Herne Bay Cartoon Festival 2022

Any idiot can be prime minister: Here's me with my seaside peep board on Herne Bay Pier at the weekend. The Tory leadership contest rumbles on but this might still be relevant next year, the tenth anniversary of the Herne Bay Cartoon Festival, if we end up with another general election.

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Setting sail for the Herne Bay Cartoon Festival

I drew the poster for this year's Herne Bay Cartoon Festival. Click to enlarge. You'll need to, I packed a lot of jokes into it. Some of them are even not about Covid.

The main festival exhibition is now up at Beach Creative, I've got a few cartoons in there. Some of them are even not about Covid. And there's a Giles exhibition at the Seaside Museum. The live event takes place on the Pier this Sunday (August 1).

You'll find all the details you need over at the Procartoonists.org blog.

Brexit and fake news at Herne Bay Cartoon Festival

Pic: Kerry Riley

Here's me -- suppressing that moment of panic when faced by a huge blank board -- at the Herne Bay Cartoon Festival, which I helped organise, on Sunday 6 August.

I filled the board with Brexit-based gags as seen in Private Eye and New Statesman. Here's a few of them.

Bearing in mind the result of the EU referendum, I assume my efforts were only appreciated by 48 per cent of the audience (probably less as Herne Bay is a bit Ukippy). Some people certainly remained stony-faced.

But it wasn't all biting political satire. As the event was held on the Pier for the first time all the cartoonists got to go on the merry-go-round at the same time. Here's me blowing my own trumpet* with Rich Skipworth and Des Buckley.

Pic: Zoom Rockman

*It's not mine it's Des's. And it's a bugle.

I co-curated the main festival exhibition at Beach Creative gallery, which was full of top-notch stuff, as ever. Lots of cartoons on fake news and Donald Trump. Here's a couple of mine.

Cartoonist Glenn Marshall put together a "fringe" show Mona Lisa: Not Happy, consisting of parodies of the famous painting in cartoons and other art forms. Here's one of my contributions, a foray into Photoshop art.

There was the usual stuff you get at a festival: cartoonists drinking, playing ukulele etc. but I'll spare you the pics. All in all, another cracking  Herne Bay festival.

I wrote a fuller report, with lots of pictures, for the Procartoonists blog which you can read here.

Click here to buy Royston's cartoon books

Herne Bay Cartoon Festival 2016

Here are a couple of my cartoons from the exhibition Postcards from the Seaside, part of this year's Herne Bay Cartoon Festival, in which many of the cartoons were modern takes on traditional seaside postcards, many in the style of Donald McGill, the acknowledged master of the genre.

The cartoon above refers to McGill's notorious, much-prosecuted postcard "A Stick of Rock, Cock?", below.

 
As usual there was a live event in the Bandstand on Herne Bay seafront, where there was much drawing of cartoons. Photo by Kasia Kowalska.


Here are a couple drawn on the shared boards (i.e. with lots of other cartoonists) during the afternoon. It's always nice to hear laughter for cartoons that have previously been rejected by several magazines, as these two have. Clearly this was an audience of great wit and taste ...


"Did you know you may be entitled to PPI compensation?"

"Ah, summer! The sun! The long nights! The annual Labour leadership campaign!"

I put together a photo report on the event which you can see at the Professional Cartoonists' Organisation blog.

Herne Bay Cartoon Festival 2015

Having helped organise the Herne Bay Cartoon Festival on 2 August, and having put together articles for the Procartoonists blog and the Cartoonists' Club magazine about it, I thought I should probably put something on my own blog before the month is out.

The photo above by Gerard Wyman, in which I'm contributing to one of the "communal" boards, sums up the day for me: I'm wearing a silly hat to keep off the sun and sitting on the ground, knackered after an exhausting but hugely fun day. There's a lot more on the aforementioned Procartoonists blog, but here are a few other Herne Bay bits and pieces.

There were many cartoons about nuisance seagulls -- as they have been in the news recently and this was a seaside cartoon festival -- here's one of my contributions. Pic by Karol Steele.

This photo by Kasia Kowalska was taken at the opening of the Martin Honeysett exhibition. I mentioned to Tim Harries that we look like the worst ever blues duo, so he made this. 

I'm not sure that it would be easy listening, to be honest.

Talking of easy listening ... here's a cartoon from the main festival exhibition. Yes, I am a ukulele player but I do understand that the ubiquity of ukuleles these days is, er, not appreciated by everyone.

Cuttings from the Herne Bay Gazette. Click to enlarge and read

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On seaside fun and being "budding"

I'm a bit late getting around to blogging about this but the Beside the Surrealside cartooning event in Herne Bay was a great success in glorious sunshine. Thanks to Kasia Kowalska for the picture above. And here's a report from the Herne Bay Gazette. Click the image to enlarge and read.

The Guardian mention that is referred to in the piece was a "reader's cartoons" feature they ran via their website. A handful of the submitted cartoons appeared in the Guardian and in an online piece.

It was really aimed at "budding" and "aspiring" cartoonists, but as I was saying to someone at Herne Bay, you never feel established as a freelance cartoonist anyway, as there's so much rejection involved! And it was nice to see a cartoon turned down by all the magazines get some exposure in print at last.

Click here to buy Royston's cartoon books

Cartoonists off to the seaside again

Here's a cartoon I submitted for the exhibition Cartoonists Beside the Surrealside which can be seen at the Beach Creative gallery, Herne Bay, from Wednesday 30 July until Tuesday 12 August. The show celebrates the town's link with Marcel Duchamp, like last year's event, so many of the cartoons will be art-themed.

I'll be one of the cartoonists taking part in the live drawing element of the event, which will be on Sunday 3 August (midday-5pm). Here's a picture of a bunch of us from last year.

Left to right: me, Kipper Williams and Chris Burke. Photo by Kasia Kowalska

It was a glorious day both in terms of weather and enjoyment, so we're hoping to do it all again at this year's event, which is supported by Arts Council England. Here's the event poster (note: the exhibition dates have been extended since the was made) drawn by Ian Baker.

Click here to buy Royston's cartoon book

Art-toonists in Herne Bay this weekend

I'll be at the above event in Herne Bay, Kent, this weekend (poster © Hunt Emerson). It's part of the Duchamp in Herne Bay festival, which marks 100 years since the artist Marcel Duchamp visited the town.

In the pranksterish spirit of the godfather of conceptual art (he's the urinal guy) many of the cartooning events have a certain playful air to them. That's another way of saying I'm really not sure what we'll be doing, but I'm sure it'll be fun!

Cartoons on the theme of art will be on display, many in various Shepherd Neame pub toilets (we're back to the urinal again) throughout the town. Here's one that appears in the slightly more salubrious setting of the official event programme.

There is a heck of lot of Duchamp in Herne Bay stuff going on over the next few weeks, not just the cartoon-based events, and it looks well worth a visit. You can read the programme online or visit the official website.