Calvin & Hobbes

I'd never realised how brilliant the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes is/was until last week when it came up during some research. It's one of those things that I was dimly aware existed but had never paid the slightest bit of attention too. I've missed out. 


These adventures of a six year-old boy and his pet/ toy/ imaginary-friend tiger are philosophical, satirical, thoughtful and witty in a way unlike any other comic strip I've ever seen. All backed up by masterful inkwork. And very funny. I picked up a compendium book of the strips (There's Treasure Everywhere) in Oxfam for £1.50.


A couple of strips from this book. I love the innocence captured in this one, which gives the book its title:

Crosswords:

After 10 years in newspapers, Bill Watterson, the strip's creator, admirably knocked the whole thing on the head in 1995, and always refused to merchandise the characters.

Here are a top 25 Calvin & Hobbes strips from a blog names Progressive Boink:

http://www.progressiveboink.com/archive/calvinhobbes.htm

Birdtree/ Lonely Cockatoo

This is based on the idea of a lonely, bland, cockatoo-type bird, surrounded by more attractive, colourful and popular avian specimens. It originally came about from sketching from the TV while watching Frasier. Just for fun really.

Thames Poster

I did this for that London Transport Museum/ AOI competition- a poster for the Thames. This is based on the under-appreciated stretch of the river beyond the Thames Barrier. The image is based on my sketchbook scrawls from a morning visit. Going to give it a couple more hours' loving soon I think.

Shows

I had a couple more exhibition-heavy days a couple of weeks ago. Swung by the Brighton Ill. & GD London private view at Rochelle School in the East End. They made very good use of the space: it's pretty cavernous and spread over two floors, but they managed to fill the walls, which I found impressive. Good open rooms and well-lit also, especially on the bottom floor.

I also made a morning visit to New Designers in Islington, to check out my friend Chris Parsons' graduation exhibit. He's a product designer and belt-wearer and also my old running buddy. We wandered around and had a good look at the product design shows- some really good new creations, and some really weird ones too. Didn't have the time to look around much of the Illustration stuff though.

I would also recommend the the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery. This wasn't my favourite year, but it's always ace. And the National Gallery's Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries exhibtition was really good too. Equipped with the accompanying leaflet and its glossary of obscure art restoration terms, it was fascinating to nose at the broad range of paintings and read their stories, trying to guess the fakes from the real deal. It made me want to be an art restorer a little bit. And the Portrait Award always makes me want to run home and paint portraits.

Old

My class' graduation website from last year has long since gone deadlink, but a found a cached version and screenshotted and reassembled my page, so I've at least got a record of it to keep. I was really pleased with how my paintings looked on there- really big and lush. The gdi09 identity was designed by Connie Dickson, Aneel Kalsi and Joe Porter, but until someone reminds me I can't remember who built the website.

I honestly can't get my head around how rapidly this past year has shot by!