Exhibition cartoon: Marriage à la Mode

Last night I went to the opening of the exhibition Marriage à la Mode at the Cartoon Museum in London. I've got a couple of cartoons in the show, including the one above.

The exhibition ties in with the upcoming Royal Wedding, though it is subtitled "Royals and Commoners In and Out of Love", so it is probably unlikely to get the thumbs up from the palace.

This cartoon, which was in Private Eye in 2009, is owned by the journalist and radio presenter Libby Purves, also a patron of the Professional Cartoonists' Organisation, who kindly lent it for the exhibition.

And as if that's not enough middle-class namedropping, my other cartoon in the show was included in a preview on the Radio 4 Today show website.

Marriage à la Mode features some very funny cartoons, from across the ages, and is well worth seeing. It's on until May 22. Oh, and the museum shop is selling copies of my book if you want to save on postage! It's also available to buy online here.

[Cartoon Museum pic from the excellent blog Tired of London, Tired of Life]

Sport cartoon for the Shrewsbury festival

The Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival takes place next month, and the theme this year is Olympian Sports. Here is a gag I submitted for exhibition, one from Private Eye in 2009. Click to enlarge. The dates are April 14-17 and you can see details of what's on here: www.shrewsburycartoonfestival.com

I'll be there, as usual. This year I'll be doing a Big Board in the Market Square, so pop along and say hello (and pick up a copy of my book! Yes, I'll be mentioning it in every blog post for the foreseeable ...)

This is the eighth festival, and will be the sixth I've attended. Here's what I got up to last year, and in 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006. Or click here for all Shrewsbury-related posts.

Car-toon from my new book

"Look out – speed camera!"
Here's a cartoon from a recent Reader's Digest that also features in my new book Penguin vs Polar Bear and Other Ridiculous Cartoons.

Earlier this week the comic-strip writer Roger Kettle (Andy Capp, Beau Peep, Horace) bought a copy of the book and later contacted me with some very nice comments about it. Totally unsolicited, by the way!

"It arrived today, Royston, and it's an absolute delight. I must have had at least a dozen laugh-out-loud moments which, for those of us weary souls who work in this business, is a remarkable return. Well done on a brilliant collection of gems."

I was more than a little chuffed with that mini-review, particularly from someone with an established record in writing jokes. You can buy the book at my Online Shop for £5.99 plus £2 p+p.

Out now: My new cartoon book ...

My first collection of magazine gag cartoons is available now. It's called Penguin vs Polar Bear and Other Ridiculous Cartoons, is 104 pages long and, well, has lots of cartoons in it.

Here's part of the back-cover blurb: "An encounter between a penguin and a polar bear may sound ridiculous, but it is just as plausible as a prehistoric man attending a job interview, or a cat completing a sudoku. Anything is possible in the world of the magazine gag cartoon.

"This collection by Royston Robertson is made up of cartoons featured in Private Eye, Reader’s Digest, The Spectator, Prospect, The Oldie, New Statesman and others. Some are satirical, others just a bit silly, and they cover subjects from art to technology, the environment to religion, history to Health & Safety. All human (and inhuman) life is mocked."

Sound good? The ideal present for the discerning cartoon lover in your life? Then head over to my newly set-up Online Shop.

You can see some of the cartoons there and buy a signed copy of the book for a mere £5.99 plus £2 p+p.

Royston's portfolio website

Great Wall of Ramsgate cartoon close-up

I put this montage together to accompany an article in The Jester, the Cartoonists' Club newsletter, about my Great Wall of Ramsgate cartoon.

As I mentioned in my first blog post on this, the cartoon was based on one published in Reader's Digest a few years back. But that featured just one character. When it came to recreating the cartoon on a 8ft by 4ft board he looked very lonely, so I decided I needed to come up with a few extras.

Royston's portfolio website

Music cartoon: Whale of a time

"Forget whale song, I'm giving them some death metal."

I haven't blogged as much as I'd have liked to lately. This is due to a combination of things, one of which is that I've been busy lately putting together a book collecting cartoons I've had published over the years. More on that once they're back from the printers, but in the meantime here's another cartoon from current issue of the Foghorn, the magazine of the Professional Cartoonists' Organisation.

Royston's portfolio website

Not Yet Sold: Yet another HMV cartoon

"I've pimped your sound system."

As regular readers of this blog will know, I've done many, many HMV dog cartoons over the years. It's like an illness. Quite a few have been published but some, such as this one, are languishing in the Not Yet Sold files.

Click here for more in this series of rejected cartoons: Not Yet Sold.

As is often the case with my rejected cartoons though, this makes an unpaid appearance in the Foghorn, magazine of the Professional Cartoonists Organisation. I even coloured it in for them.

You can read an archive of the Foghorn online, just click the button on the right-hand column of this blog (scroll down). To buy a print subscription to the mag, which comes out six times a year, go here.

Conditions right at last for cloudspotting cartoon

"Hey, that one looks just like a visible mass of condensed water vapour floating in the atmosphere."

I got such a positive reaction to this cloudspotting cartoon which appeared in print a year ago, that I immediately tried to come up with more cartoons on the subject. The cartoon above is one of them and can be seen in this week's Private Eye.

As I've mentioned here before, there can be a large gap between a magazine taking a cartoon and it appearing in print. This one was taken in early March 2010, so it has been almost a year. That's nothing though, I think my personal record is still two years, as mentioned here, and I've heard of even longer waits from other cartoonists.

Royston's portfolio websiteRoyston's portfolio website

Humorous illustration: Social not working

As well as joke cartoons, I draw humorous illustrations to accompany magazine articles. Here's a social-networking cartoon which I was commissioned to draw for a business magazine. Or perhaps it's a social not working cartoon, the idea being that they're communicating online but not so well in the "offline" world.

Royston's portfolio website

Art cartoon: Express yourself

Sometimes I find I come up with ideas for cartoons but have to let them simmer gently for a while.

I must have jotted this one down but was unsure about it, as I didn't draw it up. Then I came across it a few months later and found myself laughing. So I drew it up, and it sold to the first magazine I sent it to.

It's one of two in the current issue of Reader's Digest. Both feature spot colour, rather than full colour, which is effective/lazy, depending on your point of view.

Here are some more art cartoons.

Social-networking cartoon: Don't tweet and drive

Here's a cartoon drawn to illustrate a newspaper article about tweeting and driving. A very real problem, apparently, along with texting and Facebooking while driving.

It amazes me that anyone would use a mobile phone while driving. I sometimes find I can't even listen to the radio and concentrate on the road at the same time!

The first draft of this was slightly more graphic. I lifted this drawing from an earlier, unsold (probably not surprising) cartoon about using phones while driving.

Ouch! That's gotta hurt. The paper didn't go for it, of course.

While on the subject, you can follow me on Twitter, provided you are not driving, of course.

One from the archives: Chicken fun

"You don't think you allow them a little too much free range?"

I keep hearing about the above named book, because it is now out in paperback. This cartoon appeared in Prospect magazine in May last year (along with this one) when the book came out in hardback.

Royston's portfolio website

Cartoon for the Great Wall of Ramsgate

Here's a very big cartoon ...

Cartoon: 8ft by 4ft. Cartoonist: 5ft 8ins (and a half)

This went up on a public art project called the Great Wall of Ramsgate today. I was approached to do this last year. What impressed me about the original flyer looking for contributors is the fact that it included a call for cartoonists, see below, which is rare with this kind of thing.

I don't live in Ramsgate, I live just up the road in Broadstairs, but I'm a regular visitor and was happy to help out. The idea is that the artworks create a mural that will brighten up a rather unsightly 1,000ft-long wall that has been built around the old Pleasurama site on the seafront and is going to be in place for several years. It's looking good so far ...

Rather nice photo, taken from this flickr page

I'm not sure mine fits the brief of "Ramsgate past, present and future" or that it tells "Ramsgate's story". It is a new version of a Reader's Digest cartoon from 2006. But it's a Ramsgate-type scene, with sunburt folk on the beach and a guy with a metal detector. I hope the local council don't get too upset about all the litter under the sand ... or indeed the skeleton.

Here's one of those annoying animated GIF things that shows the process of drawing and painting the board:


Make gif animation

I have drawn cartoons on big boards at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, in 2007 and 2008, but this is the first time I've done a full colour one, and the first time I've done something that will be seen for more than two days. It was outside my comfort zone, but I really enjoyed doing it.

I found working with acrylic paints a great medium for cartoons, far less fussy than watercolours. You can go back and change things when you make mistakes, just like Photoshop!

Here are a few more selections from the wall: Phil Baker's view of the new Thanet wind farm, Ramsgate as seen by Mike Samson, and a painting of nearby Richborough Power Station by Peter Buckey.

And here's one from the people who were kind enough to supply the paints ...

Although the materials were provided, this was not a paying job, as there was no public funding. It's just about people trying to do something for their local environment.

So I now know just how big David Cameron's so-called "Big Society" is: it's 8ft by 4ft.

Royston's portfolio website

Not Yet Sold: Cat and dog cartoon

"I couldn't imagine life without my little getaway in the country."

This cartoon has it all: a dopey looking dog, a sly cat, and the satirising of contemporary middle-class mores. Yet cartoon editors failed to see its charms, so I present it here in my occasional series on rejected cartoons: Not Yet Sold.

Royston's portfolio website

Cycling cartoon: An Olympian effort

Here's a sneak peek at one of the cartoons I have submitted for exhibition at the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival 2011, which takes place in April.

The theme is Olympian Sports, and this is a new version of a cartoon I drew for the Kent Messenger when the Tour de France came through the county in 2007. This version is coloured using Faber-Castell Pitt brush pens, for those that care about that sort of thing.

It was a bit of an Olympian effort coming up with four cartoons on a sporting theme, as it's not a subject I turn to a lot, to say the least. This year I'll also be drawing a Big Board cartoon in Shrewsbury market square, so I need to think of another gag too. That one won't have bicycles in it though. I hate drawing bicycles.

The theme may appear to be a year early, as the London Olympics are in 2012, but it is in fact a tie-in with the Shropshire Olympian Festival, which takes place in June, and the Wenlock Olympian Games, also in Shropshire, in July.

Royston's portfolio website

Pantomime cartoon: Nothing like a dame

As the Christmas pantomime season draws to an end, here's a cartoon on that subject, which can be seen in the January issue of Prospect magazine. Oh, yes it can! etc etc.

Royston's portfolio website

Eskimo cartoon: A question of interpretation

This cartoon appears in the current issue of The Spectator. It's a bit of an odd one. I drew it and first sent it out last February. I can't really remember where the idea came from. I think I just liked the image of igloo skyscrapers.

But as there is no caption, I could claim that it is about the unremitting global spread of western capitalism, and submit it for a European cartoon contest. It would probably be in with a chance.

Interpretation is ultimately down to the reader. As the cartoon appears in a magazine dated January 1, it also looks like it's about returning to work after Christmas, though it was never intended as such.

Royston's portfolio website

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

"If you've been affected by any of the issues raised in this drama ..."

Here's the Christmas card I drew for Private Eye this year. Click the image to enlarge.

I very nearly didn't send them this one because the caption, which you will surely have heard at the end of many a gritty TV drama, has been used in other contexts in cartoons. But I hadn't seen it applied to the story of Jesus, and as that concerns teen pregnancy, homelessness and child murder, it seemed appropriate.

I'm taking a blogging break until January, so all the very best of the festive season to you.

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!

Carol singers cartoon: A Christmas classic

"I do love the traditional Christmas songs."
This cartoon is one of two I've got in the Private Eye Christmas Special and it refers, as I'm sure most of you know, to Fairytale of New York, by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl.

I love the song (I still have a battered 7in single of it somewhere) but I do find it funny that it has become such a Christmas favourite despite those lyrics.

You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap, lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last

Like the best Christmas songs, it has an edge of cynicism and melancholy, the latter made worse by the tragically early death of Kirsty MacColl. I was a big fan both of her solo stuff and the contributions she made to records by some of my favourite acts, such as the Smiths and Billy Bragg. She was one of a kind.




Royston's portfolio website