6 drawing lessons from Ronald Searle

Top animation news site Cartoon Brew ran an article I wrote on drawing lessons learnt from the master and his work. Read it here

Remembering Ronald Searle pt2

In February 2008 Ronald had agreed to meet me in a couple of months but the Searles' annual visit to Paris for health treatment postponed this to September. I was of course very excited to finally get the opportunity but it also impressed upon me just how frail they may be at this late stage of their lives.

The date in September came around and one Saturday morning (all meetings with Ronald were on Saturdays-he was busy with work during the week) I once again made the not un-pleasurable drive from the Cote d'Azur up to the Var.

I arrived in Tourtour maybe an hour before our scheduled appointment and walked around the village rehearsing what to say to a legend when he opens his front door.  In the event it wasn't Ronald who answered my knock but a French lady who I took to be the Searles' home help.  She led me through to the kitchen in the back.  The walls were modestly adorned with artwork-not too many pieces and not Searles' own.  Just a small collection of historical caricatures by Gillray and Cruickshank.

I stood in the kitchen and waited.  Chez Searle was a warren-like abode, expanded over decades by combining four adjoining properties. Ronald entered the kitchen descending a short flight of steps that dropped from the lounge area at a higher level. He was immaculately dressed, his head of silver hair neatly brushed and sporting his trademark beard, now silver. "Hello Mr Searle" I smiled and as we shook hands I noticed his hands twisted by age, years of drawing and injury sustained as a POW.

We sat together at the kitchen table and started the type of conversation that comes easily between creative types; he knew I was a professional cartoonist and trusted me and indulged my sincere interest in his work and career.  I was surprised that he was interested in my work and was happy to browse my portfolio-he was honest and held little regard for computer created design work!  He much preferred the looser, hand drawn sketchbook work and drawings from life.

Introductions accomplished and aware of the short time frame I steered the conversation to his work-I had prepared questions and had a lot to get through. One hour turned into two and his already rasping voice became hoarse.  As the clock ticked I felt guilty encouraging him to tell more wonderful tales and inevitably he called time saying that his wife Monica was ill upstairs and needed his attention.

I had brought a stack of his books with me that we had examined with my specific questions.  I asked him to sign only one-trying to maintain a professional cartoonist stance and suppress the rabid fan!  (There were instances while we talked where I squealed inside "I'm talking to Ronald Searle!!" but kept it checked knowing I must concentrate on memorising everything he says because I'd have to write it all down later).

As he led me to the front door I told him that I maintain a website dedicated to his artwork and he made a note of the address-I couldn't quite figure out at that point if was online or not.  Being a very private individual and wanting no distraction from his work he was known to be only contactable by fax or written correspondence.  Although he had said he finds dip pen nibs on Ebay.  I would later realize he was entirely connected with the world via the internet.

We waved good bye and I was regretting not being able to get a photo with him-if only to prove to myself that this meeting with a legend had occured.  As I walked away from his house he touchingly said "I'm always here".
I had been living in France two years at that point and left a few months later. I wish that I had met Ronald earlier and been able to visit him more often when I lived 'locally'.  However we continued our old fashioned correspondence by written letter and the day before I left for the UK I received a package from him.  Knowing my interest in animation he had made duplicates of photos of him working on Energetically Yours and a vhs tape of animated spots he made with Ivor Wood. Gold!

The exact details of that first encounter with Ronald Searle can be read here  and here

Part 1 of Remembering Ronald is here

In part 3 I'll write about 'Lunch with the Searles'!

Remembering Ronald Searle part 1

After Ronald's death animation news site Cartoon Brew asked me to write a tribute but I also wanted to share the story of how I got to meet him and the subsequent visits I was able to make. I hope to give readers an idea of what it was like to meet Ronald and an introduction to the wonderful Provencal village he lived in.  I'll split it up into parts which should be more digestable.

Between 2006-2008 I was working in France, initially in Paris for four months then later in Nice on the Cote d'Azur.  Living in the south I was aware that my drawing hero Ronald Searle resided somewhere nearby in the hills of haute Provence.  I was aware too that he had moved there in the 70s and was a very private person.  The last filmed interviews with him in his fifties revealed an intimidating wit and intelligence yet I still wondered if I could find him in his hilltop retreat. I found out the name of the village where he lives in an old interview in the Guardian and one bright Sunday morning in February 2008 set out west to find Tourtour-the 'village in the clouds'.
Taking the highway west from Nice, past Cannes towards Draguignan a very pleasurable drive took me ever higher and into more remote landscape, leaving the tourist infested coast behind. The winding road rises through Flayosc giving way to spectacular views of Provence and the Luberon-on a clear day Mont St Victoire, famously painted by Cezanne, is visible.

The route eventually brought me to the old stone portal that is the main entrance to Tourtour. Parking in this out of season month was no problem and I set out on foot to explore the village.  Now at this point I had no contact with Searle and as I walked around the village I wondered which house was his and can't deny peeking through the odd window or looking for his name on post boxes!  Of course I didn't see him strolling around the village or sipping pastis at a café terrasse either.

The village is deemed one of the most picturesque in France and I took the opportunity to sketch. I found what I considered the most interesting corner; the old fountain-place in the shadow of an ancient tree and sat in the sun to draw a quick pen sketch with some ink wash.

Breaking for lunch I moved up to the church perched on the highest point in the village.  With the breathtaking 180 degree view of Provence before me I penned a respectful fan letter to Searle explaining that I was a British animation artist working nearby and hugely influenced and inspired by his work.  If there was any chance of meeting I'd be most grateful.  I tore out the drawing of the fountain-place from my sketchbook and put it with the letter in an envelope then went back down into the village to find the post office.  Of course it was closed on a Sunday but I thought the tourist information office may help and fortunately the lady running it was helpful enough to offer to pass my letter to Mr Searle with whom she was acquainted.  I later learnt that everyone in the village knew the Searles.

I left soon after doubting my letter would ever be delivered and who the heck am I anyway thinking I could reach the great Ronald Searle.  But I was glad I had tried and it was a wonderful day out in beautiful surroundings.  I headed back down towards the Mediterranean and home to Nice. . .

A couple of days later I was delighted to receive a letter addressed to me in Searle's characteristic spidery hand writing-a reply! The response was curt but polite- he thanked me for the drawing, which he said he liked very much, and that a meeting would be possible in a couple of months once he and his wife had returned from their annual stay in Paris for medical treatment.

I was over the moon!  The Searles' health issues postponed the rendezvous several months and once the hot summer months had passed Searle seemed receptive to a meeting in September 2008 . . .

Meeting Ronald Searle Part 2: Illustration & Cartooning

Upon entering Mr Searle's house I was quite nervous, I was shown in by his hired helper & she went off to inform him of my arrival while I waited in the kitchen. On the walls of the vestibule were prints by the likes of Cruickshank & Gilray, I couldn't immediately identify them, but I assume they're choice examples of his collection of caricatures. Bequethed to the Wilhelm-Busch museum in Hannover the archive consists of work by Caracci, Gillray, Cruickshank, Vernet, Rowlandson & Newton.

Aware of Mr Searle's scholarly knowledge of the history of caricature & political cartooning I enquired who he rates in the field these days. I couldn't resist asking him what he makes of the artwork of Ralph Steadman & Gerald Scarfe, perhaps the two most influenced by him. He admires them both, saying Steadman's drawing is very strong & Scarfe has become an annual visitor to the Searle home. He holds British cartoonists Steve Bell & Martin Rowson in high esteem. (Rowson produced the 2006 documentary 'Searle's Progress'). But his favourite contemporary cartoon is Garry Trudeau's 'Doonesbury'.
Modern political cartooning in America has been killed by syndication he believes, with cartoonists afraid of being black-listed for anything too racy. Likewise he feels the New Yorker has slid in recent years with its cartoon count dropping steadily since its heyday.

In fact Searle laments the loss of a whole generation of satirical artists that he feels hasn't been succeeded by younger artists. He & contempories like André François, Roland Topor & Sempé set the standard decades ago but Searle was puzzled why no one had followed who equalled their ability -perhaps a tad unfair since they set the bar impossibly high! They were all part of a golden age of cartooning that pushed the envelope graphically & in subject matter. Searle was friendly with most of them & he said their individual talent both inspired him & made him realize his own short-comings as an artist.




As a young man Searle had been chiefly inspired by the great German Expressionists Otto Dix and George Grosz. In later years he came to know the families of both artists when he created a series of commerative medals for the French Mint.
He would also design a memorial plaque for the house where Grosz died for which he was rewarded with a drawing from one of Grosz's sketchbooks by the artist's son Peter Grosz.














Picasso too was a prime influence on Searle. His eyes twinkled when recalling the fire in his belly after seeing a Picasso exhibition that really made him want to draw. He felt 'Picasso may never have finished anything but he opened all the doors for us to go forward.' Searle acknowledged the influence of Picasso on his own work in this special cover for Punch, October 1954.



He was impressed by the maestro's prodigious output right up until the end of his life. The exhbition in 1970 at the Palais des Papes in Avignon left Searle energised but bewildered by the town's refusal to accept the artist's offer of donating the collection!






Turning to the subject of the artist's sketchbook he of course sees it as a vital repository of experiences, thoughts & observations. However he told me that there comes a point where it's all lodged in the brain anyway as a result of drawing. The details he had noted over the years found their way into his illustrations by second nature. Like any pre-Google 'old school' commercial artist he used to have an extensive library of reference material to help too. He used the example of referencing an Indian elephant which coincidentally I had a job on at the time designing exactly that!

Here's a relevant quote from the man from another source:

'There really is no secret. There is no other answer than to slog away, whilst turning oneself into a walking encyclopaedia. Of course one has to assume that, like any pianist who has ploughed away for years on his scales and exercises to become a concert pro, or a super jazz man, that the training has been thoroughly academic so that one is totally free to become classic or jazz- that is, an illustrator without chains. Also, apart from being the fly on the wall, the illustrator has to conceal the mechanics and technicalities and lead the observer to think that the whole achievement is effortless.'

Searle holds little regard for modern digital illustration & cartooning preferring work where the artist's hand is visible. I wouldn't presume to say he may be out of touch but rather that the modern media is. Beautiful, wobbly, inky hand drawn work like Searle's is actually probably viewed as old fashioned, ugly even, by today's ad agency creatives.
Despite this Mr Searle's giant reputation persists. High profile Searle collectors like Jeffrey Archer & Robert Forbes have recently hired the artist to illustrate their books & at 88 years old Searle is still in demand.
Above collaborator & Searle collector Robert Forbes

He implied that he still must work to pay the bills & never really made great sums of money from his career. But I suspect he really can't help himself & still finds drawing daily as compulsive as he did as a a young man, regardless of any financial renumeration. He told me he still gets excited to rise every day & get to his drawing board to see what will come out of his pen. It was humbling to see this great artist, who has gone through so much in his life, still with such great discipline.
A true inspiration & a constant reminder to me that there's really no excuse to not be drawing . . .

Meeting Ronald Searle Part 1: Reportage Illustration & animation

'If you want to go and see Ronald Searle-and nothing is more interesting than visiting an artist in his own surroundings-then you must fly to Provence in the South of France. In the little town high up in the hills, the tall, lean houses are closely packed together along the narrow streets. . . for several years Ronald Searle has lived and worked here in one of these houses full of nooks and crannies. Only the roof terrace yields a view over the Provençal hills; in the distance is the characteristic silhouette of Mont Sainte Victoire, the mountain Cezanne painted so many times. The house itself looks inwards. The view from the studio is blocked by the walls of the house opposite. When he stands at his long drawing table- penning curlicues or working on the design for a new medal, Ronald Searle is alone with himself and his imagination.'

from Henning Bock's introduction to Ronald Searle, 1978 Mayflower Books NY





Quite fittingly, Ronald Searle, illustration god, lives in a Provençal mountain village described on the sign as the 'village in the sky'. Also designated 'un plus beaux villages de France', to reach it means a winding yet pleasurable drive through rolling farmland & vinyards; off the beaten track but picture postcard perfect.
The Searles have lived there now for 30 years & as he told me they 'love it!'
It's allowed him a measure of anonymity (although everyone in the village seems to know him!) much cherished after a 30 year career in the international spotlight-throughout the 50s & 60s Searle was Britain's best known illustrator & his reputation lingers of course. However he longed to escape the repetitiveness, pressure & travelling of reportage illustration, finding in France a refuge & a chance to breath. Far from retired he has continued editorial illustration regularly for the New Yorker in the 80s & 90s and for LeMonde since. He has branched out into relief sculpture with a series of coins for the French mint & still accepts authors' requests to illustrate their books.
Most recently Jeffrey Archer's 'Cat 'O Nine Tails' and Robert Forbes 'Beastly Feasts'published last year.
These were among many topics that were discussed when I recently had the opportunity to visit Mr Searle & ask him about his art & career.



I kicked off the conversation asking him about the pictures he made in Morocco in 1965 which I had found intriguing in their uncharacteristic technique. They're much more painterly than his usual output, almost devoid of drawing in fact & apparently unpublished. He said they were his last assignment for HOLIDAY magazine before the magazine folded. Painted on the spot in watercolour he worked at a distance from the subject matter 'to avoid too much attention.'

Like most artists Searle prefers to draw without disturbance from an audience, remaining a passive observer, preferably without being noticed. For this sketch in a german pub he sat at the back & drew while everyone's attention was on the television set.


He looks fondly on his time as a roving illustrator for HOLIDAY magazine, jetting around the world on assignment. The magazine would pay for first class travel but he traded the ticket for two in economy allowing Monica his wife to accompany him.
He told me she would cover the trips with a polaroid camera-('the latest thing back then') which he could refer to later in case he missed any details. 'HOLIDAY would say go to Alaska & bring back 30 drawings' so off they'd go to the first location, sketch then back to the hotel to work up finished drawings, sleep, then the next day move on to the next location.' They did this for 6 months of the year for almost 15 years. It was so cold in Alaska that the ink literally froze in his pen! Consequently he did most of his sketches there in pencil.






He remembers HOLIDAY art director Frank Zachary as 'a marvellous man' & remains grateful for the opportunity to visit all corners of the world, covering Florida, New York, Germany, Spain, Hawaii amongst others. 'I'd never been to Palm Springs!'
The magazine had a lavish large format with full colour & it's something to open up an issue & see Searle's drawings reproduced almost life size. They're much better viewed this way than in the later collected reprints. For its time the production values were very high. Searle revealed to me that the magazines' printers invented an ink they christened 'Searle purple' to capture the correct hue of the ink that he used.

Searle's drawings from his trip around Germany for HOLIDAY were later reprinted in Heinz Huber's 'Haven't We Met Before?' Huber had been friends with the artist since he had invited him to appear on German television while working in the industry in the 50s. Searle would later ask him to return the favour and accompany him on his trip around Germany as his guide & talked him into writing the text of the book.

Searle also did reportage for LIFE magazine during the 60s, illustrating articles that were more serious in tone than for HOLIDAY. Known for its extensive photo library Searle believes the magazine had events so well covered photographically that they used him just to get another perspective.
In 1960 he went on the campaign trail years before Ralph Steadman & Hunter S Thompson, chronicling the presidential race between Nixon & Kennedy, spending time trying to get close enough to both to capture their likeness.


The 1961 trial of war criminal Adolf Eichmann proved to be a trial for Searle too as sketching was not permitted in court. He encountered the same obstacle when sent to draw at the Old Bailey in London. He got around this by surrepticiously drawing on tiny note paper in his lap & taking multiple loo breaks! He would memorise a feature, leave the courtroom & make rapid sketches from memory. With only a week's deadline to collate the necessary research the Old Bailey assignment turned out to be much effort for little renumeration, 'at least the Eichmann trial went on for months!' he joked.

Searle's sketching assignments often brought him close to the powerful & famous. As a teenager in his native Cambridge he had sketched Winston Churchill orating at the Guildhall for the local newspaper. His press credentials allowed him to sit in the front row where Churchill saw him sketching & later signed the drawing (Churchill was a keen amateur artist himself).









On a visit to Poland in 1948 he almost met Picasso. The Spanish artist was invited to the country as an honorary guest of the World Congress of Intellectuals For Peace. Searle was there partly to see Auschwitz for himself when he heard about the congress. Accompanied by that other great reportage draughtsman of the 20th century, Feliks Topolski, they went along in the hope of meeting their idol. However they found him beseiged by a throng of like-minded admirers. Their encounter lasted 'a second'!



Searle's reputation as a draughtsman also got him involved in an international political situation-the Suez Crisis of 1956. He was placed under the Official Secrets Act and 'requested' by the War Office to take part in a 'mission'. Stationed at Suez Operations HQ in Cyprus he was part of a five man team in the Department of Psychological Warfare.




Unable at the time to tell even his wife where he was going he seemed still reluctant to discuss details. Serving seven years in the army during & after World War 11 meant he was qualified as a military man but he refused to re-enlist & chuckled at the memory of being the sole artist in a group including an SAS commander & a pilot. These rare propaganda pamphlets are hard to find these days except probably in Egyptian flea markets!









He spent much of the following year in America working in Hollywood on an animated industrial film for Standard Oil. The 1O minute short 'Energetically Yours' was produced by Playhouse Pictures, directed by David Hilberman with Searle hired to design and storyboard.
I mentioned that I deemed it probably the finest example of Searle's style translated to animation, streets ahead of the later Dick DeadEye which Searle agreed was 'disappointing'. However he told me without hesitation that Brit animator Ivor Wood (who would become best known for stop-motion TV show Postman Pat) had captured his style best.
Here he unearthed for me an unknown chapter of animation history. While collaborating on some commercials for another oil company they concocted an idea to pitch non-commercial ads; mini artistic shorts, that would air between commercials! Needless to say this never flew with TV execs but apparently the spots were produced & now languish in Searle's archives. I hope to persuade him to dig these out sometime.



It's well known that during his stay in Hollywood Searle was invited on a tour of the Disney studios & posed for publicity shots with the great man himself. I asked him about the story of seeing 'his horse' on the walls of Tom Oreb's office & how much he thought the Disney artists were influenced by his art & others of the 'Lilliput' school. Searle dismissed this saying the top animators came from newspaper/magazine illustration themselves & had long developed their own style before he came along. Although he did acknowledge that Ken Anderson directly sourced the Searle style as a key influence on the look of 101 Dalmations. Anderson was among several of the Disney artists that Searle remained friends with despite not warming much to their boss. He was invited to their homes for evening parties & must have been very much part of that social scene.

Another ex-Disney artist he holds fond memories of is Bill Tytla. I was surprised to find out that he had worked with him at his commercial studio in New York-presumably the studio founded by him & Ray Favata in the late Fifties.

Naturally, he also got to know the UPA artists too, Hilberman of course & Art Babbitt would later produce the animation for Energetically Yours at Playhouse Pictures, along with Bill Melendez who went on to produce Dick Deadeye based on Searle's designs.

The Fifties must have been Searle's busiest decade, in his thirties, still with the energy & drive to accept any commission from reportage to animation, decorating the Chelsea Arts Ball to film posters & theatrical design. Travelling the globe on assignment & even top secret missions! What's more impressive is was also simultaneously running his own publishing company! PERPETUA (which is where this blog takes its title) was founded by him and Kaye Webb his first wife who he met in the offices of LILLIPUT magazine & would later go on to further success as editor of Puffin books.

They not only published beautiful editions of Searle's work but also volumes on Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec & André Francois. The graphic design of the covers of Perpetua Books are striking-all usually typeset in Searle's distinctive font. I was curious to know whether he had a team working for him or at least an assistant to do the books layout? But he said no, just him-he did it all!
Only a couple of titles were successes and the company didn't last but the presentation of Perpetua editions endures with their distinctive red, black & white covers.







The PERPETUA bookcovers led us back to discussing illustration & political cartooning which I'll save for part two!

(I'm grateful to Shane Glines for contributing high quality scans)