Caring about the environment should be fun
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2010.
I went to the Wheeler Centre for the first time at the weekend and met some great cartoonists (badly sketched here).
doodle from a wheeler comic panel
It was cool to talk to Andrew Weldon (and his wife), who cartoons for the Sunday Age
A Weldon clipping I have on my wall
and Dylan Horrocks, who is a well-known Kiwi graphic novelist (I’m really getting into Hicksville).
Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks
Tags: andrew weldon, cartoons, comics, dylan horrocks, illustrations, strip, wheeler centre
The military response to climate change
National security blanket
the commercial answer to climate change
The Earth Goddess, Gaia, appears in Arctic Circle
Gaia shows Oscar what the Arctic could become
A happy ending for the Arctic
Tags: cartoon, climate change, comic, earth day, gaia, global warming, illustration, series
Oscar loves to remodel the igloo
I wanted to do a strip that would provide a positive conclusion to the Earth Day series, but also stand alone. Thinking about the environment and what is happening can be depressing, but it is important to do what we can – we may buy ourselves some time and we will definitely buy ourselves a better quality of life for people as a whole.
Tags: bottle bank, optimism, positive actions
Today’s cartoon is part of a series that I’ll post when it has run. In the meantime, here’s a sneak peak of Sunday’s panel.
Oscar gives the Earth a hug
At the Top Hut on Bealey Spur
I’m just back from a visit to NZ, catching up with friends, going to a fantastic wedding and doing an overnight tramp (hike!). On my last day, I went into Christchurch and browsed the Arts Centre Market to find a gifted artist, Ron Tekawa, who uses old fabrics to make wonderful skirts. They can’t quite save my legs and wonky toes, but they are as flattering a shape as I can wear!
Billie admires my skirt
Ron Tekawa with another of his creations
Tags: art, Arts Centre, Arts Market, Bealey, Christchurch, craft, creative, Hut, maori, Market, new zealand, NZ, skirt, Spur, stall, Tramp
This is a clipping of an upcoming Sunday that was fun to do but took ages to draw.
Ed swims with the fishes
I love going to galleries as I come out feeling inspired. I think that this makes the hour or so I’ve spent in them worthwhile, even though it could be viewed as another form of procrastination – I should have been working on Arctic Circle ideas when I went to the Ron Mueck exhibition at the NGV St Kilda Road. It was so much better to see the actual sculptures rather than the photos as only in real life can you see how his sense of scale messes with the subject.
Dead Dad - strangely poignant
Small babies are disturbing enough - this one was HUGE
This one looks strangely like my friend, Gary from this angle
Tags: art, exhibit, exhibition, gallery
You get commissioned by an old UK client to draw some cartoons about farm bugs and you draw Australian…
I nearly sent this rough off before realising I'd drawn an Australian farmer
spot the difference
Aussie Farmer
I wonder if the client will ask for a flat cap
Tags: bugs, cartoon, cartoons, drawing, farmers are different in different countries, pencil sketch, roughs
Great to see more posts in the blogosphere about how not having children (or limiting the number you have to one or two) can be good for the planet as well as society. This post in Grist from Lisa Hymas was a follow up to an earlier post on the subject and provided an answer to an argument I’m faced with a lot (even by fellow greenies) – “you’d be a great person to have kids, as we need more people who think like you”…
For starters, I’ll turn again to wise words from Stephanie Mills, who heard similar arguments after she announced her intention to remain childfree in 1969:
There were well-intentioned folks who told me that I was just the kind of person who should be having children. I would respond that given the presence of the then three billion people on Earth, there were already plenty of promising babies in the world, a multitude of whom could be well served by some economic and racial justice so that the privileges I had enjoyed wouldn’t be such an extraordinary qualification for motherhood.
Also, remember, as a number of commenters note: You don’t get to pick how your kids turn out. Good parents try their best to instill in their kids strong social and environmental values, but ultimately kids determine their own destinies, parents be damned.
She doesn’t mention that even trying to live more sustainably, we still have an impact on the planet and it would just be a lot better place for future generations to live in if there were less people in those generations.
Frank has joined the voluntary human extinction movement
Tags: child free, green, low impact, no children, overpopulation, population growth
