In The Style of Calvin & Hobbes

Calvin & Hobbes is one of the elder deities of my childhood pantheon. Bill Watterson is a paragon of artistic integrity and it shows in his work, even to the 4- or 5-year-old I probably was when I first encountered it. As I got older and read his beautiful, hilarious, and characteristically insightful commentary in a C&H anniversary collection that I had, it sank in even more, and endeared the art itself to me even deeper.

Drawing has always felt like my most obvious artistic shortcoming, and in college, when I was taking drawing classes for that specific reason, I turned to Bill Watterson again, this time for stylistic rather than conceptual guidance. The expressiveness that an old-school cartoonist could wring out of an ink pen and through all the printing and reprinting processes of the industry was, as a goal for me, really shooting for the moon, but recreating a large-format dinosaur scene from a book cover and closely studying some of his winter-themed strips (always a favorite of mine) got me on a path that I felt - and feel - good about.

Drawing remains, if not an Achilles heel, at least an insecurity of mine, but these pieces are some of my more successful and I'm still happy to stand behind them. The dinosaur scene, as I mentioned, is a recreation of an existing work, as was the space scene, but the winter diptych are originals based on plein air sketches of my college campus.