Calvin gets some modeling clay and plays with it along with Hobbes, the two exploring different approaches to creating art.
Tropes
- Appeal to Popularity: Calvin preaches the need for art to be simple and accessible to everyone so that people won't be threatened by it and for widespread appeal. He says that trying to express original truths is futile in the modern era, since people won't like it, and the goal is to aim for the lowest common denominator.
- Author Tract: Calvin's spiel about how fine art isn't appreciated by modern society and that popular art is the way to success now is most certainly Watterson's own frustrations with having to fight publishers over what he could and couldn't do in Calvin & Hobbes.
- Doing It for the Art: In-universe. Hobbes makes a clay tiger, which Calvin derides as not being marketable and being too boring. Hobbes retorts that he made it because he wanted to, and for no other reason.
- I Just Like Saying the Word: Calvin and Hobbes are playing around with modelling clay, and Hobbes admits he just wanted to have an excuse to say "smock" a lot, which quickly drives Calvin crazy.Hobbes: Smock, smock, smock, smock, smock, smock!Calvin: WHAT ON EARTH IS WRONG WITH YOU?!
- Inherently Funny Words: Calvin and Hobbes are playing with modelling clay, and Hobbes demands that Calvin give him a smock to wear (actually one of his dad's business suits). Hobbes ends up getting sidetracked by the smock for a while and thinks it's just inherently funny. It's even the page image!
- Merchandise-Driven: One of the strip's repeating gags is that Calvin, for all his artistic pretension, definitely wants in on the market share. When Calvin's mom admires the clay tiger Hobbes sculpted, Calvin is incredulous that she likes something that isn't a tie-in for some franchise.Calvin: But look what I made! A hundred shrunken heads of popular cartoon characters!Calvin's Mom: Eww, you stitched their mouths shut?![beat]Calvin: Gloat now, 'cause some day I'll be a lot richer than you.Hobbes: I call it "Symphony in Orange, No. 1".
- Mouth Stitched Shut: In Troubling Unchildlike Behavior incident #2,048, Calvin makes a hundred mini clay heads of popular cartoon characters with their mouths like this. Probably for the best we weren't able to see it in detail.
