Rewrite: Calvin and Hobbs

Reading a great deal of Calvin and Hobbs you begin to notice things, things like how the as an artist like Bill Watterson gets to know his characters, they evolve, visually, until they reach a point of visual refinement that few other cartoonists ever truly achieve. The artistic style of Calvin and Hobbs is deceptive, on a cursorily glance, it seems simple, Calvin’s just a handful of lines, very simply described right? Wrong. In the few lines Bill Watterson uses to construct Calvin, or Hobbs, or any of his characters, he’s able to reveal so very much about each of them. He can show us where the character is holding their weight based on the thickness of the line, the line weight. Bill Watterson’s ability to construct a pose for each of his characters is unrivaled. Each pose struck is so simple, but the weight is always perfect, and the character of the pose is always obvious, instantly readable but almost never stereotypical or cliché, always original and always entertaining. As someone who has tried to emulate Bill Watterson’s style before, it is really really tough. If you choose just about any panel of Calvin and Hobbs and delve into it you’ll find all the layers I listed above and more. Bill Watterson’s drawings look effortless, and I’m sure eventually they were to him to some degree, but each stroke in the frame is painstakingly planned out and is placed perfectly, attempting to draw in Bill Watterson’s style is not a feat that should be take lightly.