Artist 3/20: Bill Watterson

  So this week I've decided to present an unconventional artist who I'm gonna argue works in a 3rd dimensional realm. Really he works in a 2-dimensional plane but his work is only effective with the additional dimension of time. I present to you, Bill Watterson.

    Known best as the mind behind the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip series, I'm brought with the dilema of classifying his work. Being half story telling and half imagery...what is the impact of his "artwork". Unconventional to many artists, an image isn't complete without diologue, chronology and a definite story. Each of these elements is reliant upon at least one other. So for this segment I shall explore both Watterson's visual artistry and his story-telling.

One could go on for days about the art explored in Calvin & Hobbes. Of course you have the standard look of each character inked in a very loose and cartoony manner. But through Calvin's imagination, Watterson was able to live vicariously and had an infinite number of possibilities in exploring art forms. These explorations in art forms manifested themselves in several varying degrees. Occasionally, we'd see SpaceMan Spiff; Calvin as a science-fiction space hero, drawn in the same style as calvin but in entirely different settings like space or alien planets always inhabited by unique alien creatures.

Another opportunity Watterson loved and fought to take full artistic license with was the Sunday strip. Given anywhere from 1/3 of the entire page, he wanted freedom to draw the strip in a non-traditional way. Rather than following the standard panel layout for most comic strips, Watterson played around with panel size and placement. Common in these strips, Watterson dabbled in drawing Calvin in multiple art styles including, DiChromatic, Cubism, Abstract, Negative Values, Lacking Perspective and so on usually paralleling it to how Calvin viewed the world.

Thirdly, Watterson would totally emerse use within Calvin's imagination and would draw the strips in a very realistic manner. This most often happened in strips involving dinosaurs, animals or when he and Susie were playing house and was a means for the artist to get away from cartooning for a while. Quite often these were the strips that sometimes got the biggest response as they often were so arbitrary.

 So what about the story aspect? Again, a topic that could have text books written about it. But Watterson is so clever in blurring the lines between what is fantasy and reality. Take the above strip. While the final frame illustrates that the dinosaurs are a part of Calvin's imagination, what about Hobbes? Is he just another aspect of fantasy? Is this fantasy within fantasy? While it is typically accepted that Hobbes is a figment of Calvin's imagination, we often see Calvin accomplish things that he most likely couldn't have done without the assistance of someone. Also, through the varying strips, we are presented with everything from politics, philosophy, ethics, art, parenthood, cultural flaws and other social commentary. Another gargantuan irony is how Calvin apparently has abounding knowledge on the formentioned topics yet is the stereotypical incompetant and unmotivated student.
I believe this is where my love for juxtapostion and opposites is derived.

However, my greatest respect for Watterson comes from his integrity as an artist and his work. He only worked on the Calvin and Hobbes series for less than 10 years because the quality had reached its zenith and anything more would pale in comparison to what his characters were intended to be. And rather than economize from his work much like Garfield's creator Jim Davis, he has refused to allow the production of any merchandise with his characters insisting that they stand on their own, in the medium they were originally conceived.