Nigel Parkinson, Cartoonist

Nigel Parkinson, Cartoonist
Me at a Comic Con

Monday 15 November 2010

By Hand

From 1998 to 2009 I drew the weekly antics of  BEA, Dennis the Menace's liitle sister, in the Beano. Originally, I drew it and the colours were added by D C Thomson (unusually for me, I normally hand-coloured everything myself and had done since 1988) but during 2003 the Beano ediitor Euan Kerr asked me to hand colour BEA too.
This was my first attempt- I was going for something a bit different, having no key-line on the backgrounds- but I didn't really like it and dropped the idea. Good job, too, because it looks a bit odd. Anyway, look closely and you'll see my hand-colouring technique.

2 comments:

Kid said...

I never really took to Bea - she seemed too much like a younger version of Ivy the Terrible and detracted from Dennis's status as an only child. (I think the strip worked better that way.)

Nice drawing. A stronger outline colour around the title would have alleviated your reservations, most likely.

James Spiring said...

Kid, it wouldn't surprise me if those similarities are the reason Ivy was eventually added to Bea's strip, a few months before the new Dennis & Gnasher cartoon caused the Bea strip to end (Ivy reverted to reprints and now has a new artist). I actually thought that Bea and Ivy together was very much like a female Cuddles and Dimples. I mean, they even had the same artist!