Matt Buck's Hack Cartoons

The cartoon awards season results can be found at my colleague Morten's blog - and congratulations are due him, Dave Brown, Steve Bell and Martin Rowson. The event speech was given by former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer Ken (Kenneth) Clarke. He made a good speech, as you might expect from a professional speech maker, but he also said at least one incredibly silly thing. I paraphrase him here, but the gist of it was, who'd want to look at cartoons on the internet?

Sketchbook caricature of Ken (Kenneth) Clarke - Conservative MP - and guest at the Political Cartoon Awards

I understand why he did this, to connect precisely with what he judged to be his audience, largely middle class, middle-aged, or, elderly and largely suspicious of technology. It worked for him, he got a laugh.

But this, to me, is a classic piece of ostrich-ism and is pointlessly damaging to those of us who have to go out and make a living as professional commercial artists, today, in the ugly here and now. One of my colleagues told me not to get cross about it, to which I can only say bollocks, if we can't be bothered about how we are going to make a living through our skill at drawing then we won't survive as a form of either art or journalism.

Clarke's joke smacks of 'if I don't look I won't have to see what is changing around me.' This is probably because he (and many others) do not understand the digital world and have no interest in learning about it. I thought this was a sad and silly attitude to perpetuate among other people who love cartoons and drawing as a useful form of human communication.

The digital world may not be easy to understand but it offers opportunity to commercial artists in a way that the old print world, and its surviving fans, would be daft to ignore.


Matt Buck’s animated drawings

’Tis the time of year for the annual political cartoon awards, at which I traditionally win nowt. The idea is to offer an image for the year (2007) and hope it catches the jury's eye as the best single image entered.*

My entry for this year's Political Cartoon of the Year award

There is also the highly desirable cartoonist of the year award. This invariably goes to one of the daily newspaper cartoonists. The event is an excuse for lots of professional cartoonists to get together, smoke, drink and bitch about the lucky winners. It is also, as a result, unmissable and one of the drawing years’ absolutely fixed points. It also, bizarrely, always clashes with other social events you cannot easily avoid. Kudos to Dr Tim Benson of the Political Cartoon Society who organises and promotes the event which this year is being held at The Guardian newspaper's Newsroom. You can see Dave Brown of The Independent and his winning one-off image for last year here - scroll down a bit.

* Cynics say, and there are a few about, the key to victory is to have one's entry stationed strategically close to the drinks.

5th December 2007

Matt Buck’s animated drawings