Chance discovery

While the wife had the smart TV playing Yes items with a set of album and single cover illustrations (Roger Dean stuff) I recalled the artwork in my 5th form common room done by an artistic type known as Derek Riggs (and a few bits from me¹)
So I did a couple of searches and very quickly discovered what Derek did after school. After only doing a few weeks of 6th form and getting an early entry to the College of Art.

Apparently he did some cover artwork that even the oldies will have seen reproduced out on the street on T-shirts and denim jackets. “Eddie the Head” is well known – Iron Maiden are an inducement for me to operate the power button, or channel selection, but seem to have put a fair bit of spendable paper his way.

¹ The shading for the perspective/3D effect on the painted in electrical socket needed redoing after every visit of one teacher. You’d think that after attempting to plug into a painting once she’d have learned.

And now his artwork has made it onto stamps

Interesting pre-celebration of his 65th birthday (exactly one month after mine)

I notice he seems to have a Wikipedia page these days – from which the phrase: “Riggs currently resides in Riverside County, California, US.¹⁵¹⁶ He has seasonal affective disorder.” stands out.

Mostly the S.A.D reference – Derek was a bit moody at the best of times, winter meant being stuck indoors, which wasn’t good, although we mostly put that down to being in the house with his mum for longer periods (definitely not good)