James Petrie

Born: June 2, 1932; Died: August 25, 2014

JIM Petrie, who has died aged 82, had one constant companion for 40 years - the red and black flash of mischief that was Minnie the Minx.

He brought the little terror to life in the pages of The Beano from 1961 until he retired in 2001, signing off on his 2,000th comic strip.

Over his career with DC Thomson he also worked on the Dandy, Beezer, Topper and Sparky comics but it was for Minnie that he was best known, producing, in addition to the weekly instalment, 400 annual stories, 35 summer specials and seven libraries - a phenomenal amount of minxing that he said had kept him "in porridge" over the years.

Born in Kirriemuir, his artistic talent was spotted by a teacher at the town's Webster's Seminary who encouraged him to go to college. He graduated with a diploma in fine art from Dundee Technical College and School of Art in the early 1950s and then trained as a teacher, working initially in Lanarkshire before moving to Dundee.

He was teaching at the city's Kirkton High School in 1961 when the chance came to fill in part-time on the Minnie the Minx strip. He ghosted the style of Minnie's original artist Leo Baxendale and so impressed the editorial team and readers that, when Leo left the following year, he was asked to draw her full-time.

His first strip, before the days of political correctness, featured the tearaway in her trademark red and black striped jumper destroying her mother's feather duster to make what would now be referred to as a native American headdress and take her friends captive. She was slippered by her father as a result.

Mr Petrie's cast of characters also included Minnie's chum Chester the cat, Minnie's nemesis Fatty Fudge and, in the 1970s, the Sparky People strip which looked behind the scenes on The Sparky comic. In 2011 he was persuaded to come out of retirement to draw a one-off Fatty Fudge adventure The Tummy Returns.

A freelance artist and flamboyant dresser, his work on Minnie allowed him the financial freedom to pursue his own art, based from his studio at home where he would cut a bohemian figure, preferring to work in a sheepskin coat rather than allow heating to ruin his paint.

A gifted water colourist, who was inspired by all things Spanish and admired Dali and Picasso, he exhibited his work, which evoked complex, ambiguous and profound emotions, in various galleries.

He once submitted two paintings, representing birth and death, to Dundee's McManus Galleries. The curators were willing to take the depiction of death but the birth was deemed too graphic. Mr Petrie, who didn't hesitate to stand up for his principles - he showed solidarity with the Dundee Timex strikers in 1993 and was an anti-Iraq war demonstrator - withdrew both paintings in protest.

Latterly he was involved in Angus Gliding Club and became immensely inspired by the tranquility of the skies and the image of landscape and horizon merging. That aspect translated into his watercolour dreamscapes featuring objects against a backdrop without a horizon.

A complicated character who was both warm and witty, reserved and charming, he was also an avid follower of politics and current affairs - he was still reading the New Statesman until recently - though some popular music appeared to have passed him by: he once sold a painting to Frankie Goes to Hollywood star Holly Johnson, blissfully unaware of the 1980s chart star's fame.

He is survived by his children Derek, Margo, Carol, John and Steven, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and sister Muriel.