Sebastian Palmer-Roche
“I decided to draw a wolf. A wolf gazing at the shiny moon with a couple of bats…
I was trying to draw an illustration for a snippet of the poem ‘Who am I’ by Erik Burns. Erik is 10, like me. His poem was in Toitoi 22 and it was illustrated with some other pictures that I drew. One line in Erik’s poem says ‘I am a wolf’. In this particular picture of mine, the wolf doesn’t notice the little owl. The owl has a vision, he plans to make a flowerbed using his magical powers (he can make flowers with his eyes).
I drew my picture from scratch. It took a lot of pens but I managed to do it pretty quickly. I draw all the time at home. Mostly I like to draw cartoon characters. I also like drawing evil guys like super villains.
Toitoi is a journal. It’s for young writers and artists and has stories and pictures for kids, by kids. I’m not sure how I found out about it but my Mum remembers. She says: “we often visit Timeout Bookshop and one of the wonderful booksellers there mentioned it to me. I found a drawing Sebastian had left lying around (there were plenty to choose from as he draws constantly day and night). So that was the beginning of his journey with Toitoi.”
I’ve had pictures published in Toitoi 15 and 21, then in Toitoi 22 my wolf picture was chosen as the Story Search. Other young writers made up stories based on my picture. The editors chose a winner and I did more pictures to go with it. It will come out in issue 24. It felt quite nice to know that other kids were writing about my picture, it made me feel very happy. I like to write stories too and if I wrote about this picture it would be the story of a sinister wolf eating other animals.
I draw and make art because I like it. If I’m interested in things, I draw them, I want to put them down on paper and keep the pictures. The first time I saw one of my pictures published in Toitoi it felt really good, I felt like ‘Sebby PR, you’ve done it!’
I like reading though not as much as I like to draw! Reading is fun though, I get to enter my own little world. I like Rhys Darby’s books – I think they’re really funny. At school, sometimes New Zealand authors and illustrators come to visit. I’ve seen and heard Stu Duvall, James Russell and Joanna Grochowicz. I particularly liked listening to Stu Duvall, because he draws cartoons too and was cool and fun.”
Sebastian Palmer-Roche is an illustrator, cartoonist and Toitoi contributor.