Drawing with Purpose in Politics

Dave Brown

Dave Brown is the political cartoonist for The Independent. He studied Fine Art at Leeds University, graduating in 1980. Before becoming a cartoonist he worked as a motorcycle courier and was the drummer in a punk band. In 1989 he won the Sunday Times Political Cartoon Competition and subsequently worked for a number of British newspapers and magazines before taking up a regular post on The Independent in 1996. In 2006 his cartoon Venus Envy was voted Political Cartoon of the Year, an award he had also received in 2003. In 2004 he was named Political Cartoonist of the Year by both the Political Cartoon Society and the Cartoon Art Trust. In 2007 his book Rogues' Gallery, a collection of political cartoons pastiching famous paintings, was published.

Dave Brown elaborates on his drawing as a political cartoonist and as a 'visual journalist'. He discusses the value and potency of a personal political point of view on the news of the day and how he is motivated by contemporary politics in his work. Working as a highly motivated political commentator, he sees his work operating as anti-establishment, 'to prick the pomposity of the so-called great and the good', though all within the parameters of the newspaper's philosophy. Trusting his personal sense of humour is part and parcel of his work, and keeping his satirical viewpoint to the fore is of equal importance in his completed drawings.

The purpose in his work is clear and expressed with agility in this essay, which also outlines his daily routine in working towards the ever present deadline, taking into account how the news can change during the course of each twenty four hours. Five mornings each week with a blank piece of paper, after a brief discussion with the Comment Page editor, Dave Brown sketches from television, ruminates on quotations from various current scenarios and other sources to work towards meeting the demands of a daily broadsheet, and the position of his drawings next to the editorial leader. The sixth day, Saturday, he produces a cartoon for the ongoing series 'Rogues Gallery'. His bold drawings bring us clear messages and hold a prominence, exposure and perhaps influence that few artists ever achieve.

Every morning, six days a week, I sit down in my studio with a blank sheet of paper on the drawing board in front of me. By the end of the afternoon I must have transformed it into a finished piece of artwork, scanned it and e-mailed it to an office in London's docklands. The next morning you might see it at your breakfast table or on your train to work. That is if you still read a newspaper and if that paper is The Independent.

I am the paper's political cartoonist and on the newspaper's editorial pages I create those grotesque images of our own dear Prime Minister and the other leaders who govern us. Tomorrow of course they'll be wrapping your fish and chips (the grotesque images, not the leaders unfortunately), or perhaps – you being a conscientious Independent reader – in the recycling bin.

A rather ephemeral art then, looked at for a few seconds perhaps before being discarded. So what's the point? What's the purpose? Most national newspapers still recognize the need to employ a cartoonist (though worryingly some recently have decided they can do without); they understand that we help to enliven their acres of grey text. But what else are we good for?

My work still sits in the traditional position for the political cartoon, on the leader page. This is the page where the columns have no bye lines, but propound the paper's position on the issues of the day. Yet my cartoon neither illustrates those leader columns, nor expresses a view dictated to me by the paper. Rather it sits apart, it bears my signature; it is, if you will, 'all my own work'. My position is more like that of columnists also found on the editorial pages, expressing a personal point of view on the news. The political cartoonist is a visual journalist aiming to persuade you to his or her (almost invariably 'his') point with a drawn satire.

Once in an interview I was asked 'Do you draw with the idea, hope or intent that you might be impacting on public opinion?' This was cunningly followed by the question: 'Do you feel that you have had an impact on public opinion over the years?'

Now of course I'd love it if my coruscating wit could strip the scales from readers' eyes so that they embraced my personal political vision; however I'm not so deluded. A cartoon won't change the world. I doubt whether it's likely to effect a Damascene conversion in a single reader. But in a system where most of us can only tell our leaders what we think of them every five years or so, I'm in the wonderful position of being able to metaphorically poke them eye with a sharp pen every day.

Does this hurt them? Not as much as one would hope; mostly politicians ignore cartoons, some infuriatingly draw the sting by asking to buy the original (after all there is only one thing worse if you are a politician than being cartooned, and that's not being cartooned).

However, occasionally your ridicule does manage to rankle. I tend not to consort with the enemy but I was once introduced to a cabinet minister at a party who, on discovering who I was, complained about how I'd been drawing him recently. Needless to say, what had been a one-off gag became a regular feature of my caricatures of him, and this felt like some sort of badge of success, purpose paying off.

The cartoon is an art form with an amazingly broad language. It can combine images and words; static and two dimensional, yet it can convey movement, time and sound. Figurative, and to an extent realist, it can create an extraordinary range of fabulous characters and surreal settings that would cost Hollywood millions, all with little more than pen and ink.

Political cartoonists in particular draw upon a wide range of references from everyday life, popular culture and high art to subvert and make their point. A cartoon can often be (deceptively) simple and economical in its line. However, the space historically afforded to the political cartoon in British newspapers has led to a tradition of often fine draughtsmanship.

And the political cartoonist has to have something to say; like the gag cartoonist, we want to make you laugh, but with a purpose. There's no point to a political cartoonist without a strong political philosophy. There is always the need to challenge the reader to an extent, and not simply reflect their own views back at them (though of course editors rarely employ...