at the Shropshire Star newspaper. Thanks Richard.
It's British cartoon talent

A Shrewsbury Big Boarder writes - about drawing

PCOer Pete Dredge writes about making a Big Board for the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival:

I've been in training for weeks now, aiming to be at peak fitness for the Big Board Challenge at Shrewsbury this month. Yes, the "knee-bending, back-stretching, squat-thrusting and magnum marker pen-clutching" exercise DVD has been dusted off once again in preparation for this most unnatural of acts for the normally indoor, horizontal A4 practitioner of the cartoon art. Rather like a finely tuned Test cricketer being asked to adjust to the Twenty20 version of the game, the entire spectacle is rather more entertaining for the uninitiated than for the true connoisseur of the art!

British cartoon talent

Shropshire gets ready for cartoon festival

As is only appropriate, the Shropshire Star newspaper today begins the countdown to the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival.

The event takes place on the weekend of April 18-20, but the main festival exhibition, entitled "But is it Art?", opens this Sunday (March 30) and runs until April 26.

Click on "But is it art", under Labels below, to see examples of many PCO members contributions to the show. Below is one from PCOer William Rudling.



British cartoon talent