Thursday, 14 March 2013

Know How!


Back in the summer of 2002 Egmont UK launched Know How!, a new monthly activity magazine for children. Contents included various arts and crafts subjects and light educational features. Editor Claire Mewett invited me to contribute quite a few illustrations every issue but my two main assignments for the mag were the Funny Find-It and Crazy Colouring double page spreads.

Funny Find-It consisted of one huge busy picture with a different setting every issue. One month it'd be a beach, the next a shopping centre and so on, with the reader invited to scour the picture in order to find several characters or objects. 



Crazy Colouring was a black and white centrespread in the mag, again with a different topic every issue. The idea being for kids to colour them of course. This gave me the opportunity to illustrate various genres including pirates, sword and sorcery, spies, Western, and more.


I thoroughly enjoyed drawing these spreads as I was able to apply a slightly different and more detailed style than I'd normally use for smaller images. Even today, 11 years later, I still consider these large black and white spreads for Know How! amongst my favourite pages. It was really a pleasure to work for this magazine.

I'm guessing that most comic collectors won't have seen this side of my work (as Know How! wasn't a comic) so here's a selection for you to browse.

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6 comments:

  1. Peter Gray14 March 2013 at 15:19

    You are great a the busy page...what alot of fun to look at..

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  2. Lew Stringer14 March 2013 at 23:12

    Thanks Peter. I also did a few of those busy spreads last year for Toxic mag.

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  3. Harry Rickard16 March 2013 at 18:00

    The wizard one is in a lovely style - very different to what I've seen before by you!

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  4. Lew Stringer16 March 2013 at 18:09

    Thanks. One of the reasons for doing this new blog is that it occurred to me that a lot of today's readers will only be familiar with my work for The Dandy and The Beano. This blog gives me the space and opportunity to show off the varied things I've done over the last 30 years.

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  5. Tiniebras18 March 2013 at 20:57

    I absolutely love these pages. Its the blend between the fun of "Where's Wally" and the anarchy of British humour comics. I was lucky enough to win one of these on ebay and my Kids adore it. I tried to replace it at Christmas in their bedroom with some lovely Leo Baxendale prints that I had picked up but they demanded to have it back. Any chance we could see some more of these on ebay?

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    1. Lew Stringer18 March 2013 at 22:48

      Aw, that's nice to hear. That's what this job is all about. As long as the audience it's aimed at is happy, I'm happy. Never mind the grumpy critics who wish comics were like they were when they were seven. :)

      Yes, I'll probably be selling another one or two of those in a few weeks, once I've sorted through my archives. I'll post details here as and when.

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