At the 2014 Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival

I attended the 11th Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival last weekend, the 9th consecutive one I have been to. Below is my Big Board cartoon (the boards are 8ft by 6ft) drawn at the event. It's a compilation of cartoons I've drawn over the years of Nipper the HMV dog, as the festival theme was Music. Click to enlarge and see the gags.

As well as the Big Board I contributed to the instant cartoons exhibition in the Market Square, drawing music cartoons on the spot. Here's me being indecisive over which pen to use. (Photo, and the one at the top, by Kasia Kowalska)

And here's a very silly music-themed gag from the instant cartoons exhibition, which seemed to go down well, as very silly cartoons usually do.

For the first time I was also on the Melodrawma team, helping draw a live comic strip to the accompaniment of narration, music and bizarre sound effects. Words and photos can't do justice to the craziness of the Melodrawma so you'll have to just go along next year to see what that is all about!

Meanwhile, there's more on Shrewsbury at the Procartoonists blog.

Click here to buy Royston's NEW 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).