{"id":37679,"date":"2026-02-26T16:23:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T21:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=37679"},"modified":"2026-02-26T16:23:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T21:23:25","slug":"johnston-offers-glimpse-behind-the-cartoons-at-apl-next-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/johnston-offers-glimpse-behind-the-cartoons-at-apl-next-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnston offers glimpse behind the cartoons at APL next week"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Scott Johnston\u2019s editorial cartoons in The Auroran have kept readers laughing for a quarter-century, but Johnston\u2019s cartoonist lens extends well beyond the issues of Aurora \u2013 and next week you can get a glimpse into his creative process at the Aurora Public Library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An array of Johnston\u2019s non-editorial cartoons are now featured at APL\u2019s Colleen Abbott Gallery through March 28. This Tuesday, March 3, however, Johnston will offer an artist\u2019s talk beginning at 7 p.m., illustrating both how he gets his ideas and how the final product all comes together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the things I really enjoy about doing the non-political cartoons is that I get to do them on anything and everything,\u201d says Johnston. \u201cWhen I do the editorial stuff, I have to restrict myself to Aurora or thereabouts. When I do the non-political cartoons, I can do them on animals and pets, mythology, fairy tales, arts, literature, science, holidays, historical figures, aliens, trees, inanimate objects \u2013 just about anything and everything. And it\u2019s very liberating to be able to think of a cartoon about trees when the next cartoon you do is about pirates, or Rapunzel or something like that. It\u2019s a lot of fun to be able to let your mind wander and to pick and choose across a wide variety of subjects.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Johnston was invited to curate the exhibition, he started with 100 of his favourites and whittled it down to the best 35 to account for the available space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He made a concerted effort to ensure a wide variety of subjects were represented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was fun to revisit a lot of the cartoons I hadn\u2019t looked at in a while and a challenge to pick them out because, of course, they all tend to be your favourites,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen you put so much effort into them, you kind of have a soft spot for them all, so it\u2019s a bit hard to pick and choose, but, in the end, we came up with a good cross-section.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent years, Johnston\u2019s work has been exposed to audiences well beyond Aurora, whether through his social media profile or the five volumes of non-editorial cartoons he\u2019s published. It\u2019s a journey he says has brought a lot of \u201crewarding\u201d feedback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re cartooning, it\u2019s like you\u2019re kind of drawing them for yourself, what you feel is funny, but you don\u2019t often get that immediate reaction,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I put the cartoons in the paper, it goes out, people read the paper, but I don\u2019t necessarily know if they thought it was funny or that they got the joke, or thought it was insightful, or anything like that. In getting a wider audience, it\u2019s nice to see that my cartoons are universally appreciated \u2013 I get feedback from folks from across Canada, the States, Europe, Australia, and all over the world. It\u2019s really fun to think that people on the other side of the world are enjoying the work that I have done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just want people to have fun with this show. It has been a long, cold winter here in Aurora and I think people are looking forward to the spring and being cheered up a bit. I\u2019m hoping these cartoons will bring smiles to folks\u2019 faces, and that they\u2019ll have some fun looking at cartoons that they may not have seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott Johnston\u2019s editorial cartoons in The Auroran have kept readers laughing for a quarter-century, but Johnston\u2019s cartoonist lens extends well beyond the issues of Aurora \u2013 and next week you can get a glimpse into his creative process at the Aurora Public Library. An array of Johnston\u2019s non-editorial cartoons are now featured at APL\u2019s Colleen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/2026-02-26-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9NJ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 21:31:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37681,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37679\/revisions\/37681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}