Numbers & Greetings worksheet

This is a part of a Numbers and Greetings worksheet I drew for teaching Chinese. I was quite happy with how it looked. Simple but very effective.

Japanese Language Awards

These were fun to create! After a trip to Japan in 2016, I came back with quite a lot of inspiration of what the Japanese culture is like. I drew these to help assist the Japanese language teacher here at school. The awards follow the Japanese theme of seasons.

Pencil Sketch

This is a photo of a sketch I made of my son years ago when he was a few weeks old. He was born premature and had to be kept in hospital for nearly three months. The hospital staff were fantastic and I can not thank them enough. At one stage during the journey, the nursing staff found that he was loosing body temperature, so he had to be kept in his humidity crib for a few days. We weren't allowed to hold him for about three days. So instead, I pulled out the sketch pad and drew.

Gone Bush - Series 1, No# 11 to 20

 

Amazing to think that I drew these back in 1998.

Gone Bush No# 2.8

The names for the two football clubs featured here come from the local Yorta Yorta language. "dhukandira" means wombat, while "gurburr" means koala. I added the "a" onto the end of the name to make it "Gurburra" so that it sounds more like a possible name for a local town.

Many of the towns  of Victoria's North East / Southern NSW have Aboriginal names that end with "a", such as Wangaratta, Echuca, Corowa, Wahgunyah, Wodonga, Yackandandah, Moama, Barooga and (my favourite) Tangambalanga.

Gone Bush No# 2.7

What would you have is fish were stuck in traffic? Would they feel the same as us?  I made sure to add a few Murray River species in this comic (no carp allowed!)

Chinese Food Nouns work sheet

The illustrations for this one were quick as well as fun to draw. Adding colour with poster textas adds to the visual appeal.

Gone Bush - Series 2, Strips 1 to 6

Chinese Student visit to Cobram Anglican Grammar School

Hot off the press this week for some visiting Chinese students to the school. This was great fun to draw. The blue and green colours of the dragon represents growth and learning while the native koala can be found residing in the red gum forests around Cobram/Barooga.

In addition, the dragon has nine green scales down its back. The number nine is considered a very lucky number in Chinese culture.

Chinese Language Award - Second Edition

This is the same award as shown earlier, but with clouds added. One of my students, who migrated from China a few years ago, suggested that I add traditional Chinese illustration clouds. It certainly improves the picture!

Another activity for Chinese this week. This is a cut up sentence activity aimed at Middle Primary.
The completed sentences read; 
Zhè shì wǒ de lóng. Wǒ de lóng shì huángsè de. Tā de míngzì shì Qiáng dà. 

Chinese Language Award

Hot off the press... A Chinese Language Award for school.  This involved a little research, too. For example, the colour of the dragon, the number of claws and the little globe that it is chasing.

This took a little while to complete, due to the detail, but it is certainly worth it.

Kevin Koala in Shanghai - The final product

Here's the final product with pinyin added.

From concept to reality - Kevin Koala in Shanghai

Last year, I was privileged to travel to China. While I was there I was very inspired by the city-scape of Shanghai.

From a photo of the Shanghai CBD, I made this sketch.

From that sketch, I then utilised the idea to become the first panel in this Kevin Koala comic strip.

The next step will be to add dialogue. Stay tuned...

Shanghai fascinates me because of how development has gone on there in the last 30 years. This photo dates back to 1990;

Which is pretty much what my grandfather saw when he visited Shanghai in 1980.

Simon the Nexian - Experiments with font and format

A couple of experiments with how I can print/type text on top of the comic format for Simon the Nexian.

I'd also like to be able to use this format to create translations in Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian.

Simon the Nexian - Chapter 9

Simon travels to the planet of the Monoks and meets Tak Palsu, one of Tak Koafai's relatives. Who's side is Palsu on really?

(Authors Note: This was drawn while travelling from Shanghai to Quonzhou)

Chinese Characters

A while ago I came across a fun activity of writing your name in Chinese characters. Each letter of the English alphabet had an equivalent character that looked similar in appearance. Here's my initials (GPB) below.

Fred the Dog CD Cover page

Back in 2003 I recorded some of my children's songs with the aim of creating a CD. I also designed a CD cover. The idea was that the CD would be like a fridge. The title was on the door, held in place by fridge magnets. The door could then be "opened" revealing the contents inside. The back of the CD was the back of the fridge, with all of the song titles listed.

Guritong sketch with coloured pencil.

My niece and I were drawing together during the Christmas holidays. This is one of the things I came up with.

Lecture note sketches while in Lombok, Indonesia.

This is some work from a few years ago. In January of 2014, I was at the University of Mataram, Lombok, Indonesia on a three week intensive Indonesian Language course. I began drawing some sketches while writing notes from my "dosen" (lecturer). Although I was three weeks away from family and home, I still thoroughly enjoyed the experience and occasionally dream of going back.
The boy featured is a practice sketch for Penci (Penchi), one of my characters for Simon The Nexian.