Off to the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival

Tomorrow I'm travelling up to the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival. There are events from Friday through to Sunday. I'll mainly be taking part in events on Saturday, such as "reverse caricaturing" (you stick your head through a board, cartoonist draws a body ... like the cartoon above by Roger Penwill, only without the huge shrew), drawing a cartoon as part of a huge mural known as a Humural (geddit?) and doing a 6ft by 8ft "Big Board" cartoon.

So if you're in the area, come over and say hello! Many thanks to Shrewsbury area blogger Chrissy, of Chrissy Marie's Card Craft, for the very nice plug for the festival, and for this site, yesterday.

The Official Shrewsbury Site

Shrewsbury Festival stories on the PCO blog

History cartoons: How we used to laugh

Here's a cartoon that appears in the April issue of Prospect magazine. I'm no great history buff, but history cartoons are always fun to do.

Last year I illustrated a series of articles on life in medieval times ("How we used to fight ... eat ..." etc) which appeared in the BBC's Robin Hood Adventures magazine, a tie-in with the TV series. They were fun to do and I found that when the job finished I continued to think up gag cartoons on a medieval theme!

Here are a few of the cartoons from the "How we used to ..." series.





Cartoons by Royston

Cartoonists 2008: Partial exhibition online

Some of the work from Cartoonists 2008 is now up on the Chris Beetles Gallery website. Click the links below.

Cartoonists 2008: Partial exhibition
Direct link to my section

Cartoonists 2008: The private view

Last night I attended the private view of the Cartoonists 2008 show at the Chris Beetles Gallery. This was my first time showing work at a London gallery, so it was a pretty big deal for me.

There was a small section with my work in it and a few others scattered around the gallery. Ironically, the only one I didn't spot was the one I posted here on Monday. That doesn't mean it wasn't in there though because, believe me, there was a lot of cartoons by many cartoonists in the show, every square inch of wall space seemed to be covered, so I may have missed it.

To be honest, there were far too many cartoons to take in. As I've said on this blog before, cartoons are really meant to be seen in magazines and papers, and it's a bit weird seeing so many in one go. But it does give you a chance to see magnificent works by the likes of Mike Williams and Ed McLachlan in their full glory, rather than reduced to fill a two-column space. And of course, it gives people a chance to buy cartoons, which I'm certainly not knocking!

The place was packed, with lots of people clearly enjoying the cartoons. And it was a good chance to catch up with a few cartoonist pals and meet a few others for the first time. Add to this the free champagne, and the fact that I spotted a "sold" spot on one of my cartoons, and you have my idea of a good night.

******

Footnote: Probably the most surreal part of the night was seeing my biography on the wall. This is because it was written by me, just four days ago, and because they asked me to write something with humour in it, like the biography on my main website, rather than just listing where I've been published etc. So I emailed it to them, thinking, I'm sure this sillines can't be the kind of thing they're after really, and it was reproduced practically word for word. Here it is:

Royston Robertson

Born in Catterick, North Yorkshire, in 1968, Royston Robertson has been drawing cartoons for about as long as he can remember. At the age of seven, he wrote to the TV show Jim'll Fix It to ask if he could edit the Beano for a day. Jim never fixed it.

Between school and university, instead of going to work on a kibbutz, Royston ran the comic DoodleBug with a group of friends. Part fanzine, part Viz, it built up a strong following in the North East.

After university, Royston trained as a journalist, giving in to the “get a proper job” hype, and eventually worked for five years as a sub-editor at The Times. But all the time he kept drawing and selling gag cartoons and he gave up the day job in 2004.

He has been published in Private Eye, Reader's Digest, The Spectator, Prospect, New Statesman, The Oldie and many other publications throughout the world. He has also drawn cartoons for Oxford University Press, Children’s BBC and Scholastic Children’s Books.

Royston Robertson is now based in Broadstairs, Kent.

Jimmy Savile has still not replied to his letter.

Cartoons by Royston

Royston cartoons in Cartoonists 2008 exhibition

I have some original cartoons, including the one above, in an exhibition entitled Cartoonists 2008 which opens at the Chris Beetles Gallery in St James's, London, tomorrow (April 8) and runs until May 3.

It is the gallery’s second annual show devoted to the art of British cartooning, following on from the You Havin’ a Laugh? exhibition last year.

I'm in pretty humbling company, as the show features such big cartooning names as Ronald Searle, Matt, Banx, and Simon Bond, and magazine gag cartooning heroes such as Mike Williams and Ed McLachlan.

The gallery, at 8-10 Ryder Street, St James’s, London, is open from 10am-5.30pm, Monday to Saturday. Tel 020-7839 7551, email gallery@chrisbeetles.com or visit the website.

Cartoons by Royston

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival: The countdown begins

It's April Fools' Day! And rather appropriately I'm taking the afternoon off for the AGM of the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain. For AGM read "large number of beers with cartooning pals". Hurrah for that.

April also brings with it the 5th Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, a long weekend of diverse cartooning activity, which runs from April 18-20.

I've mentioned the festival here before and will do so again! If you can get along to it you won't be sorry. This will be my third one and I'm looking forward to another hugely enjoyable weekend.

Around 40 professional cartoonists and caricaturists from the UK and overseas will converge on Shrewsbury to cartoon and caricature for the public.

The theme of the 2008 festival is “Art” and one of the highlights will be an exhibition of new work by festival cartoonists entitled “But is it Art?” which has already opened at the town’s Bear Steps Gallery and runs until April 26. Here's one of the cartoons I submitted for the show.

The festival offers opportunities to see artists at work, with 20, including myself, drawing on huge boards in The Square, others drawing caricatures and some running cartoon workshops.

Other highlights: The Guardian's Steve Bell will again deliver an illustrated talk. I saw his talk two years ago and it was hilarious. He really brings the "If" strips to life. Not to be missed. "Rogues Gallery", a one-man exhibition by Dave Brown, political cartoonist for The Independent, has already opened at Bear Steps and will run until April 26.

Other exhibitions include: “Stars, Strips and Yankee Doodles” – a collection of cartoons from the USA including gags and comic strips from Mad magazine and Archie comics; an exhibition of cartoons on a climate change theme; and a collection of uncaptioned visual cartoons by Belgian artists.

And of course, original artwork, prints and other cartoon merchandise will be available. All in all, an essential weekend for anyone interested in cartoons.

In the meantime, I'm going to warm up at The Cartoonist pub, off Fleet Street. So I've got a train to catch ...

Some Shrewsbury links:

The Official Site

More "But is it Art?" cartoons by PCO members

What I got up to at Shrewsbury last year

Cartoons and "Art"

I was asked to write an article for the Australian Cartoonists' Association magazine Inkspot so I picked the subject of cartoons and their relationship to "Art" ... consequently I was a little confused to see the mag yesterday and find that that the opening paragraph is not mine and is about avian flu!

Then I got an email from my cartoonist colleague Clive Collins who was equally confused, saying it's his intro, from an earlier issue. I'm guessing that some page over-writing went on here. I thought I'd mention it on my blog in case anyone who read it thought I'd gone insane (perhaps affected by avian flu).

Below is a cartoon which accompanied the article (which I'll be reproducing on a Big Board at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival next month) and the article itself ... as it was meant to be seen.



The subject of Art, with a capital A, and its relation to cartoons, or otherwise, has been much discussed among the UK’s cartooning community lately.

This was partly prompted by an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, which was all about “laughing” and aimed to see if Art can be funny. So there was a machine that tells jokes, photographs of a man trying to fly, a video installation of a clown struggling through a forest – stop! Oh, my aching sides!

But the work of cartoonists, whose work is usually funny in a far less ham-fisted way, was not included. Cartoons, of course, are not seen as Art. There’s that capital letter again.

Another reason that Art is prominent in the minds of UK cartoonists is that it is also the theme of this year’s Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival, which takes place on the weekend of April 18-20. Many cartoonists have already submitted cartoons on the theme “But is it Art?” for the festival’s exhibition and are now limbering up to produce a “Big Board” on the subject in the market square during the festival.

So, can cartoons be Art? The problem is that it’s one of those words, like “cartoons” and “comics” that can be interpreted in different ways. We all talk about producing artwork, but how many would claim they are works of Art?

I’ve decided that, really, I don’t care. And although I’m happy to see cartoon exhibitions promoting our industry, such as those at Shrewsbury, I always feel that cartoons look best where they belong: on the page. I recently attended an exhibition of work by Heath Robinson, but I had a pressing appointment and didn’t allow myself enough time to take it all in. But it didn’t matter; I just bought the programme and looked at the cartoons at my leisure in the format in which they were meant to be seen.

Cartoons, at the risk of sounding a bit Tony Blair, are The People’s Art. They belong in newspapers, magazines and books, more so than galleries. And when they are there, you can bet that they’re far, far funnier than a film of a clown stuck in a forest.

The Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival runs from April 18-20. The "But is it Art?" exhibition opens today (March 30) and runs until April 26.

Cartoons by Royston

Submitting cartoons: Watch that punctuation!

Here's a cartoon from the March issue of Reader's Digest. As I used to be a newspaper sub-editor for a living, it is to my eternal shame that when I first submitted this cartoon the possessive apostrophe was in the wrong place.

Cartoons by Royston

My portfolio website: We have a problem

If you have been trying to look at my main portfolio website, you may be experiencing problems at the moment.

For the time being you can see the site at this alternative URL:
Cartoons by Royston: Business as usual!

Cat cartoon: The marital muse

Here's a cartoon from this week's Private Eye. This one came about when I was trying to think up some gags and, looking for inspiration, I asked my wife to give me a few "themes" that I could work on. I'm not sure she even looked up from her sudoku to say, "Er, I don't know ... sudoku". I said something sarcastic along the lines of, "Great, thanks for the effort." But a cartoon still emerged. Not sure when the cat came into it. I just like doing cat cartoons.

Cartoons by Royston (on cats and other subjects)

Easter cartoon: Is it that time already?

Have a good Easter weekend, all. It gets earlier every year, doesn't it?



Cartoons by Royston

Books cartoon finds a home at last

Sometimes it takes a cartoon a while to find its rightful place in the world. This gag appears in The Oldie Review of Books, a supplement free with the current issue of The Oldie magazine.

They wrote to contributing cartoonists asking for gags on a books theme so I submitted some that I had on file. This one had been submitted to many magazines here and abroad – including The Oldie! – but had never sold. But it found a fitting home in a magazine about books.

This is why I like to refer to my files of unpublished cartoons not as rejections, but as gags that haven't sold yet...

Cartoons by Royston

Animal cartoon: One from the archives

Time for another dip into the archives. Here's another of my early Private Eye gags, this one from ten years ago this month.

Not sure the joke is still relevant. The era of reality TV and makeover shows has enabled ITV to sidestep its inability to make funny sitcoms, and it seems to make very few these days, funny or otherwise.

Drawing wise, it's not too terrible I suppose! This is from the pre-Google image search days ... so they look nothing like hyenas. They're more wolfish. And that awful "rabbit ears" aerial on top of the TV is something I would never draw now. It's a sort of "cartoon shorthand" that I used to use a lot, like mortar boards to indicate schoolteachers. I'm not sure I've even seen an aerial like that, and I've certainly never seen a teacher wear a mortar board. So I stopped doing that. I do like the picture on the wall though, of the hyenas in happier times.

One thing I do remember about this cartoon is that it originally said "second part" rather than "next episode", but the Eye suggested the change – the thinking being that "second part" is more relevant to a drama show, rather than a sitcom. Ah, the subtleties of gag cartooning. And you thought these things were just thrown together.

Cartoons by Royston

Restaurant cartoon: A second helping

Here's a cartoon that was in The Spectator last week and makes a re-appearance this week in the media digest magazine The Week.

I tend to find that, broadly speaking, my cartoons fall into two categories: there are the ones that are based on observations of life, they're usually topical (in the sense that they are about the times we live in, rather than about this week's news) and, at the risk of sounding a little pretentious, there's a kind of "truth" to them. Then there are the ones that are just a bit silly, a throwaway line, sometimes a pun, a play on words, or a visual pun. "Soup of tomorrow" falls into the latter category!

To elaborate further, here's an example of one from the "observation of life" category ...

And here's one from the "throwaway line" category ...


I suppose, on balance, I find it more rewarding when I come up with cartoons in the first category. But I try not to take myself too seriously (a good idea if you're a cartoonist!) so it's always fun to do the "boom-boom" gags too.

Cartoons by Royston

Music business cartoon: It's that dog again

This cartoon is in the March issue of Prospect. It was inspired by a story in the news a while back about the new EMI boss insisting that his acts work harder. But the cartoon was non-specific enough so that it has "legs", unlike some topical gags.

Bizarrely, this is the third "HMV dog" cartoon that I've had published in the last six months or so! Click on "HMV" under Labels below to see the others.

Cartoons by Royston

Cartoon TV show: Modern Toss

I was asked by the Editor of The Jester (the Cartoonists’ Club newsletter, which I edited until the end of last year) to write a review of the TV series Modern Toss. So I did.



Review: Modern Toss, Channel 4

Private Eye readers may remember when, a few years ago, cartoons started appearing in the magazine by someone called “Link”. These caused some grumbling in the cartooning community because they were, frankly, baffling.

It wasn’t just the fact they were drawn in a naïve, scrawly style, that got people’s backs up, but the fact that no one could see what the joke was. I recall one featured someone with a profusion of nose hair saying, “I’m having a bad nose hair day” … nope, still doesn’t do it for me.

Shortly afterwards, a magazine called Modern Toss appeared, filled with cartoons by Link, who we now knew to be Jon Link, and his cohort Mick Bunnage. Here the odball ideas were fleshed out to strips as well as spot cartoons. These were pretty juvenile and largely based on elaborate swearing (especially “Mr Tourette – Master Signwriter”) but they were more successful than the spot gags. Although there was still an “Emperor’s new clothes” feel, there were chuckles to be had.

Now you can experience Modern Toss on the telly, its second series appearing in the wee small hours of Thursday morning on – where else? – Channel 4.

It features animations, live-action sketches and a mix of the two. So you get real scenes populated by characters that look like doodles drawn while on the phone. The look of the magazine is reproduced faithfully and the end result is a TV series that’s hit and miss but pretty funny in places. And it’s certainly one of a kind!

A character called Drive-by Abuser made me laugh a lot. He’s a scribble who drives around on a moped hurling pointless abuse at things such as traffic lights, and a tree shedding its leaves – “You gonna clean up that mess? You want a f***ing dustpan and brush?” He has that cheery London demeanour which means that his foul-mouthed tirades are always followed by a friendly “See y’around, yeah?”

Most of the sketches put you in mind of the kind of daft things that people pass around by email. In fact, the internet is probably the natural home of this show. If you do a search for Modern Toss on You Tube you can see lots of the sketches there. Just make sure the f***ing nippers aren’t around, yeah?

Cartoons by Royston

Theatre cartoon: A-level comes in handy

This cartoon, in the February issue of Reader's Digest, is one of those where the magazine wanted an edit. Originally I had another line at the end in the speech bubble: "I expect he'll be here soon." But I think they thought the point was already made. I think they were right.

I find that editors usually are right (probably because I used to be a newspaper sub-editor myself!) so I'm never very precious about making changes. I always think of that Gary Larson line: when his editor suggested the title "The Far Side", Larson was just so happy to be seeing his stuff in print that his comment later was, "They could have called it Revenge of the Zucchini People for all I cared".

This is not the first Waiting for Godot cartoon I've done. I'm not a huge Beckett fan or anything, but I studied it for A-level so it's etched on my brain - particularly the memory of a young, female teacher reading out the line "let's hang ourselves, it'd give us an erection". Never forgotten that for some reason ...

This is another cartoon submitted for the "But is it Art?" exhibition, part of the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival.

Cartoons by Royston

Art cartoon for the Shrewsbury festival

Here is one of four cartoons I submitted for the "But is it Art?" exhibition which is part of the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival. The festival takes place on the weekend of April 18-20, though the "But is it Art?" show will run from March 30 until April 26.

Cartoons by Royston

Valentine's Day cartoon

Here's a limited edition pink cartoon for all you lovers out there ...



Cartoons by Royston

Private Eye cartoons: A hit and a miss

Here are two cartoons submitted to Private Eye – a hit and a miss. The top one is in this week’s issue. Expect to see the show they’re watching on Channel Five within three years. You read it here first.

The second gag I’m posting here because it’s one of those topical ones that you can’t send on to another mag because the story is finished. (Note for international readers: Jeremy Beadle was a TV practical joker who died last week). I was pleased with the cartoon as I thought the joke was simple and funny. I thought it was in with a chance as the Eye often goes for “gravestone” gags after the deaths of well known personalities. But what do I know? They passed on it.

I also considered just the gravestone with the words “Beadle’s Not About” (after his show “Beadle’s About”) but decided against it. The following day that was the headline on the front page of The Sun, proving that my skills as a newspaper sub-editor (I was one for eight years) are still intact!

Cartoons by Royston