Video transcript
2019 NSW PRC Guided illustrations with Aura Parker

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AURA PARKER: We're going to be doing some guided illustration today where we draw together step-by-step. And I'm going to show you how to draw one of the characters from the Premier's Reading Challenge poster. Today, we're going to be drawing the Redback Spider, this little one at the top. So I hope you have your lead pencils ready and your charcoal-- charcoal's the best thing to draw with-- and some paper. So these are the bugs from the poster.

This is Cram, the book-gobbling grub, who devours books one-by-one and can never stop. This is Avid, the butterfly. She reads widely. And the more books she reads, the higher she flies. Here we have Braille Snail, who reads with his feelers. His little eyes are on her feelers. And we have the Book Worm. So it was pretty tricky to draw a worm holding a book because they didn't have any hands, but it worked out OK--

TAMARA RODGERS: Nice.

AURA PARKER: --because he's holding the little book with his little tail there. So they're very busy in this little imaginary world of the poster. They're inspired by the bugs that are in my book, but they're brand-new little bugs. And lastly, we have the Speed Reader, who reads really, really fast while zooming really, really fast. I have to actually tell him to slow down.

TAMARA RODGERS: Nice.

AURA PARKER: Not on the books, on the zooming. So there you have it.

TAMARA RODGERS: Awesome. Thank you so much. We're really excited to be here in your studio today and to get to draw one of these fantastic little bugs. We can't wait to see what you all come up with when you're drawing along with Aura at home. Thank you for having us in your studio.

AURA PARKER: My pleasure. I'm glad you could come.

TAMARA RODGERS: Awesome. Let's get drawing.

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AURA PARKER: Hi. I'm Aura Parker. I'm an author and Illustrator of children's books. So welcome to my creative space. It's in the basement of my house. Now, we've been in this house for about a year. It's a special house. All the rooms are round. It's called P&O style architecture, if you're interested in that. So we're down in the basement where I make the pictures for my books.

And today, we're going to do an illustration, a guided illustration, of the Redback Spider, this little spider here. We're going to be drawing the spider that way so we can turn it around. This is easier to draw with the head and the eyes up. So grab your charcoal. If you're using charcoal, you need to press really, really lightly. Charcoal's great to work with because you can do shading quite easily, and you can get your drawing to look like it has a lot of volume quite quickly.

So firstly, I'll get you to do a little spot right in the centre of your page. I'm just doing that because I want you to draw in the top half for now. So right in the middle, we're going to start drawing the spider's head, which is a rectangle shape. But I'm not going to draw the corners. I'm just going to draw the lines for the side of the head first, and then I'm going to go around to make a rectangle with rounded corners.

So I want this spider to look like he's reading a book, and the book's going to be over here. So when I draw the next shape, which is the shape that goes around the spider's head, I'm going to leave less of a gap on this side than this side. So this next line is going to be close in there, and the one on that side a bit further out. And then, one on top. So I'm not joining the corners together. And then go round, and then you should have the shape of your bug's head.

If you're working with pencil, you can still shade. You just have to do lots of little lines close together. So if you're using a pencil, you just do little lines like that. With the charcoal, you can smooth it with your finger. Let's do some more lines there. There we go. So we've got the shape of our spider's head. Next, I'm going to put in a bit of a line here for the top of its body and a nice curve on the bottom. A little bit more shading.

You have to press lightly with a charcoal. Otherwise, it can snap. If it snaps, just keep going. Just keep drawing. And then, last shape is a big round body on the bottom. There we go. So just put some more shading on the side. I'm concentrating my shading on this side. Just makes it look like the character has depth. And you'll end up with dirty fingers, which are perfect for doing little rosy cheeks for your spider. So you can rub that on.

And then, when I'm doing my art, if I was drawing, I would probably do the eyes first and the head first. But in this case, it's nice to leave it to the end because it makes the picture when you add the eyes. So this little character is going to be reading books, so I will get you to draw a rectangle. And the rectangle is going to be off to an angle there. And another one over here.

This little character is going to be reading four books at the one time. I did have an idea for this character, but it was too late. I'd already finished the poster. I was going to draw-- you know how spiders have eight eyes? I thought that could be cool, because he could actually be looking at all these different books. So if anyone wants to do a one like that later, I'd love to see how that looks.

So just do a little bit of shading on the edge of those books. That's the cover that is closest to us. Going to try and draw these little books with perspective, so put another little line there for the spine up a little bit higher than your books. And put that little line to complete the spine. The next lines that we're going to do are going to be really, really light. So for the pages, I want you to press really, really lightly. Just flick like that. Flick. Flick. Flick. Flick. Flick. Flick.

And put the back cover in. Excellent. So I've drawn the books first so that I can smudge them a little bit and then draw the legs over the top. So this spider's going to have eight legs. And by legs, I'm including the arms and legs, of course. So one, two, three, four. This one's going to be holding a book. Five. Six. Make these ones long, these last two.

When I was a kid, I drew constantly, and pretty much all the illustrators that I know drew constantly when they were kids. I drew all over every piece of paper I could find. I drew all over my textbooks. I drew all over the table and the walls. My mum would tell me not to do that. And sometimes, I'd go to school and I would draw all over my arms and legs and come home covered in my illustrations as well.

So what I was doing all that time was practicing. So if you want to be good at something, you have to practise. So I hope you all work really hard at the challenge too. Because all the reading that you're doing, it's so much fun. But the thing that you can get out of books, I think, is you can read about all the hopes and dreams of those characters, and it can help you figure out what you want to do.

I'm just putting a little bit of embellishment, a little bit of hairy legs. So the Redback Spider needs-- here's the little antennas here. Needs a diamond on the abdomen just going off to the side. It would be red, but we're working just in charcoal. And shade it in nicely. Just going over some of my lines. So there's our spider. And lastly, we want to do the eyes. Just leave a little dot inside the eyes.

So next, we need to give our Redback Spider a mouth. Think of it a bit of a concentrating mouth. I think a bit more of a smile. He likes his reading. Next, we'll put the glasses on. If you put the spider's glasses off to the right of his eyeball, it might look like he's actually looking in this direction a bit. Cute. There you go.

I hope your spiders are working out. If you have that little voice in your head that's saying, oh, no, my drawing's not looking like Aura's, it's not going well, don't worry. Just keep drawing, because you can always rewind and watch it and draw another one. Because I am-- I draw things over and over again.

In actual fact, when I was doing the Premier's Reading Challenge poster, I wasn't happy with this expression on Speed Reader, so I drew Speed Reader again and just added just a little bit of the eyebrows and just a little bit more intensity in his face and made the pages curl. It made him look a bit more speedy. So I'm just letting you know, if things don't turn out perfectly the first time, just keep going.

You can put some details on your spider, little hairs. That looks good. And ta-da. The last thing we have to do-- there's one more thing we have to do. We have to turn it up the other way. It goes this way. And then we need to put the thread, hanging on a thread. And there you go. I can't wait to see what you guys draw. Good luck with the challenge. You'll all be fantastic.

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