Friday, January 28, 2011

Friday Flashback: Froggies! I Love Them!

(scratch board frog from my freshman year of high school)

So I have this thing for frogs. LOVE 'EM. Always have, always will.

Even in my Things I Like book from first grade, I'm carrying a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone and a drawing of a frog.

See?

I remember in high school Spanish class, my teacher remarked upon the frog prince cartoons I drew on EVERYTHING.

"Quién es su rana principe?" she asked (or whatever the Spanish for "Who is your frog prince?" is - I got a C in Spanish, and that was about 12 years ago, so I'm just making stuff up here).

To which I replied, "Um...."

To which she replied, "Is it Micah?" and pointed to the hot guy who sat in front of me.

Now, for the record, I didn't have a thing for the hot guy in front of me, but his face turned bright red and she thought that was fantastic, and proceeded to call him my Rana Principe for the rest of the school year, which we both just LOVED if you can imagine.

And that was when I stopped drawing frog princes on my homework...

But those frog princes - I continued drawing them.

La Rana Principe - drawn in 1999
(this picture is huge, so I could only scan a portion, but he has fabulous feet!)

At the moment, I'm working on a picture book dummy (for those who don't know, a dummy is a mock-up of an illustrated picture book - mostly done with black and white sketches with text and a few full color illustrations thrown in) for a story about ....

FROGS in LOVE!

Spanish frogs, to be exact. I started the story of Hector and Consuelo when I was in high school Spanish (no joke), and now I'm working on bringing it to life.

So. I hope you all like frogs, too, because you will most certainly see some more frog illustrations as I put my dummy together and share bits and pieces of it.

Happy Friday, to all of you! And for those of you who read these flashbacks and think, "HEY! I like flashing back to my past, too!"

JOIN IN THE FUN! And while you're at it, hop on over to Tia's blog and add your linkie-loo to the Flashback Friday list.

xoxo,

11 comments:

Unknown said...

I loved this! You would get along well with my grandad who is obsessed with frogs!The dashboard of his car is stuffed with toy frogs and his license plate reads TOADY. His email even reflects back to frogs. My grandma however love turtles, so I have always wanted to do a story on the turtle and the toad. :P

Alyssa S. said...

I LOVE the first illustration. It's a negative...or something like that, right?

You're now officially Merrick and Amelia's BFF because they both adore frogs. We have plastic frogs, stuffed frogs, frog princess (not Disney but an actual frog with a crown) t-shirts, frog pencil toppers. We got frogs :) We go to the zoo, we have to see the frogs...and the snakes. Did I mention we like frogs?

I can't wait to see your dummy, which is my way of saying "do I get to see your dummy?"

Oh and while we're flashing back...flashback to yesterday...I was not in any way likening you to mean green piggies who steal angry birdy eggs. The boomerang toucans DO resemble you a bit though :P

Unknown said...

Alyssa - the first illustration is scratch board, so the board was black, and I used a sharp object to scratch the image of the frog out.

Also WIBBIT!

Cole's Corner said...

YES! I love frogs, too, and always have.

Meeling said...

Cool painting of the frog...love the details and the colors!! Very cool and yes I too love froggies!!

Can't wait to see more...

Cathy said...

Love your frog and LOVE the fact you have all your old illusrations etc from school! That's sooo cool :)

Tina Laurel Lee said...

Love frogs!

Amie Kaufman said...

Oh my goodness, I can't wait! Love the illustration, and can't you imagine a book saying 'Marisa Hopkins has been drawing frogs since...'

Tia Colleen said...

Um. So if I finish the childrens book that I'm writing, you'll do the illustrations for me, right? RIGHT?!

mshatch said...

I love your frog; he's gorgeous!

Ana M.F. said...

I love frogs too!
(y si son ranas prìncipe mejor XD )
Great work!
Thanks for your visit :)

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