Who’s this Michael guy anyway – plus first froggy drawing!
It’s Wednesday and Wednesday is the day I hijack Darcy Moon Books from Catherine’s hands (it’s tricky, I have to distract her with a chocolate bar or something) and talk about the pictures that you will find in Darcy Moon and the deep-fried frogs! My name is Michael Scott Parkinson (phew! What a mouthful! You can call me Michael for short. Or Mikey. Or Sir Michael, Michael the great, whatever you like really. Rupert. Englebert. Really, I’m not fussy.) and I was the guy who did the illustrations for the book. Yay me!
Each week I’m going to post something like ..hmnn, I dont know..how to draw Darcy Moon and Jumpy or maybe I’ll show you what the characters used to look like when I first started drawing them? Maybe I’ll even be able to post a video showing you how I go about drawing as I do it all on the computer – no paper, people! I even have some frog related comic strips that I’m going to post real soon. I know, I know, pretty exciting.
But you know what I’m looking forward to the most! You know what I can’t sleep properly at night ‘cos I’m just bursting at the seams about? Can you guess? Go on, give it a try! I’ll wait. No? Ok, I’ll tell you. I cannot WAIT until we start getting some drawings of Darcy Moon and Jumpy and Wizen from the kids who have read this book. And boy oh boy, do I want some! I want to collect drawings of frogs by the truckload! I want the mailman to have to back a dumptruck up to my house and I want to not even be able to see my mailbox…actually, forget that, I don’t even want to be able to see my HOUSE because it’s covered with AWESOME drawings of frogs and Darcys and tortoises and other stuff! Don’t let me down everybody!
For now, though, let’s look at the very first drawing I did when I was called upon to illustrate the tale of the heroic amphibian Jumpy R. Swigglebottom the Third, esquire (I made that up, I don’t think that’s his last name, I’ll have to check with Catherine). Catherine must have sensed that I could draw an AWESOME frog and asked me if I could draw her book. BUT she had to know I’d get her characters JUST right so I drew this for her. She loved it and said not to change a SINGLE THING about it. “Seriously!” she said “ It has to look EXACTLY like this!”
But…it looked kind of different to how Jumpy actually turned out. Which is more like this.
Whoops. Sorry Catherine. That’s OK though, we’re still buds! Right Catherine? Oh, she’s still eating her chocolate bar, we’ll leave her in peace. She’s had a busy week.
Stay tuned – same frog-time, same frog-channel next week for the first comic strip starring the frogs of the swamp!
-Your friendly neighbourhood Michael
