The Timeless Artwork of Dave Whamond

 

	Cartoon by Dave Whamond

By Mike Sullivan

You probably recall a time when calendars, promoting products and safety, circulated prior to the beginning of every year. Prior to the proliferation of mobile devices, calendar apps and electronic reminders, calendars offered an excellent medium of promoting products and messaging and for years, Alberta One-Call circulated tens of thousands of calendars to safety partners every year. For a long time, Dave Whamond’s artwork was the centrepiece of those calendars offering a humourous, yet lasting and thought-provoking view to our damage prevention messaging.

Dave Whamond’s work has appeared in publications such as Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, Psychology Today, OWL, MacLeans, Reader’s Digest, National Geographic, Outdoor Canada and many others. He has worked on national campaigns in Canada and the U.S. for Taco Bell, Tim Hortons, Real Canadian Superstore/Loblaws, Labatt Brewing Company, Domino's Pizza, Advil, Chrysler, VISA, Bell, Barq's, McDonald's, Canadian Tire, Coca-Cola, Disney and NASA. He has worked on over 30 books including the Oddrey series, My Think-a-ma-jink, the Adventures of Hot Dog and Bob series, and the new Robert Munsch book, Braids. His new book, Frank and Laverne is in stores now.

Dave has won numerous awards such as the Blue Spruce award for both My Think-a-ma-jink and Oddrey as well as a Silver Birch award for Secret Agent Y.O.U. He has been nominated for 10 Reuben awards for the National Cartoonists Society and has won four of them for Magazine Illustration, Advertising Illustration, Newspaper Illustration and Best Book Illustration.

His internationally syndicated panel comic Reality Check has appeared daily since 1995 in papers such as the Miami Herald, Seattle Post Intelligencer, Toronto Star, Boston Herald, Chicago Tribune, Detroit News, Minneapolis Star Tribune and others. It was nominated for best cartoon panel of the year by the National Cartoonists Society.

Dave also taught third and fourth-year illustration at the Alberta College of Art and Design from 1997 to 2006.