2017-04-19
Emma Davidson
One of the many benefits of living in Canberra is easy access to our national institutions, especially when they run special workshops for kids on school holidays. This April, I took my kids to a political cartooning workshop at the Museum of Australian Democracy.
Run by professional cartoonist Andrew Hore, the workshops coincided with the annual Behind the Lines exhibition of last year's best political cartoons. He took the kids through the basics of how and why political cartoons are created. I expect to see a better class of graffiti around Canberra's schools next term.
According to Andrew, one of the keys to a good caricature is deciding what to show, and what to leave out. You want a recognisable character, highlighting a feature that is easily identifiable, but you don't want too much detail. He advised the kids to leave plenty of white space around their drawings, and look for the major shapes when starting a new drawing.
Starting with an easy one...
The first character they drew was an easily recognisable one: Trump, with that hair and a cranky look on his face. Every kid in the room was able to recognise this caricature. While we like to think our kids are still in the world of innocent playground games at this age, the fact of the matter is that their playground games include making fun of politicians whose poor decision-making skills certainly seem to deserve it. I heard some pretty funny playground rhymes about a certain Australian PM a few years ago, they've just moved on to an easier target for their jokes in 2017.
Piercing eyes and strong beliefs
Moving on to the second character, Andrew really stepped up the difficulty level in guessing who he was drawing. We could see that it was a woman with dark hair. Tip from Andrew when drawing hair: don't colour it all in the same dark shade, try darker at the bottom and lighter at the top to give it some depth. As he continued to draw, fending off unsuccessful guesses like Julia Gillard, he dropped a hint that it was a Greens politician. To which I hear a certain cheeky boy say "Christina!" (Christina Hobbs, ACT Senate candidate for 2016). No, it wasn't Christina (although I did wish it was, because that would mean she was a Senator). Andrew gave us more hints. "She has very piercing eyes, and strong beliefs." It turned out to be Sarah Hanson-Young. I think if your standout feature is strong beliefs, you're actually doing fairly well!
The Xenophon with the moustache
For the third picture, Andrew stayed in South Australia but changed parties to draw Nick Xenophon with a head shaped like an upside-down bucket.
"Is this one gonna be angry too?" I heard a small person ask.
"Yeah, a lot of them look angry," Andrew replied.
"Nah, I'm gonna make mine look scared," says one of the other young artists.
As they completed their drawings, the kids added in props such as objects for the character to hold. "Can I give him a moustache?" asked the cheeky boy who knows his Greens candidates.
"Sure but then he'll turn into another Xenophon, maybe Nick's brother," says Andrew.
Cranky tomato
Drawing a character that skewers their recently reported behaviour can be a lot of fun, according to Andrew. "When we saw the newspaper photo of Tony Abbott in his cossie at the beach, all the cartoonists in Australia cheered!" Andrew said. I suspect there were a lot of people who were not so much cheering, as wishing they hadn't looked at the paper that particular day, but it certainly is a recognisable image of that particular politician.
The final caricature of the day was also a reference to media reports about the subject's behaviour and appearance. Andrew began his drawing with a hint that this politican had been described by Johnny Depp as "a cranky tomato" and that he has a prominent schnozz. The kids had no idea who that might be, but they did enjoy having a go at drawing a tomato-headed big-nosed man in a suit, who turned out to be Barnaby Joyce.
By the end of an hour and a half of drawing and laughing, Andrew had passed on a few technical skills, as well as an appreciation of satire.
Behind the Lines is touring regional Australia over the next few months, as well as their exhibition at the building I will always think of as Old Parliament House.
Image: Stop Press cartoon by William Mahony, 1940, published in Daily News.
All caricatures by Billy Davidson, aged 9 years.