Some of my earliest drawings were bugs! (and space ships and sea creatures)

Here are photos of some of my earliest drawings. My mother kept many of them from my childhood. These are from when I was 4 years old. She made this book by cutting up paper shopping bags from the supermarket and binding them with yarn. 

Pretty good condition considering it dates to 1979! This front cover has me testing out some fonts. I actually remember not wanting to write my name on the front cover at all. So I put the sticker on the front corner instead.  When my mom saw it, she said...

"Write your name bigger and in the middle."

"Why?"

"So we know who made the drawings."

"But we do know who made the drawings."

"Just do it, Eric."

Looking at it now, you can almost hear the gears turning in my 4-year old brain as I wanted to make the loop smaller for the "R", then decided against it. The cover drawing above it is a tree or a singing mushroom. Notice the zebra sticker as I was going through a  mixed-media phase at the time. 

My mother would glue any drawings she deemed worthy onto the pages inside. She did a great job with the layout. These are drawings from my actual life at the time, beetles, moths, spiders and caterpillars... Many of the creatures I would find in the schoolyard. The drawing on the top is a scene from Battlestar Galactica. Which at the time was my favorite show along with the nature documentary shows like Lorne Greene's Wild Wilderness. 

My mom would add the date each drawing was made. Apparently on August 20, 1979 we went to a restaurant. My dad would give me a pen so I could draw on my paper napkin. When I had filled up the space on my napkin, my parents would give me their napkins so I could draw more. They were good parents. It was a little more difficult to draw on this paper because it would crease but drawing on crease-y paper was better than not drawing. Notice the flying carrot over the car and the tentacle count accuracy of the octopus.

My mother would also caption certain drawings when she didn't think it was clear what it was. But I would argue this is clearly a Construction Site...

This spread shows more space ships and a photo from an inflight magazine of a 747 jumbo jet. That year our family took a trip to Japan. It was my first memory of a big airplane trip and it's the first time I ever remember having a "crush" on someone.  

I was a 4 year old travelling with his parents. She was a flight attendant in her 20s/30s. I swore to myself we were going to get married or at least go to a movie. 

Instead of sleeping during the flight, I would just keep making her drawings. Whenever she passed by our row of seats she would stop to look at what I was drawing and smile. It was the first time I realized that you could draw something and make someone smile (who aren't your parents). That had a profound effect on me.

I never got her number. She's probably in her 70s now. But I remember as clear as day it was the first time I felt like I was in love, or at least infatuated. I don't have those drawings anymore, I gave them to her when we disembarked the plane. She smiled the most beautiful smile and excitedly told me she was so happy to have them. I blushed and floated off on cloud 9. She probably just threw them in the trash. But her reaction was enough to inspire me to keep drawing.

I was going through a scorpion phase. There are many drawings of scorpions. 

I tested my new Santa stamp in the corner.  More mixed media. 

Incidentally, the villain in The Storyville Mosquito show was originally a scorpion. But we decided on making it a tarantula instead for puppet/logistical reasons. 

More robots. In this case, they are Cylons from Battlestar Galactica.

Here's a "Dinosaur at Sunrise".  Although at age 4, I doubt I cared what time of day it was in a drawing. Also, Santa strikes again in the corner... 

More cephalopods. Adding those little suction cups to the tentacles now... That sea anemone I tried to draw on the right is terrible.

TROUT!  But that octopus though! (bottom right)

"Sears Tower at Night" Vancouver BC 1979. I actually still draw buildings using this method. 

Here's a bee hive or wasp nest. This is before I learned how to draw honeycombs. I also got bored and didn't finish it. You can almost hear me sighing while trying to fill the whole hive and that 4 year old's inner monologue saying "Why did I start this??"  Eventually, I'd meet animators and learn the virtue of artistic patience. 

Hermit Crab. My favorite part of this drawing is the 2 arrows pointing to the crab. My hermit crab drawing style would refine over time. A hermit crab would make a stealth cameo in the Space Cadet book years later... 

Some bugs... I believe this was an earwig.  

I actually remember trying really hard to get the wings right on this one. There was a dead hornet on the sidewalk and I was looking at it through my magnifying glass. 

Here's a picture I ripped out of a museum pamphlet of a T-Rex because I was heavily into dinosaurs at the time but didn't know how to draw their skeletons yet.

In the bottom panel there's a drawing of a scene I saw from one of the nature shows... It's a tiger and it's prey. Barely spent any time drawing the sun on that one...

Here are some other things that interested me at the time. Namely, Tigers and Sharks! You'll notice there's a koala in the top left although they were nowhere near as cool as the tigers and sharks or as fast as the cheetahs.

That's about it for this one! 1979!  Here's the glorious but minimal back cover design...

Hope you enjoyed this virtual scroll down memory lane.  

It was fun for me to rediscover... Shouts out to mom for collecting some of this stuff! 

Now, whenever anyone asks me "Why Robots?" "Why Mosquitos?" "Why Octopus?" I'll just hand them this book and say "This is the way." 

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