Kangaroo and Butterflies

I’ve spent most of the week in my studio. I’m now back working on “My First Book of Animals” written by Nicola Davies.

I was supposed to do a picture of a kangaroo. I remember the time when I once sketched a kangaroo from my memory. The drawing was so bad, that my editor laughed at me. It made me learn how to draw a kangaroo properly.

In fact I have a kangaroo in two of my books. One is in “Silly Suzy Goose” and the other one in the popup book “Animal Counting”.

I also looked at my little sketchbooks and found this drawing.

Here is the sketch for the book illustration

and here is the final kangaroo.

I’m trying to keep the “freshness” of the sketch in the final picture, but it’s not always easy. It’s the scale of the final picture which makes the difference.

The next was a bumble bee bat. A bat which is so small, than he can sit on top of your finger. Here is the sketch

and here is the final picture.

The third picture I did this week was a Blue Morpho Butterfly. Again, I did a couple of butterflies before. In fact I have a whole book about a butterfly. It’s called “Butterfly, Butterfly”.

I looked at my little sketchbooks and this is what I found.

 

Two sketches. The next one is a very colourful butterfly flying against the sun.

This is the sketch of Blue Morpho Butterfly.

 

And here is the final illustration.

I love working on Nicola’s book, because her texts are so beautiful and inspiring.

On Friday was a solar eclipse. I was driving south with my wife and we were lucky enough to see it and experience it all. The Sun was overshadowed by Moon and the world changed colour for an hour. Everything was quiet for while.

Friday was also the day when the very nice man and great writer Mal Peet had his funeral in Exmouth. It was as if a big butterfly had flown into the Sun.