Archie Babinec Thompson, a senior here at Prep, is well known for his fun cartoon art sketches. Babinec-Thompson started drawing in sketchbooks during his freshman and sophomore years, drawing inspiration from his favorite comic book series, Calvin & Hobbes. Babinec Thompson reflects fondly on this anthology because of the way the author used a small kid and his imaginary childhood friend to depict big adult thoughts and ideas while at the same time incorporating humor into it. And, of course, Babinec Thompson loves the art, saying, “The art is super well done. It’s crazy to imagine the author, Bill Watterson, doing it every day.” 

  He later joined art window because of his friends, and through this, he was able to realize his love of art. His friends were good artists, and Babinec-Thompson wanted to replicate that. “I saw what techniques they were using, and I tried to emulate them myself,” he explains.   

The easiest way for him to get into art and drawing was to draw comics and characters. “You didn’t have to make it look realistic,” said Babinec-Thompson, “you just had to come up with something in your imagination. Once you had that, you could make a story for them.” 

Babinec-Thompson’s inspiration comes to him in many different ways. Sometimes, he’ll have an idea throughout the day and has to write it down to remember it. Other times, he writes things until he gets a grasp on what he wants to do. Occasionally he will also work off of a photo – it all just depends on the kind of art that he’s doing. 

Babinec-Thompson started out by drawing cartoon characters, even having a few specific characters that he would draw, but now he is pushing himself to master other art skills and focus more on realism, having his art become less of a character and more like a person. This is something that he wants to try and incorporate into both elements. With his drawings of characters and people, he tries to focus on what he wants to show or tell through them. 

           A specific art style that Babinec-Thompson wants to focus more on in the future is screen printing, a type of art that uses a squeegee to force ink onto a surface through a screen to create a picture. He eventually wants to take on a big project of creating a screen print of a person the size of a wall, his inspiration coming from Any Warhol’s Elvis Art in the Seattle Art Museum.  

            Next year, Babinec-Thompson will be just across the lake at the University of Washington, majoring in fine arts. Babinec-Thompson’s art has come a long way since he first started in Freshman year, and he hopes to keep growing with it and eventually do it as a living.