The Cartoon Blog

The Chancellors’ Debate on Channel 4 last night was predictably unexciting, but it was great for a cartoonist to have 50 minutes to stare and sketch the trio’s faces. Darling’s dark hooded eyes and accompanying eyebrows really can’t be exaggerated enough.  Osborne’s fresh face (described perfectly by the Observer as that of a “WW2 bomber pilot”) is weathering a bit, his nose getting more tomato-y and cheeks a little more flushed. Vince Cable will always be Vince Cable, but I’m never going to have to draw him that much. Am I?

Speaking of Cable, he got the only rounds of applause of the night – three. If everyone loves the Lib Dems (and they regularly get more claps on Question Time than the main party bods) why does no one vote for them? Just a  thought.

…Peter Brookes of The Times. He won the Press Award last night, and see a superb example of his work here to see why.

I saw the film In The Loop last night – better late than never. Good. Some funny bits. As you’ll probably know, it’s all about political spin doctors and their attempt at media management.

Twice in the story – twice – Malcolm Tucker (the infamous Alastair Campbell character) screams about an MP’s portrayal in a newspaper cartoon. In one he’s a walrus, and later, in the second, on the Great Wall of China. And I noticed that that one was drawn by the Telegraph’s Garland. I was so impressed! But not only for the fact that Nick Garland now has one foot in Fleet Street and the other in Hollywood, but also that it appears political cartoons do matter!

No,  it’s not a documentary, but surely based on fact…

The cartoonist Ronald Searle is 90, and there are two exhibitions in London to celebrate. One at Chris Beetles gallery and the other at the Cartoon Museum. On Tuesday, I went to Beetles for the opening. There is an overwhelming amount  of his work, including Punch covers, St Trinians and Molesworth, adverts, recent illustrations for Jeffrey Archer’s Cat O’ Nine Tales, and a striking little section of reportage on the Kennedy/Nixon campaign.

He is without argument one of the greatest cartoonists ever, and subsequently inspired almost every cartoonist since. His work from forty years ago is still amazingly fresh and spry. I could compare his early work to the film Citizen Kane, in that one could so easily look at in now and admire and shrug. But that’s to forget how groundbreaking and influential his work was.

If you’re interested, there’s a very good (rare) interview with him in the… Read More

Here are the nominees for this year’s prestigious Press Gazette Award for Cartoon:

The Daily Mail – Stanley McMurtry

The Daily Telegraph – Nick Garland

The Daily Telegraph – Matt Pritchett

The Independent – Dave Brown

The Mail on Sunday – Michael Heath

The Observer – Chris Riddell

The Times – Peter Brooke

I don’t know where Morten Morland found this Eastern television report on the Brown bullying story, but it is truly hilarious. See it  here.

As a cartoonist, I thought the strangest bit of last night’s extremely strange interview/party political broadcast with Brown was not him at all. It was the words he used to refer to the early loss of his child – “these events we’ve had to respond to”. What? Who speaks like that of such an emotional time? These events? And then “in the next period of time”. Truly, truly weird.

Anyway, it wasn’t all his extremely odd language that really surprised me. It was his brothers. Two of them. Who knew? Not me. And their faces. Just fascinating (as all siblings are, really.) They looked like a caricature of Gordon, but drawn on a hangover. In the dark. With a crayon.

I went to the Van Gogh Letters exhibition yesterday at the RA. Much has been written about it, and it is indeed a superb experience. But from a cartoonist’s point of view the most awe-inspiring thing about it is his stunning sketches. Using a reed pen, quill or even just a normal writing pen, they are quick, impulsive drawings. It’s what cartoonists do all the time – looking, noting, getting the essence of a place or face.

However, these are enviably masterful. They seem, even more so somehow than the finished paintings, immediate thoughts, feelings, atmospheres rather than literal translations of life to paper. Greatly inspired by Japanese prints, Van Gogh’s monochrome ink and wash sketches are remarkable in embracing that ancient style while being astonishingly modern. For me, they were the surprise stars of the show.

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Firstly, yesterday’s Steve Bell (here.) A brilliant, droll, rather haunting image delivering a message on the terrible toll of war. On Monday, Martin Rowson focused on the Eurozone and did a beautiful painting (here.)

Today we have laughs. Matt just made me giggle at an old cartoonistist’s favourite updated perfectly. And Peter Brookes has an almost text book political cartoon: Great image, great joke, great political observation. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Brilliant Matt today. Hilarious.