It's been a busy few weeks, and I didn't really see myself actually doing any drawing until the middle of June. Little did I know however that on accompanying my daughter's class (well some of it) to Granada (Spain) as the responsible male adult (well .. two out of three ain't bad) I would find myself drawing 'Falling Frogs' for Spanish 9 year olds.
The idea of the 4 day trip was to visit a Spanish school, give the British kids a chance to mix and speak some Spanish, by attending a class. So the kids were split into groups of three and an adult (typically a teacher) would then accompany the group and spend the day with them in the class with the Spanish teacher and 30 odd Spanish children. I accompanied three of ours as we were taken into a Year 3 class.
All was going pretty well until they started showing me their English work books. I commented on how good they looked and handed them back after flicking through and picking out the odd word or image in each for special mention. After a while one of the kids pointed out that the teacher from the previous visit had written something and drawn a little rose on the page. It looked like she expected the same from me. Hmmm ... 'Would you like me to draw in your book ?', I asked (in English I'm afraid) .. to which the girl, with a very serious little expression, nodded.
OK ... what to draw ? ... something that I could do standing up .. with school pencils ... Ah .. 'The Falling Frog'. I set to work ... and after about 5 minutes had a decent little drawing for her with the words 'A falling frog' written under it. She seemed pretty pleased and went back to her desk ... I sat in a chair to one side and started looking at the posters etc on the walls ...
A short while later another girl come along with her book and said something about 'rana' which my biology days informed me was probably 'frog', so I set to work in her book. Half way through her little sketch I looked up to check it was what she wanted and was startled to see pretty much the entire class stood in a queue behind her. All with their English work books to the ready .. this must be what it feels like to be a proper artist at a comic convention. Well ... I got the rest to return to their desks, so I wouldn't get in trouble from their teacher and then went around after finishing the drawing I was working on. As I finished each one another child would rush over to get their's done .... I must have drawn about 20 falling frogs in all.
I was tempted to change the drawing to a Robot half way through, but was worried that I much get some of them coming back for that too.
I've no idea what their teacher made of it all ... I guess she thinks all Brits are a little strange now. Probably not too far from the truth :o)
I always find I'm laughing to myself whenever I hear the name Hector used to describe a famous Greek hero. I mean ... Hector ... come on ... shouldn't a hero of Greece have a name that ends in 'us' or 'es' ? Wasn't Hector just a dog who lived with a cat and next door to a lady frog ? 
