© Christian Adams

The Telegraph’s political cartoonist, Christian Adams, dissects his depictions of Cameron, Clegg and Osborne as he looks at what makes an effective caricature. In a subsequent blog post, he identifies which politicians are the best to draw in terms of the most cartoonable body parts (watch out for the photo of Merkel, which is close to being NSFW).

In a worrying development, a group of MPs in India has pressured the government into banning cartoons that lampoon politicians from school textbooks, despite saying that they have no objection to similar examples of visual satire appearing in newspapers. You can read more on the story here. Unsurprisingly, the move has already drawn criticism from academics and other professionals.

The second BD & Comics Passion festival takes place at the Institut français in London from May 24 to 27. The four-day event features a diverse selection of talks from comic creators including Kevin O’Neill, Pat Mills, Tom Gauld and Jonathan Ross, and will see a healthy contingent of French and Belgian cartoonists in attendance. See the website for more details.

For the aficionado of the modern media there is a final chance to hear Greed All About It, a drama upon the mid-career activities of Mr Rupert Murdoch at Wapping. Procartoonists.org member Nick Newman shares the writing credit with Private Eye Editor Ian Hislop. But, HURRY! There are only 12 hours left to do it!

© Andy Davey

Our old friend Foghorn muses on cultural differences in the trade of image making.

The Plumb Pudding in Danger by James Gillray @ Procartoonists.org

Procartoonists.org member Pete Dredge was interviewed on the subject of the political cartoonist James Gillray for the BBC’s Sunday Politics Show in the East Midlands: Watch it here

Pete visits a new exhibition of Gillray’s work at the Nottingham Contemporary gallery and talks about how the 18th-century cartoonist’s work strikes a chord with modern audiences with its parallels to today’s events.

The free exhibition runs until July 1 – click here for details. To tie in with the exhibition there is also a series of talks, The Critical Currency of Caricature, which looks at the relationship between cartoons and politics.

The Gout by James Gillray @ Procartoonists.org

The warm welcome and friendly support we got from the visitors to the Interactive Zone, where the first Faces and Voices experiment was carried out, more than made up for the weather which lived up to its promise – no sunshine and it was cold!

We had 880 participants during the three days of the event. Each saw two sets of photos in the first part of the survey. Looking at the first row of three faces, they had to decide which of the first two faces looked like the third.

In the second part, participants had to decide which of the two faces was a good match to the voice they were hearing, reciting a Mark Twain quote:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Listening to the quote helps us to understand how the larynx works and adjust to create different sounds in the text; for example the words explore, dream and discover.

The data taken from the Sheffield event [above, held on the May Bank Holiday weekend] will help us enormously and I would like to thank all those who took part.

Anyone who couldn’t take part can still do so by using the
Faces and Voices website

Sir – Before you cartoonist johnnies start attacking those least able to defend themselves and who are presently enduring all manner of innuendo and slur at the hands of the leftist lackey Lord Leveson, I would ask you to take a moment to reflect upon the Great British Freedoms which are at stake here.

As I understand it, there is nothing in law to prevent a serving Prime Minister from nipping down the road in his pyjamas in the evening to call upon a flame-haired, female, similarly clad, fortysomething national newspaper editor.

I have it on good authority that there were others present. Suggestions that the two special branch officers on duty that night wore nighties is a vile calumny. In fact, both favoured silk loungers.

It is typical of our Prime Minister that he should seek to offer solace to those threatened by scurrilous rumour ; to exercise a lady’s horse in times of stress; and more recently, have her house swept for any incriminating audio-visual evidence.

I am,
Yours sincerely,
Sir Arthur Scrimmage (Col. Retd)
Glossop Open Prison

Delivered by Bill Stott

© Martin Rowson

The Iranian cartoonist Mahmoud Shokraye has been sentenced to 25 lashes after an MP took offence at a caricature. The Guardian has more on the story here, and fellow cartoonists, including Procartoonists.org members Martin Rowson, above, and Clive Collins, have reacted with pictures of their own.

Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor at The New Yorker, has written a very entertaining blog post looking at the creative process as depicted in cartoons. He also writes about the need for magazine cartoonists to be constant innovators, and the piece is illustrated throughout by choice New Yorker gags. Enjoy it here.

The Pittsbugh Post-Gazette writes about “rage comics”, a growing trend in internet humour whereby amateur cartoonists vent their frustrations in order to make others laugh. Read more here.

Following the sad death of the writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak earlier this week, Forbidden Planet collects several fitting tributes and other comic creators pay their respects.

And finally, Daily Cartoonist looks back 258 years to what is considered the first example of an American editorial cartoon.

© Andy Davey

In the second of our weekly series about the Foghorn take a dip into the prehistory of werd, sorry, word and picture cartooning in the UK. We will be publishing a new one at 5pm next Thursday.

A group of cartoonists and illustrators have got together to pay tribute to Edward Lear, who was born 200 years ago on May 12.

Forty artists have created the show Happy Birthday Edward Lear in honour of the writer and artist who was famed for his nonsense verse, including The Owl and the Pussycat.

The exhibition, which is at at the Poetry Café, in Betterton Street, Covent Garden, London, until June 8, features the cartoonists Morten Mørland, Glen Baxter, Peter Blegvad, Woodrow Phoenix and Procartoonists.org member Chichi Parish, among many others.

For more details, visit the website: Happy Birthday Edward Lear.

In other news: The aforementioned Chichi Parish has written a profile of Molly Crabapple, creator of Dr Sketchy’s, the burlesque life-drawing event, who visited London to promote Week in Hell, a new art project. Read it here.

© Michael Kountouris @ Procartoonists.org

Let’s return to the crisis. It is not only economic but also political and social, but mainly it is a systemic crisis, a crisis of values and principles, a crisis of culture, which is not only Greek but European as well.

© Michael Kountouris

In Greece, we are in shock and we don’t know when and how we will get over it. For this shock, this crisis, apart from the politicians, the mass media have great responsibilities too.

The media and press, having as owners big companies, building contractors and ship-owners, instead of speaking and informing the people, serve other’s interests. They lost their credibility and objectivity, they are scorned, and at the end they became a furious slogan of the Greek demonstrators: “Traitors!”

Many important Greek newspapers suspended publication, journalists were fired, TV channels stopped broadcasting, media companies collapsed. In this tornado, cartoonists in Greece live in difficult times. They lose their jobs, either because magazines or newspapers they work for are closing down, or because their work is considered a “luxury” for the newspapers. Or even, and this is the most disturbing reason, they are fired for censorship reasons.

The words I have written are too many for a cartoonist, so I prefer to end with some of my cartoons which have been published lately and refer to the European crisis and the situation in Greece.

© Michael Kountouris @ Procartoonists.org

© Michael Kountouris @ Procartoonists.org

Procartoonists.org thanks Michael for sharing his words and pictures here.

Terry Mosher, a Canadian political cartoonist best known by his pen name of Aislin, has been inducted into the country’s Cartoonist Hall of Fame this weekend. In an interview with the Daily Brew blog, he discusses his work and explains that conservatives are easier to satirise than liberals because “the fatter the cat, the more fun you have”. Read the Q&A here.

Daniel Clowes, the creator of Ghost World and Eightball, is the subject of a new gallery exhibition in his hometown of Oakland, California. If you can’t make it over there, read this instead.

With Garfield making the move into full-length comic books, the cartoon cat’s creator, Jim Davis, speaks to Comic Book Resources about adapting his character to different formats – and about what the decline of newspapers and rise of the internet can mean for up-and-coming cartoonists. Read more here.