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.

Cartoons to the rescue!

Cartoons can be used to lift any subject matter that is complex, serious, dry or any of the above. Here is a selection of recent cartoons from business publications that cover insurance, law, technology, corporate finance, waste management and the health service.

Click here to find out how you can commission me to draw cartoons

And here's an excerpt from some live drawing during a talk at a business conference. The subject here was cyber-security, another potentially tricky one ...

Click here for more on live drawing

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.

Going live: Cartoons in front of an audience

Drawing live at conferences and events is something I've been doing more of over recent years, producing a memorable cartoon summary of speeches, workshops and discussions.

The process is variously known as graphic recording, scribing, sketchnotes, graphic facilitation, visualisation ... I tend to just call it live cartooning. The subjects can be many and varied, though this one, held last month, was something of a gift: a conference called Comedy on Stage and Page.

It was held at the University of Kent by the newly established British Stand-Up Comedy Archive (BSUCA) in association with the British Cartoon Archive. The photos are copyright BSUCA, and you can see more here.

Below is one of the finished pages. I completed eight by the end of the day's events. Get in touch if you have an event that could benefit from this kind of cartooning.

Click here to buy Royston's cartoon book

Live drawing: Love Them or Loathe Them

I did a live-drawing project last weekend as part of the Summer Squall arts festival in Ramsgate. It was called Love Them or Loathe Them and I drew a series of 3ft by 3ft cartoons of well-known divisive figures, such as the artist Tracey Emin, below, a local Margate girl ...

These were then pasted up on to the "Great Wall of Ramsgate", a hoarding around an empty building site which is itself the focus of local hate as it used to be the Pleasurama leisure park, was then supposed to become flats and is now a derelict eyesore.

The passing public were asked to give their views on the individuals depicted. We had ink pads saying “Love” or “Loathe” but they didn’t work very well, so instead people were invited to add comments with marker pens. And they didn’t hold back ...

Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence party was particularly divisive. He has since been confirmed as the Ukip candidate for the area at the general election next year, so this proved to be a poll of local opinion. I counted 15 against, 7 for and 3 undecided ...

Here are the rest of the drawings. The Radio 2 DJ Chris Evans ...

Once I'd added the blood to the teeth of the footballer Luis Suarez, below, I realised I probably shouldn't have bothered with the "Barcelona" on his shirt. But as the public had to match the cartoons with the names on the poster (top) I wanted to leave no room for doubt ...

Pop star Lady Gaga ...

Boris Johnson. Another one seeking election next year ...

TV "controversialist" Jeremy Clarkson ...

Former MP/writer/TV personality Ann Widdecombe. One of the last ones I drew, hence no comments yet ...

The comedian and wannabe revolutionary Russell Brand ...

X-factor judge and record company boss Simon Cowell. I might have pushed this one a bit far, he looks a bit like Kim Jong-un. The Kids got this one no problem, though ...

Toothsome journalist and TV personality Janet Street-Porter ...

The last one I drew was Alan Sugar and I freely admit that the likeness is not really there. Looks a bit too thuggish. However, I had a get-out clause with the speech bubbles ...

It was a really fun job and the public reaction was great. Many thanks to Jeni Butler for sorting out the logistics of the job beforehand and Sue Martin for her help on the day by, particularly by helping me with the wallpapering!

UPDATE: I neglected to take pic of all of the cartoons but thankfully @standuptoUKIP were on the case (posted on Twitter by @StopFarage). Looks like more comments have been added, and someone has tried to remove Suarez! Click image to enlarge.

Click here to buy Royston's cartoon books

Keeping busy

Here's me with fellow cartoonist Simon Ellinas and a wall full of cartoons at a recent live-drawing event in central London. It has been a very busy month cartoon-wise, hence I've not updated the blog for a while. I'll redress the balance next month when I post a load of Christmas cartoons. In the meantime, here's a recent one about gnomes.

"My son ran away to join the Terracotta Army."

Click here to buy Royston's cartoon book