Taken from my forthcoming children’s book ‘The Misadventures of Frank the Unfortunate Sock Puppet”.
Illustration notes:
I had a lot of fun with this one. I knew I wanted to do a sock puppet as I had seen one drawn into a piece in the latest issue of Juxtapoz. I began drawing the sock with a mental image in my head of a snake puppet like we used to make at school. I drew a hairy arm holding the puppet up but it looked kind of ordinary so that was scrapped and drew the puppet lying unused. Next were buttons for eyes, a funky mustache and the obligatory felt forked tongue and I was in business… but a single sock puppet an interesting illustration does not make.
I had a quick think on what constitutes an iconic sock (yeah, I did a WTF to the phrase iconic sock too). Naturally, the good old footy sock we know and love with those bands of your favourite team colours looping around came to mind. That solved two problems as the black and white wasnt working all that well for contrast so colour would be useful.
The footy sock obviously conjured up memories of rabid supporters and their hatred for the opposing team. I thought it would be a bit of a laugh for our old sock puppet to had a big night out on the sauce and wake up in his least favourite team’s colours.
Now, I’m a South Aussie, so I had to go with either the Crows or Port Power. The black, white and teal of Port is what I tried first but it looked a little *meh* so Frank the Sock Puppet was going to wake up in Crow’s colours! I also threw in the famous Graham Kennedy crow call reference for those with a keen eye, it’s still swearing but not as bad as fuck. It is a children’s book after all!
The Creative Panic 