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Friday 1 July 2011

Do Bears Wear a Tall Hat?

Those of you who have warm and cherished childhood memories of A. A. Milne LOOK AWAY NOW. Ah! Too late.
This is another one I couldn't sell. Too scatological, perhaps? My original caption read as follows: "Ah, Winnie, there you are!" When I put it up on the critic's forum at the Cartoonist's Club of Great Britain (for goodness' sake, don't make me put in another link! Oh very well) it was pointed out to me that Christopher Robin called his bear Pooh rather than Winnie. So I removed the name all together. I have a tendency to over-explain my cartoons through the caption. I call this patronizing, just in case you didn't understand. By removing such an obvious signpost, I think the cartoon works much better and emphasizes location rather than action. It is an allusion to the phrase 'do bears do number two doo-doos in the woods?' and, by jove, just look at where the famous bear is sitting.
I drew the original in pencil, free-hand. By that, I mean that I did not scan in E. H. Shepard's illustration and copy over it. Nah, that would be too easy. Why shouldn't I make life more difficult for myself? No, I reverted to the old eye-hand co-ordination method of drawing and then scanned my pencils into my Bamboo. Mr. Shepard's model for my version of Pooh may be found in the first chapter of Winnie-The-Pooh (Winnie-The Pooh and Some Bees) and his model for my Christopher Robin is at the very end of Expotition to the North Pole in the same volume. I only draw your attention to these facts in order to emphasize what a supreme master of his craft Shepard was. Twee, cosy and middle class? So what? When did charm become something to denigrate? Oh my god! I've just turned into the Daily Mail, haven't I?

9 comments:

  1. Nice drawing Brendan,the last caption is better...

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  2. Love this one - my kind of humour!

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  3. Thank you, both. I am now officially feeling warm and fuzzy. Rather like a teddy bear, in fact!

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  4. Excuse my pendanticism, but shouldn't that be, "do bears wear tall hats?"? Or did you mean, "do bears wear A tall hat?"? Whereapon, all the bears wear the same hat?

    This also suggests a joke about whether sh*t sticks to your fur or not.

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  5. Also, while I'm at it - doesn't Pooh look a bit like he's "waiting for it to break"?

    Sorry . . .your cartoons are obviously too life-like. Well done.

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  6. I've always suspected Christopher Robin was having a sly laugh at his dad's expense with that "Pooh" name anyway.

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  7. Dave, it was a conflation of two sentences, one plural, one singular. Live with it, Mr. pedantry. As for Pooh's [i]moment[/i], I think he's at the head tremor part.
    Zythophile, I think you're right. I bet Christopher Robin's bear didn't need an aitch.

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  8. Er . . . don't you mean Mr. Pedantry. Capital P for a Proper noun and all that.

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  9. You're a proper something, I'll give you that! Grrr!

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