I love when y’all request stuff like this! Been sitting on this one awhile but today seemed the right one to pull the trigger, so here’s a little tribute to Bill Watterson‘s great Calvin & Hobbes series (which got started in 1985 and ran for ten years). You just can’t argue with a good comic, and Watterson did it super-right:
So I started off with a two coat base of Orly Prince Charming — I know I covered most of it up, but it really is a lovely rich chocolate color, and stood up to brand expectation with application and cover. With that set, I used seven colors of acrylic paint (I don’t know why it tickles me that it only took seven, but there you have it) to paint in both Calvin and Hobbes on the nails; pinky and ring in their dancing glory, middle and index with some muggin’ faces I’d expect to see if they were riding in the back of a station wagon (remember that as a kid, trying to crack up whoever was stuck behind you during a drive? Ok, we still do this.)
Want more Calvin and Hobbes? Click here to flip through and revisit old favorites online.
This is waaaay awesome!! I love C&H!! my fav!! I am amazed at this skill u have to freehand!!
Me too! I have most of the books still on my shelf, they’re a great rainy day go-to. And thank you — I seriously worked this one over like a fiend, you can see it more on the pinky and ring, just a mess of patches and corrections… whatever OCD ticks I may have definitely come out when working on this stuff!
Calvin and Hobbes forever <3
Sayin’!
Wow! You did an amazing job! I loved reading C&H and now my son does as well. He will love this when he sees it.
Seriously love that you’re passing the love down to your boy — my dad’s the one that started me off with C&H fix too (in fact a handful of my books are from his shelf).
you’re my hero *.*
::blush:: and you… you are the wind beneath my wings.
Are we having a Beaches moment yet?
I think this might actually be my fave of ALL of your designs!! I just love Calvin’s mean muggin’ face on your middle finger
Best cartoon ever.
Aww thank you! I was seriously trying to figure out how to take it off my nail in one piece so I could keep it (is that weird?) because I didn’t want to deal with making it slowly disappear in nail polish remover. This one’s definitely one of my favorites too.
Sosososooooo nice, really well painted as usual, well done!
…. no tutorial? that would be cool… very nice job
Oh gosh, sadly no… This was hours and hours of me sitting on the couch and futzing with paint, I’m not really sure how to translate that into a 5 minute tutorial! Mostly (and this is sort of the spot I’m in with this site) is that I don’t have enough time to do a lot of video stuff, so have to do what few how-tos I have with photos and graphics. If you block out the shapes in black though and start working in the colors (I usually start with the eyes) you can do a character from any cartoon you see!