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.

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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.

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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

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.

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Going live in Herne Bay

The Cartoonists in the Bandstand event in Herne Bay on August 3rd was a huge success (I'm a bit late to writing about this, but I've been away for a week).

As the event was celebrating 100 years since Marcel Duchamp lived in the town, we all drew loads of art-based cartoons. There were more to be seen in galleries and pubs. Here's me imagining the birth of the art critic, while getting sunburnt. (Photo above by Kasia Kowalska).

I put together a photo-based account of the day here.

"No! It is picture of hunt! It not 'really about inner conflict'!" 

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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.

Shrewsbury 2013: Doze were the days

Here is my Big Board cartoon from 10th Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, which took place at the weekend. You can see, right, that I used a homemade template, Banksy-style, to get the "Buffering" icon right. I wasn't going to risk mucking that up.

This year I went for a very loose look and had it finished in about three and a half hours. A crucial decision was to apply the acrylic paints straight after the pencilling, then ink the lines. It saves having to re-ink when you paint over lines.

What I love about the festival is getting feedback from the public, not something cartoonists usually experience. It was good to hear the recognition as I drew. Many women and children claimed that this was familiar behaviour from their husbands/fathers.

But you can't please all of the people: a different version of the "Buffering" cartoon appeared in the main festival exhibition and when I arrived at the private view somebody was trying to explain it to the Mayor.

"Do you ever get a hollow feeling when you've looked forward to something for ages and then it finally happens?"

This Daleks cartoon also featured in the exhibition and was a seller. I seem to have drawn quite a lot of Daleks at Shrewsbury over the years (always a hit with the kids) and this one seemed appropriate with the festival theme of "Time" and the upcoming 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. It was also included in a feature by the BBC on ten years of the festival. The exhibition runs until May 6 then it goes on tour (details here).

Some more links: see a great short video on the festival here and a slideshow of all the boards here.

As ever, as well as the live drawing and attending of exhibitions, there was much drinking, singing and carousing. But the least said about that the better. Feel free to add a caption to this picture.

Photo: Clive Goddard. I think. Frankly, there are so many pics of half-cut cartoonists flying around online right now, it's hard to keep track.

Kicking it old school: My Big Board

Note: Draw this ... but in the olden days
"What? There's no 'Victorianise' filter in Photoshop??"

This was attached to my Big Board at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival at the weekend, where the theme was Sport. I'd originally planned something else but they wanted a Victorian theme for the Market Square boards, to celebrate the "Olympian Games" held in nearby Much Wenlock in 1850, which inspired the revival of the modern Olympics.

The festival programme featured my old "offside" cartoon, which I'd submitted for exhibition, so I thought it would be fun to do a Victorian take on that. Of course, anyone watching me draw could see that despite the jokey notice above, I had the whole thing worked out beforehand and was working from that. I'd scaled the drawing: 6in by 8in for the 6ft by 8ft board. Taking no chances!

I gave all the characters Victorian garb, the mug became a chintzy teacup, the ketchup bottle became an early bottle of "Heinz's Catsup" (thank you Google Image Search) and there was even a cameo role for the New Yorker's Victorian dandy Eustace Tilley, on the left, an in-joke spotted by a few cartoonists when I'd completed the board.

I had a few hours to do the pencilling after arriving in Shrewsbury on Friday afternoon. Some cartoonists like to do a "big reveal" with the punchline, but I figured that there were so many people coming and going, I may as well say what the joke was from the beginning. People can usually "get it" even when the drawing is not quite finished.

I'd decided to paint the cartoon in sepia tones and set about this on the Saturday. I wasn't the only cartoonist to settle on this plan of action, as you can see from Clive Goddard's cartoon on the left behind mine, and there were others. At first I found it a bit of a struggle, as I started off way too dark at the top and bottom. (Thanks to Timothy King for this photo.)

Here's how it came out in the end. I was fairly pleased with it, but having never done a sepia painting before I felt like I wanted to do another based on what I'd learned. But maybe not a 6ft by 8ft one. It got some great reactions though, so I was happy enough as I headed off to the pub...

"I must say, your explanation of the offside rule was most pertinent."

Here's a time-lapse video, put together by Gerard Whyman, of the Big Boards being painted. I'm in here at 4.27 ...



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Review of the Year type thing

It must be time for what reality-TV presenters call my "best bits", a round-up of the highlights of my cartooning year, as seen through this blog (mostly).

Yes, I know it's basically a round robin, but at least I didn't print it out with dodgy festive clip art around the edge and I'm not boring you about my kids' achievements or any challenging health issues, so cut me some slack.




Presenting a talk and slideshow about my cartoons for the first time was certainly a high point of the year for me. I wrote about that experience here. It was a buzz getting an audience reaction to my cartoons.

The Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, the fifth I've attended, below, was great as usual, and I'm now in the process of trying to think up cartoons on an Olympics theme for next April's festival. More live cartooning took place at the Big Draw, where I fought valiantly in the Battle of the Cartoonists – didn't win though.

It was great to be in an exhibition at the Cartoon Museum for the first time. Ink and the Bottle is entirely cartoons about drinking. Here's another from the exhibition, and a festive one too ...

"Oh no, look who's in..."
Another first for me was spending the General Election night at the Groucho Club. We drew lots of cartoons and people supplied us with lots of free booze as a result. That was a better outcome than the election. Here's a cartoon about the fallout from that ...

"Remember, it's not the winning that's important, it's the not losing ..."

More drunkenness ... this year the Cartoonist's Club of Great Britain celebrated its 50th, so we had a party and we even kicked it old school with a convention at Butlins.

"Life's a beach."
I usually include a couple of cartoons that went down well in this round-up. This cloudspotters' cartoon, which I thought was too odd to sell, generated a lot of good feedback.


"Ha ha, that cloud looks just like Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, 1929-1931."

A personal favourite was my Bayeux Tapestry cartoon. That also got a lot of reaction, though quite a bit was of the "I don't get it" variety. Scoring a hat-trick in the Reader's Digest caption competition caused me to do a lap of honour around the room.

I should mention all the great cartoons by other people I've seen this year in exhibitions, many of which I wrote about for the PCO's Bloghorn: Ray Lowry, Fougasse, Toy Tales, Modern Toss, Rude Britannia, and Roland Searle.

And finally, it's great to know that I can head into 2011 knowing that I am officially as funny as Matt!

If you've enjoyed my cartoons this year, why not commission me to draw some for you in 2011!