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The Active Seniors Collection: Ollie Grandpa and Heart Granny

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A cheerful cartoon illustration titled 'Ollie Grandpa' — an older man on a skateboard catching serious air, silver hair flying, flower-adorned helmet on, striped scarf trailing behind him. Part of the Active Seniors series celebrating older people who refuse to slow down.
Ollie Grandpa — © John Corney

The whole spirit of retirement, done right, is this: after a long working life, you finally have time to do the things you always wanted to. Not everyone slows down when they retire. Some people speed up. Some people get on a skateboard for the first time at 68, or ride a motor scooter through the city just because they've earned the right to, or start showing up to family gatherings in outfits that require sunglasses.

That's the spirit I wanted to capture in my Active Seniors series — a collection of cheerful illustrations celebrating older people who have decided, quite firmly, that they're not done yet.

Meet Ollie Grandpa

Ollie Grandpa is the piece above — a spirited older man catching serious air on his skateboard, silver hair flying, a flower-adorned helmet keeping him sensible, a striped scarf trailing behind him because scarves in the wind are non-negotiable. He's the male counterpart to my long-running Little Old Lady character, and he shares her fundamental orientation to life: whatever happens next, he's going to enjoy it. His name is a small pun — an "ollie" is one of the foundational skateboarding tricks — and the design has become one of my personal favorites in the shop.

Meet Heart Granny

A cheerful cartoon illustration titled 'Heart Granny' — an older woman riding a bright orange motor scooter covered in red hearts, silver hair streaming under a flower-adorned helmet, big beaming smile, striped scarf flying behind her. Part of the Active Seniors series.
Heart Granny — © John Corney

Heart Granny is the same character in a slightly gentler mood — a joyful older woman riding a bright orange motor scooter covered in red hearts, beaming, ready for wherever she's going. She's about spreading affection at a comfortable cruising speed, rather than catching air. Both approaches to later life have their merits.

Part of a Growing Collection

Ollie Grandpa and Heart Granny are part of a wider group of characters I've been developing over the past few years, all sharing the same fundamental idea: older people who refuse to slow down, dress boringly, or accept that certain things aren't for them anymore. The collection started with a cool granny on a skateboard back in 2022, inspired by my own mother's late-life independence in Whanganui, New Zealand, and has grown from there. Since drawing Ollie Grandpa and Heart Granny, the granny herself has continued to evolve — she's now cruising Auckland in a vintage Austin A35 as well, and she keeps trading up to more ambitious vehicles.

Available on Redbubble

Both designs are available at my Redbubble shop as graphic tees, travel mugs, stickers, tote bags, greeting cards, and across the full product range. They make excellent gifts for a beloved grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, or retired friend — or for anyone celebrating the adventurous side of getting older. I'll admit I wear the shirts myself; my neighbours have gotten used to seeing me walk my dog in one or another of them.

Redbubble runs sales periodically throughout the year with site-wide discounts across the shop, so it's always worth checking in when browsing.

👉 Browse the Active Seniors Collection

You can find all my work at my Redbubble shop, KornKob Art — or search Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).

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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
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Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival

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The 15th anniversary Pasifika Festival poster — a collage of the Pacific cultures the festival celebrates. On Saturday 10 March 2007, I spent the day at the Pasifika Festival at Western Springs Park in Auckland. It was the festival's 15th year — an annual celebration of Pacific Island cultures that has been part of Auckland's calendar since 1993, and which typically draws crowds of well over 100,000 across the day. Nine Pacific villages are traditionally represented — Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue, Fiji, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Kiribati and Tahiti — with music, dance, food, arts, and craft from each community sharing the same park for the day. I usually visit New Zealand earlier in February, but in 2007 I was there in March and it was the first — and, to date, only — time I've been able to attend Pasifika. I hope to make it back one of these years. But I came away from that single visit with the str...
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The Watchman and Virgin River — Painterly Winter Landscape

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The Watchman and Virgin River, Zion National Park — Painterly Winter Landscape — © John Corney The Watchman is one of Zion National Park's most recognizable formations — the peak that rises up just past the south entrance, often photographed reflected in or framed by the Virgin River as it winds through the valley floor. I photographed this view on the same January 2006 trip as the other winter Zion piece in this collection, with the river running low and the cottonwoods and willows along the bank stripped bare for the season. I worked this one up with AI assistance into a full painterly interpretation, the same way I've approached the rest of this Zion series — directing the process the way a film director works with a cinematographer, choosing what to carry forward from the original photograph and what to push harder. Here that meant leaning into the warmth of the low winter light against the cool snow on the upper ridgeline, and letting th...
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