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Pen & Ink
An illustrated history
Bill Leak, Eric Lobbecke, Bill Mitchell, Larry Pickering, Peter Nicholson and of course the incomparable Bruce Petty...what would a big news day be without the wit and style of our brilliant cartoonists and artists? Tour our gallery of The Australian’s best cartoons and illustrations through the decades.
Cartoonist
Bruce Petty
Bruce Petty remembers the issues from his time at The Australian
1964-77
While working at The Australian, Bruce Petty would spend nine hours a day refining cartoon ideas and reading newspapers for inspiration. He started cartooning in the 1950s when he was in London trying to make a living as an illustrator. Born in 1929 and raised on the family orchard in Victoria, he took a job in an animation studio in Melbourne at the age of 19 and headed off to see the world in 1954. After having cartoons published in Punch, Esquire, the Saturday Evening Post, and The New Yorker, he returned to Australia in 1960. After turning down a job on The Age, he accepted one in Sydney on The Daily Mirror in 1961 and in 1964 became the first cartoonist on The Australian. While his scribble style didn’t please everyone, he revolutionised cartooning in Australia by making the idea more important than the drawing. Menzies, Holt, Gorton, McMahon, Whitlam and Fraser were prime ministers during his 13 years with the paper. Petty resigned in 1977 to work for The Age, where he is still cartooning.
- Lindsay Foyle
Cartoonist
Aubrey Collette
1965-71
COLLETTE arrived in Australia in 1962 from Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka) where for over a decade he had been one of the country’s leading cartoonists. But after a change in government, he became persona non grata and was told if he wanted to continue living safely he should do it somewhere else. Born in 1920, Collette was a quiet man who began on The Australian in 1965. He would arrive in the office early and be gone by 11am, saying if he hadn’t had a good idea by then he wasn’t going to. He left in 1971 to work on The Herald in Melbourne and from there moved to The Straits Times in Singapore in 1984.
He returned to Melbourne after a few years and died in 1992.
- Lindsay Foyle
Cartoonist
Mark Lynch
1988-94
LYNCH was working as a steward for Qantas in 1988 when he noticed The Australian would sometimes run an old cartoon with a line saying Bill Mitchell was ill. Lynch dropped a cartoon into the office with a note saying it might be better to run a fresh cartoon. It was in the paper the next day. So he drew another and that ran, too. For the next four years he faxed cartoons from all over the world. Born in Sydney in 1951, Lynch left Qantas in 1991 to run a restaurant. Some days he would be serving food at one table and drawing a cartoon for The Australian at the next.
- Lyndsay Foyle
Cartoonist
Bill Mitchell
1980-94
A QUIET, almost shy person, Mitchell worked as a copy boy on The West Australian while waiting to join the air force, which then rejected him because of crook eyes. He turned his attention to cartooning. Mitchell’s work appeared in 1969 and he soon became the first daily cartoonist on the Perth paper since it was established in 1834. In 1978, Kalgoorlie-born Mitchell, then 37, moved to Sydney to work on The Daily Telegraph before transferring to The Australian in 1980. Mitchell said he was never pressured to toe a political line at The Australian but added that feminists, the Church of England, politicians and black activists, among others, did try to stop him drawing. Mitchell’s biggest battle was with cancer. Some days he would lie in bed thinking of a cartoon, get up to draw it, only to have to go back to bed and rest before inking in his drawing and faxing it to the office. Mitchell lost the battle in 1994. His memory was kept alive with the annual Bill Mitchell Memorial Art Award, created by The Australian to recognise the work of young cartoonists not already working for a paper.
- Lyndsay Foyle
Cartoonist / Artist
Bill Leak
Watch Bill Leak talk about his work
1994-
LEAK was trying to eke out a living as a painter when he discovered he could make money drawing cartoons. Born in 1956 in Adelaide, for a time he considered a career in music before settling on art. Leak attended the Julian Ashton Art School and spent a number of years in Europe painting. He has worked for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review and contributed cartoons and illustrations to many publications. He said joining The Australian in 1994 was probably his best career move: he enjoys the challenge of providing a bit of entertainment for a national readership that still differentiates between entertainment and news. Leak has won almost every award open to Australian cartoonists, including eight Walkleys, and is one of our top portrait painters. He has entered the Archibald Prize more times without winning than any other living artist.
- Lyndsay Foyle
Cartoonist
Peter Nicholson
1994-
When The Australian offered Peter Nicholson a job in 1994, he was running his Rubbery Figures film studio in Melbourne, and doing cartoons for The Age. He leapt at the chance to devote himself to daily cartoons, and sent his political puppets to the National Museum. At The Australian, he pioneered drawing cartoons directly onto the computer, and also made a weekly animation for The Australian on-line for three years. As an unrelated sideshow, he sculpted the bronze portraits of Fraser, Hawke, Keating, Howard, Rudd and Gillard in for the Prime Ministers Avenue, Ballarat.
Illustrator
Eric Lobbecke
Watch Eric Lobbecke talk about his work
1988-
WITH a background in graphic design, Lobbecke took a substantial pay cut to join News Limited so he could work on newspapers. He illustrated his first opinion page for the Australian in 1988, and also appeared in The Daily Telegraph for ten years, establishing him as one of Australia's top humorous illustrators. Lobbecke was born in Vienna in 1966 and moved to Australia in 1973. He started contributing pocket cartoons to The Australian in 1997 and in 2000 began cartooning for The Sunday Telegraph. He gave up using words in cartoons when he was asked to draw the opinion page and Inquirer full time in 2008.
Cartoonist
Jon Kudelka
1998-
KUDELKA completed a science degree at the University Of Tasmania in 1991 before taking the next logical career step and becoming a cartoonist at The Hobart Mercury. In 1998 he heard there was some work going on The Australian and drove from Hobart to Sydney the next day to investigate. His interview, which included a gruelling Q&A session with Bill Leak at the pub, went well and he now works regularly for the Australian. He won a Walkley in 2008 and in 2010 was The National Museum Of Australia’s Cartoonist Of The Year.
Artist
Sturt Krygsman
Sturt Krygsman reflects on drawing for The Australian
1993-
Sturt was born into an artistic household on the northern beaches of Sydney in 1964. His first artistic influences came from absorbing the illustration and design books that his father brought home from work, marvelling at the quality, humour and different styles within. He studied graphic design at Randwick and entered the advertising game after completing the course.An opportunity for a new career came when he was employed in the fledgling newspaper graphics section in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1988. Sturt came to The Australian in 1993 as a full time illustrator. He has many national awards to his name including three Walkley Awards
Cartoonist
Judy Horacek
1997-2004
HORACEK is a freelance cartoonist who began contributing cartoons to The Australian Magazine in July 1997, and was published regularly there until August 2001. She also had a couple of stints drawing the main daily cartoon, including for an entire month in January 2000. From November 2001 until March 2004, she drew a pocket cartoon for the Letters Page once a week, one of which was nominated for a Walkley Award. She also drew cartoons for the Australian's Review of Books from May 1999 until June 2001 when it ceased publication.
She enjoys examining the human condition and having a whinge through cartooning, but laments that there is too much filing involved.
Cartoonist
Lindsay Foyle
1996-2011
FOYLE joined The Australian in 1996 as a layout sub-editor. His cartoons soon popped up on the IT pages and then in the news section, too. His computer comic strip The Spin ran for over three years. Foyle was born in Sydney in 1944 and spent more than 20 years working on The Bulletin. For several years his cartoons ran in the sports pages of The Australian, and for three years he contributed a cartoon to the letters page.