Royston's best cartoons of 2024

I have put together a couple of short videos featuring some of my best cartoons from 2024, all published in magazines such as Private Eye, The Spectator, The Critic and others. The first video features topical/news-related cartoons and below there's a selection of more general gag cartoons.

Enjoy!

You want magazine cartoons? I got 'em

Here's a somewhat random selection of cartoons (I think this is what the young people call a pic dump) from various UK newsstand magazines over recent months. Enjoy! Click any image to enlarge.

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Zoom: A new cartoon genre

Who could have seen the Zoom cartoon emerging as almost a genre in its own right? But the rise in home-working this year, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, means I've been drawing video-conferencing quite a lot this year. Here are some examples, gag cartoons, an illustration on various Zoom scenarios and a trade magazine strip.

Problematic cartoon

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Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival 2019

I drew a Big Board at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival last weekend. That's me, above, with John Landers in the background. This year we were all indoors, at the Darwin Shopping Centre, a last-minute change as a result of so-called Storm Hannah. 

This is the finished board. Click to enlarge. The theme was "Animals" so I drew some animal-related cartoons with, inevitably, a Brexit slant. People laughed, always the hoped-for reaction, because I think everyone is quite exasperated by Brexit whether Remainer or a Leaver. It's not the first time I've done a board full of Brexit cartoons. Here's one from the Herne Bay Cartoon Festival in 2017. I may well do more, the way things are going ...

We made it to the Shropshire Star! Including a reappearance for my Dog's Pollocks cartoon, bottom. Click images to enlarge.

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Bumper cartoon selection!

Here's a bumper selection of cartoons published in magazines such as Private Eye, The Spectator and Prospect over recent months. In other words, it's the obligatory "I haven't updated this blog for ages" post!

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Post-Brexit hat-trick

I managed to get three cartoons in the Private Eye "Leave Special", a feat I was rather chuffed with but I'd rather we hadn't voted to leave the EU for it to happen!

All three were on a post-Brexit theme, here's one of them.

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In praise of gag cartoons

Here's an article I wrote for the Procartoonists blog five years ago, when I published my first collection of cartoons:

Whenever the media spotlight is turned on cartoons it is often those of a political variety. These cartoons shout the loudest and have news impact, but I think it's time to speak up for its modest cousin: the gag cartoon.

I have been drawing gag cartoons for the magazine market for about 15 years. I love the process of coming up with new ideas and, hopefully, getting them published.

Recently I've been sifting through my drawings from magazines such as Reader's Digest and Private Eye in order to put together a book collection. I'm not friends with any famous people so I had to write my own foreword for the book and decided to to put down exactly what it is I like so much about gag cartoons as a medium.

This was the crux of piece: "The single-panel joke is a perfect, self-contained unit of comedy, an instant hit of humour that doesn't demand much of your time."

I once heard the writer Will Self describe gags as "the haiku of cartoons". That may sound a little pretentious (from Will Self? Surely not?) but I think it's true, a gag cartoon is like a poem. Or a one-liner joke, perhaps. It is a small, carefully crafted article.

It doesn't have the grandeur or the, let's be honest, occasional self-importance of the political cartoon, but it is still designed to provoke a reaction: hopefully laughter.

I have heard some people claim that the gag cartoon is in some way an old-fashioned form. This is probably because it is so closely connected with magazines, so people think of crumpled, yellowing copies of Punch in the dentist's waiting room. Also, magazines and newspapers are "dead-tree technology", and that, we are constantly being told, is on the way out.

But, when you think about it, the gag cartoon is actually perfectly suited for this age of the short attention span and sits just as easily on a web page, or an iPad app, as a magazine page.

And long may it continue to do so.

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Social-networking cartoon: Like or dislike?

Here's a gag about Facebook's recent experiments to introduce emoticons to express sadness, sympathy etc., rather than just providing the usual Like button.

I'm not sounding the death-knell of this blog with this cartoon but I think we have to accept that since the rise of the likes of Twitter and Facebook, there is more "conversation" happening on social-media than on blogs these days ... hence this is my first post of the month!

I will continue to post stuff here, seems a shame to stop after more than ten years, but you can also find me on Twitter and Facebook ...

Magazine cartoons: Odd parenting

Here's a cartoon from the new issue of The Oldie. Hi-vis jackets is one of those topics I seem to go back to again and again. And here's another one about odd parenting from the last issue of Private Eye.

"You can over-encourage kids, you know."

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Drawing at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival

Photos © Mike Ashton, the festival photographer. Click images to enlarge

Belatedly, here are a couple of pics from this year's Shrewsbury festival. No time for a full blog post this year, but it was all the usual fun ... see Shrewsbury posts from over the past ten years! I drew a compendium of gags on my big board, on the festival theme of "Style".

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Magazine cartoon: The old switcheroo

"My dream is to walk with humans."

A cartoon from the new issue of Prospect magazine that employs the comedic device known as the old switcheroo i.e. you turn a concept on its head to create a joke.

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New cartoon book alert!

My second collection of magazine gag cartoons is available now. It's called Cartoons on Demand and is the same format as my first book i.e a 104-page glossy paperback with lots of cartoons in it from magazines such as Private Eye, Reader's Digest, Prospect and The Spectator.

Head over to my Online Shop where you can see some of the cartoons and buy a signed copy of the book for £5.99 plus £2 p+p. (Or, bargain hunters, you can buy it with the first one for just £11.49 plus £2 p+p). The perfect gift for the cartoon lover in your life etc etc.

Ten cartoons about Twitter

It occurred to me recently that I have done rather a lot of cartoons about Twitter. Here are ten of them. You can follow me on Twitter: @roystoncartoons

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