The Book Sniffer: Harold's Hungry Eyes

Creating Harold

by Kevin Waldron

I made a cat first. My wife every now and then considers getting a cat. I say no, “What will it do all day in our tiny apartment?” So I made a little picture instead called 24 hrs in the life of a cat that hangs on our wall.

I quite liked how scribbley the drawings were against the very organised photographic background. So I made another, this time with a black and white dog. I had drawn a full page of Boston terriers, more than I could fit on the photo from the magazine, so I made the simplest gif with all of them in no particular order . The nice people at Phaidon spotted him and we arranged to meet.

I didn’t have anything else in mind other than showing them what I had been working on in my studio for my own satisfaction. Like this collage of 10^th street near my home in Manhattan.

All the windows and doors are antique chairs, tables, dressers, etc. So we had a dog we liked and now a city. Dogs like slippers and I’ve always thought the Brooklyn Bridge from afar looks a bit like giant, old wooden pegs.

Here is another unfinished collage I was experimenting with that contributed the final ingredient- food!

In fact food appeared quite often in my collages as there were so many advertisements for it in the magazines I found.

The dog lived in an apartment in the city and was obsessed with food, let’s make a story around that! So from then on I looked at everything in the city through a hungry dog’s eyes!

We just had to think of a way to get Harold outside on his own so he could show us these new sights.

When I had enough collages to play with I started to refine them in a way that would keep the spontaneity of my sketches. Using a wash colour background suited this and was a good tool for filling the space that didn’t interest Harold!