✏️ TREE 609: JG – the art one

This post is arriving out of order. You may have noticed that I accidentally sent you TREE 610 on Monday. To save you from getting spammed I delayed this one until now. Sorry for the mess up. Silver lining: in a beautiful coincidence, the post that went out at the wrong time is called ‘One of the dumbest things I’ve done’.

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I loved ads when I was a kid, especially funny ones, especially ones that told good stories, especially ones that had a bit of subtlety and depth. I didn't care what the medium was. My best friend and I used to make up radio stations and record them on cassettes. Our adverts were the best part. Certain people shall remember me forever for the classic ‘Diaper Patch’. (It was quick-setting concrete, in case you are wondering, and still not sold in shops.) It was my love for ads that eventually pushed me in the direction of graphic design rather than fine art or cartooning.

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My mother made me respond to one of those ‘Draw Me’ ads. It was a lady pig cartoon. I drew the pig as it was shown on the ad, then I drew an improved version. A few weeks later a salesman with one sunburnt arm sprouting a lawn of bleached hair set up a portable film projector on our kitchen table and showed us a movie about the wonders of Art Instruction Schools. Then he showed us samples of work by alumni of the school. My parents were so impressed by the Artists Who Were So Good That Their Paintings Looked Like Photographs that they signed me up.

The correspondence instructors did not appreciate my style. The technical instruction was at the cutting edge of the 1960s. And I never finished the final exam. But I really did learn how to draw. For that I shall be eternally grateful.

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I loved American newspaper comic strips. It started with one of the greatest greats: Peanuts. Then one of my friends introduced me to Garfield. I got hooked because I was too young to know any better. Then there was The Far Side and my years of page-a-day calendars, Bloom County and Outland, Bizarro, FoxTrot, Mother Goose and Grimm, Non Sequitur, and Shoe – Jeff McNally knew what to do with ink!

I decided I would become a cartoonist. I invented characters and went to classes and drew and drew and drew. I even naively submitted some cartoons to the Saturday Evening Post (drawn on copier paper!) They came back with a nice note explaining how I could fold my return envelope better next time.

Somewhere along the way I found a book of the first B.C. strips. They were actually hilarious. Later came Red Meat, Ernie Pook’s Comeek, This Modern World and Zippy the Pinhead. But the most important strip to me, by far, was Calvin and Hobbes. Bill Watterson is an Actual Genius, and Calvin and Hobbes was the last great newspaper comic. It inspired me to draw, and at the same time reminded me that I would never be good enough to come near Bill Watterson’s standard of work. Then I got into historical comics, especially Walt Kelly’s Pogo and Krazy Kat by George Herriman. The more I read and looked, the more I realised that I was not an Actual Genius. That’s never a reason to not do something.

Young Fathers’ Glastonbury set was phenomenal! If you have access to BBC iPlayer, do yourself a favour and watch the whole thing.

In case you missed it yesterday, I showed off the cover of my upcoming book.

Grow slowly
Jeff