Good time to support the Cartoon Museum

"Ohmigod, what big ears she has! Ohmigod, what a big nose she has! ..."

Here's another cartoon from the Animal Crackers exhibition at the Cartoon Museum in London. This is an old Private Eye one. The exhibition has almost a month to run (it finishes October 21) so get along to see it if you can.

The museum took a bit of a beating when it comes to visitor numbers during the Olympics, and has started opening seven days a week to make up the shortfall, so now is the ideal time to support it.

 
I took my kids along to see Animal Crackers recently and they had a great time. There's a "cartoon trail" for them to take part in and plenty of opportunity to create your own cartoons, above. The next exhibition, from October 24, celebrates 75 years of The Dandy, so I'm sure we'll all get along to that one too.

Buy Royston's cartoon book ... also available in the Cartoon Museum shop!

The cartoon that keeps on giving

I've got three cartoons in the exhibition Animal Crackers, which opens at the Cartoon Museum in London today. Go see it if you're in the city this summer, it's funnier than the Olympic Games.

I was chuffed that my penguin and polar bear cartoon was used on the invitation to the private view, above, which I attended last night. For a cartoon that I had zero expectation for when I drew it in 2006, it seems to have taken on a life of its own.

It was originally in Reader's Digest, then it went on an expedition to the Antarctic, and later was used on a fundraising T-shirt for a bipolar disorder charity. I've also used it myself as a business card, a Christmas card and it gave me the idea to do a Pengiun Books spoof for the cover of my book of cartoons.

And throughout its many incarnations, I continue to hear of some people saying they don't get it. Which is fine, you can't please all the people all the time. I myself don't know the answer to one question: which one is in the wrong cartoon?

Footnote: The Animal Crackers exhibition is divided into themed sections. This one is in the Polar Opposites section where I was pleased, and a little humbled, to see it alongside this masterful piece by Mike Williams.

Cartoon tribute to H.M. Bateman

The man who bought a sofa that was not in a sale

I can heartily recommend the exhibition H.M. Bateman: The Man Who Went Mad on Paper which is currently at the Cartoon Museum in London. For sheer draughtsmanship it's one of the best shows I've seen there.

Bateman was famous for his "The man who ..." cartoons, depicting social gaffes of the day. The cartoon above, which appeared in Prospect last year, is an attempt to use the Bateman template in a modern scenario. Quite a few contemporary cartoonists have done this.

It was fun to draw, mixing my own style with elements of Bateman's. I used The girl who ordered a glass of milk at the Café Royal, below, as inspiration.

Click here to buy Royston's cartoon book

Cartoons in 'Ink and the Bottle' exhibition

I've got a couple of cartoons in the above exhibition at the Cartoon Museum in London. Neither are quite as colourful as the Donald McGill cartoon above, because they're the original ink drawings that were later scanned and coloured, using Photoshop, for Reader's Digest.

Here's one of them, a spin on a well-worn theme ...

"Bloody students."

As you've probably gathered, all the cartoons in the show are on a drinking theme. I saw it last night and it's very well put together, covering the good and bad points of Britain's favourite leisure activity.

The exhibition is not chronological, instead cartoons are linked by different aspects of the theme. It's fun to see how many similarities there are, despite the different times, between Ally Sloper, Andy Capp, and Viz. Go see.

UPDATE: The Radio 4 discussion on the Ink and the Bottle exhibition is online: Listen here

More HMV dog cartoons (scroll down).

A very cartoony weekend

The Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain is 50 years old on Thursday. We celebrated at the weekend with a party, lots of food and drink, and a very big cake.

It took place in the pub off London's Fleet Street where it all began (well, actually a pub which stands on the site of the pub where it all began, but that doesn't sound quite as good!) on April Fool’s Day, appropriately for cartoonists, 1960.

I made a cartoony weekend of it, meeting up with fellow cartoonists to attend the UK Web and Mini Comix Thing, above, where I spent much more money than planned, as well as the brilliant Ronald Searle at 90 exhibition at the Cartoon Museum.

On Friday I also checked out the smaller Searle show at the Chris Beetles Gallery and went to see Exit Through the Gift Shop, the excellent film by Banksy, the street artist and, some would say, a cartoonist writ large (see above example from the Banksy website).

All-in-all, a fun and inspiring weekend. And now, it's back to work ...

UPDATE: There's a fuller report on the Comix Thing over at
Tim Harries' blog

Royston's portfolio website

Cartoon exhibition: A Beano beano

Last week I went to a preview of the Beano and Dandy Birthday Bash exhibition which is currently running at the Cartoon Museum in London. Here's a short review I wrote for the PCO blog:

I attended the preview of Beano and Dandy show and can report that, as you would expect, it's great fun.

For the cartoonist geeks among us it's a chance to peer up close at original artwork drawn by some of the much-loved masters of comic art, such as Ken Reid and Dudley Watkins.

But there's plenty for the younger comic readers too, including activities and quizzes. Can you name all nine Bash Street Kids?

The exhibition spans eight decades and takes in all the Beano and Dandy characters you'd expect to see, from the iconic figureheads of Dennis the Menace and Desperate Dan to much-loved characters from the past such as Brassneck, Winker Watson and Pansy Potter (The Strongman's Daughter, of course).

A highlight for me was the wartime strip showing Lord Snooty taking on Adolf Hitler. Der Führer is unhappy that the Beano is keeping the British nation cheerful and vows to get rid of it. But Snooty and his pals have other ideas. A classic.

I'll certainly be returning with my kids, and I suggest that anyone with a love of British comics puts it on their must-see list for the summer and autumn. The exhibition runs until November 2.

The museum is running Beano and Dandy events for children throughout August, including family fun days, cartooning masterclass sessions, and chances to meet Beano artists. For more, visit the Cartoon Museum website.

Royston's portfolio website

Review: Pont at the Cartoon Museum

I wrote a review of the exhibition Pont: Observing the British at Home and Abroad, which is at the Cartoon Museum in London, for the Professional Cartoonists' Organisation blog. Here it is:

It's probably asking for trouble to use the word "important" in relation to a cartoon exhibition, but it seems applicable here as Pont, who was known as Graham Laidler to his mum, is so often overlooked when histories of cartooning are written.

Also, these cartoons from the 1930s were clearly instrumental in helping to create the magazine cartoon as we know it today. And a tribute to their worth is the fact that so many are laugh-out-loud funny, even now.

Pont's The British Character cartoons, which appeared in Punch and make up a large chunk of the show, still seem to hit the nail on the head. Even the captions in themselves are funny: "Fondness for laughing at our own anecdotes"; "Passion for not forgetting the moderately great"; and, my particular favourite, "A tendency to leave the washing-up till later".

The drawings demand your attention, and repay you with lots of brilliant details. Look at that impatient left foot in the drawing above! In "Life in the Flat Above", part of the Popular Misconceptions series, we see every member of the family jumping up and down on the floor and clanging pots, but look closer and you see that figures in the paintings on the walls, including an elephant, are also jumping.

Laidler died at 32, a tragically short life, but what a groundbreaking legacy he left. The cartoon above looks like a 1930s precursor to the melancholy of Charles Schulz's Peanuts.

So it's an important show, but it's mostly just very, very funny. The exhibition, which includes a comprehensive and reasonably priced catalogue, is at the Cartoon Museum until July 27. Go and see it.

The Cartoon Museum website

The Professional Cartoonists' Organisation