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Drawing comfort: the sketchbooks that got Chris Riddell through 2020

For the Observer’s cartoonist, keeping a daily pictorial record of events was the only way to make sense of last year. He tells how a new book was the result

On 13 December 2019 I woke up and reached out for the “on” button of my bedside radio. I lay back and listened to the familiar voices of Radio 4’s Today programme tell me the results of the general election. As the interviews and analysis washed over me, I felt that mixture of emotions that had become all too familiar. Anger, sorrow, disbelief and helplessness. It was how I had felt when Nick Clegg became David Cameron’s useful idiot, when Boris Johnson and Michael Gove stood at the podium dumbfounded by their Brexit victory and when Donald Trump’s tiny hands grasped the reins of power and he became the leader of the free world. Now a bumbling buffoon had won a working majority and was going to “Get Brexit done”.

As I shouted at the radio, I noticed the sketchbook next to it. I love drawing in sketchbooks. I have hundreds of them all over my house and studio in various stages of completion. My advice to all aspiring illustrators is to keep a sketchbook and draw in it every day. For two years, during my time as the children’s laureate, I drew a daily sketch charting my travels and posted the pages on social media. I found it therapeutic and cathartic in equal measure. Now, as the country woke up to the prospect of five years of Tory government, I stifled my shouts and reached for my sketchbook. I drew a troll in a nappy holding a spiked club and felt momentarily better.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3sApS7j
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