Here is a little of what's behind the book Waiting for Chicken Smith. You may like to read it on holidays, or the next time you sit down with a chocolate milk, potato scallops and/or cup of hot chips. Wait one hour before going back into the surf.
Surfers Paradise petrol station, c1990s. (Photo: Sasha Middleton).
Collection of shells. Waiting for Chicken Smith, 2018.
I had some book illustrations and book covers in an exhibition. There was a Visitors' Book at the door and writing comments on the show was encouraged. Children can be polite and brutally damning in equal measure. Some write what they think they should, others just seem polite, and then there's ones that, after looking at what everyone else has written, intentionally write the most extreme opposite just to make things interesting. These usually make the best reading. I'm talking about you, Jumping Jack Flash.
If I go to a museum, house, hotel, historical building or exhibition and am asked to sign such a book, I panic because I sometimes don't want people to know what I think. Just because I wasn't impressed by it shouldn't mean it should be recorded in my handwriting for eternity. I've been to museums where Visitors Books themselves are on exhibit to show what people have said about something or other 200 years ago. Or a hotel register showing that Napoleon or Neil Diamond or someone has stayed somewhere sometime. And people are worried about whether one's online presence can be erased.
I remember my Uncle Harry's car was like a lounge room. It had wide bench seats and you would move around inside it like you were in the Apollo Command Module on the way to the moon (no seat belts required). In the hot sun the vinyl seats would be ferociously hot and dangerous, so Uncle Harry and Aunt Agnes had a couple of scratchy beach towels in the back to lie over the seats to save the back of our legs. My Uncle always wore his collar buttoned, without a tie, even on the world's hottest day. We'd keep the windows down all the time and Uncle Harry didn't mind if you put your arms out in the slipstream. He was that kind of fellow.
Chauffeuring Uncle Harry in his 1966 Holden HR station wagon.
After speaking with my friend's son, this is his idea of his Dream Home. It has to be on wheels, with a sofa with cushions and a wooden door. A round window would be ideal. I added the curtains for privacy, something he didn't think was that necessary. I also added the table because eating on one's lap is a bit messy plus he might want to work on something or other. He isn't that bothered about that. There's also a big screen TV that is visible from any point in the caravan: even the shower. When he's old enough to drive he can attach a car to the Dream Home and take it anywhere he wants to live. So long as he has a permit and registration. He said "that's fine with me". I told him that the Dream Home can't be any more than about 750kgs because towing it could be a problem. He suggested we take the cushions and curtains out.
The unregistered Dream Home.
A short film trailer of my NEW picture book Waiting for Chicken Smith (Little Hare Books, 2018) is only a click away. Why wait?
Music by profuselyillustrated.com
with unsolicited musical direction by D. Franklyn Crane.
Notes to Self are drawn in this book. And sometimes drawn off-site and transported by hand and fixed into the book under strong glue. Some are just loose inside the book and may never be affixed and may get lost in my flat. Sometimes a lot of thought is put into the drawing, and other times virtually none. Just like real thoughts. Looking through them, I can't tell which are which.
Coming soon to Notes to Self.
I have made four dummies of my picture book Waiting for Chicken Smith, all with the cheapest paper I could find in the drawer. The cover is based on a drawing made on a piece of scrap paper. The illustrations are made using cheap brown wrapping paper and a lot of it was pasted onto cartridge paper I got for half price at a chain store. I used a half finished oil pencil to draw most of the pictures and now it's gone. I used gouache from 30-year-old tubes made by a company that no longer exists. The text is written on a typewriter with a faded ribbon and a bent G key.
I wouldn't do it any other way.
A beautiful reproduction of what is described above can be yours in July this year.
I left my keys in a shoe and now they're gone.
