The Bears Arrive Safely

Our 3 furry friends arrived safely at Andersen Press (phew) and everyone is really pleased (double phew).

They have already been repackaged and sent off to Switzerland, to the printer. No skiing for our bears though: they are there to be scanned on a drum-scanner, which turns them into high quality digital files.

Andersen will get sent these the minute they're done, ready for the designer to do page layouts, and for me to do the digital finishing work.

It's a bit of a race to get things ready in time to create a mock-up book for the massive Frankfurt Book Fair on Oct 14th, to woo all those lovely foreign editions...

My problem is that I am booked solid with school visits until well after the Fair. My only window of opportunity is one free weekend, squeezed between my travels when, instead of a well-earned bit of feet-up, I'll have to set to on those scans.

The Bears Are On Their Way!!!!

Yes, my bears have left home and are off into the Big Wide World.

I spent yesterday mounting everything up, which takes ages.

Each piece of artwork first needs to be trimmed (I cut my pastel paper 10mm wider than I need all round, so I can trim it back to a nice, crisp edge). The ruler has to be wiped with a bit of loo-roll after every single cut, as it picks up chalk from the illustration.

Here comes a quite unnecessary, arty shot of my waste bin full of trimmings...

I lay the trimmed artwork face down on the overlay paper (cut by my dear hubby) to stick masking tape loops on the back, then flip it over and position it on the mount card.

I wipe any blotted-off chalk from the overlay with more loo-roll (so handy), then position the overlay paper on top of the illustration, to press the artwork in place, so I never touch the surface of the chalk.

The overlay is secured with magic-tape along the top edge:

I've learned to use a steel rule to weight the overlay paper down at this point, or the tape's static sucks the paper up and makes a right old mess (requiring much swearing, scrunching up, binning and re-cutting).

Once mounted, I give each illustration a last once-over, a final check for missing buttons, whiskers, teeth etc. In this case it was missing pussy-cat eyebrow hairs:

I label each mount with the project info and my details, but also with a BIG RED WARNING for printers to alert them to the perils of pastels!

Then it's all sandwiched between two huge and very stiff sheets of cardboard, before being wrapped in brown paper and lots of sellotape for good measure. It ended up over 2.5 feet long:

I struggled with it to my local post office: it weighed a ton and cost £21 to post, but you should have seen the wide grin on my face as I walked back home.

I do have mixed feelings about this bit though: huge relief that it's all done, but vague terror in case it gets damaged or lost in transit. And I still can't quite believe it's gone. You can tell I'm over-excited by the length of this post! A glass of wine (or two) tonight I think...

Illustrating a Picture Book: Nearly There

The deadline for posting my artwork is Thursday: so, what's left to do? You'll be pleased to hear that things have continued to go really well, I put in some time over the weekend, and all the artwork is now done. Hurray!! Whoo-whoo!


My final pieces were the sundry character vignettes for the title page and back cover, which I finished on Friday. I'm really pleased with the middle one in particular:


Then on Sunday I went back and sorted out odds and ends, mainly the penultimate 'running away' spread, which has been sitting three-quarters finished for simply ages:


Below is a detail which will enlarge further with a click (sorry - still can't get full-width pics to enlarge for you):

Today I've been going back through everything, comparing the artwork, checking colour continuity and touching up anything I'm not so happy about, now I'm seeing it afresh.

So... tomorrow I'll get it all mounted and posted off 2 whole days early - I can hardly believe it.

Just as well, because the saved time will be VERY handy. By Thursday night I also have to pay my VAT (gulp), buy all my train tickets for my first batch of school visits and get everything prepared for a day of storytelling at Brayton Infants in Selby, starting first thing Friday morning!

Plus, there's the vital last-minute check though recent emails and those event sheets, to make sure I have all the info I need from the schools. There's always one who emails a timetable the night before, and it's always the one that features ten 30 minute storytellings, end-to-end...

Mounting Pastel Artwork

As things have got a bit tight with my work lately, John helped out on Saturday, cutting my mount card and paper overlays, while I caught up on my admin (what a star).

It's very tedious and easy to muck up. Card sheets must be measured and cut for each piece of artwork, about 15mm bigger than the drawing all round (too big and the final package is larger than necessary, and we don't want to tempt Fate's parcel-bending fingers).


Then paper sheets are cut just slightly smaller: overlays for each mount, to protect the pastel surface.

It was this job I had in mind when I designed my 'island' in the centre of the studio:


In my previous studio, cutting mounts involved balancing acts with the cutting board, and pixie-style tip-toeing over various piles of card and paper laid out all over the floor and teetering on every surface. Thank goodness it's easier now, as I think John's pixie days are behind him...

Children's Book Catalogue Illustration Needed

I had an email from Bears on the Stairs publisher, Anderson Press, this week. Their new catalogue needs to go off to print now, ready for the massive Frankfurt Book Fair in 3 weeks, and can't wait for my artwork deadline. But I hate posting odd bits off in advance - my last job is always going through everything together, checking continuity and touching up where necessary.

Thank goodness for digital cameras! I took a couple of high-res snaps and was able to email them across. They won't be as high quality as scans, but will be fine at the smaller scale.

Ideally, you want the cover in the catalogue, but because of the way I do my artwork, the cover image still has the pink paper background at this stage, rather than a nice punchy colour, so it depends on whether Anderson have time at their end to do a quick Photoshop job, before popping on the text.

In case not, I sent them a snap of the endpapers as well, as that's sort of a similar image, sporting all 3 naughty bears together, but fully coloured:

Art For Hearts

There is to be an on-line charity auction in the first week of November, in aid of the research done by the transplant team at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital in London. My brother spent a long time in this wonderful hospital when he was young, so it is a cause close to my heart.

Two things to tell you about it:

1: it is not too late to donate a piece of artwork for auction if you are quick. Contact Ian Stacey for an address to send it to. The work will be on display in the hospital in October, so you have to get your skates on!

2: the auction will be held on Ebay, so everyone can take part. Here's your chance to own an original piece of artwork (one of mine perhaps...) and give money to a good cause at the same time. I'll post the exact date nearer the time.

Sorry for lack of pics - I'm in haste as lots to do!

Illustrating a Picture Book: Feeling Much Better

This was the kitchen spread as I left it on Monday night:

...and this is how it looked, all finished, by only Tuesday lunchtime:

After such a long haul working on the complex bedroom spread, I was getting really worried about not being done in time, but things have speeded up again, thank goodness, and I clawed back half a day on the kitchen.

The next piece went really quickly too and took less than the day I allowed.

The background colour of this illustration will be knocked out in Photoshop once the scans are back, and flat colour dropped in, retaining just the spotty pattern and the light beam. This is to make sure it sits alongside the previous, full-bleed page without visual confusion. I coloured the wall anyway, as it was easier to gauge the other colours, especially the shining light, with the wall colour there.

There are 5 drawing days left and 3 pieces still to do. They all now involve repeating established colour schemes, so in theory they should run fairly smoothly too.

This is my desk shot tonight and, as you can see, I am well on with my next piece, the 'hiding bears' page:

There are still odd pieces with finishing off to be done (like the running away spread) but I'm feeling much more positive again and, thank goodness, pretty confident tonight that I'll meet next week's deadline.

Illustrating a Picture Book: Refreshed

So, how do things stand? Well, I'm feeling refreshed from a lovely weekend away, at a friend's wedding (held at a youth hostel on the moors!) and I'm ready to get stuck in again.


The bedroom spread finally got finished first thing this morning (phew!), taking more than 3 days in the end. I got within a gnat's whisker on Friday afternoon but, annoyingly, couldn't quite get it done before we had to leave.

The kitchen you last saw as a redrafted rough, is now underway in earnest:

We've already had green, blue and peach coloured walls, so I thought a bright yellow kitchen might be fun. I'm really pleased to have got so far in 1 day, but have had to stop at 6pm, because rain made the light too grim.

From tomorrow morning, I've just 8 working days and 1 weekend until 'D-Day', and that includes a day of mounting and posting (sound effect: sharp drawing in of breath). There is still a fair bit to do, and I will keep you posted, but please bear with me if my posts get thinner and wider apart for a while!

Free Money!!!!

Just a reminder, in case you've forgotten, or there is anyone out there who doesn't know about the DACS Payback scheme:

If you are a visual artist, whose work has been published in a UK book or magazine at any time, or has been broadcast on UK television in the last 18 months, you could be eligible for some FREE MONEY! Truly - no catch.


£3 million of royalties is shared out every year, you just have to fill in an application form before 30 September 2009 to make your claim. It's not just recent publications either - you can claim for work published many years ago: I still get money for editorial work I did in the 1980s.

You can register on-line on the DACS website, or email them. It totally free and you don't need to be a member. But get going now - there are just 10 days left!

"And The Murderer Is..."

Talking books are a life-saver! A friend of mine watches TV while he works; I can't imagine such a thing. When I'm drawing roughs, only music will do (sporadic intense bouts of problem-solving concentration, mean I 'zone in and out'), but for artwork, nothing keeps me content and calmly productive - which I REALLY need right now - better than a nice, comforting story.

But when you're at it all day, you get through them at a rate of knots, so I load up at the library on Saturday, then work my way through my stash during the week. Comedy's great and crime is happily riveting, but because of my divided concentration, I need to write down the character's names on the bottom of my drawing board, so I can check up who's who!

I just had a REALLY annoying one though - a 9 CD thriller, which was great, right up to the final CD, where the last 4 tracks had been destroyed by some clumsy oaf scraping a chunk of silver from the CD's surface.

"...and the murderer is..."

Grrrrrrrrrr!

Children's Book Illustration: How to Draw the Dark

I'm still working away on the bedroom spread for Bears on the Stairs today, trying to get it finished before I stop tonight. The colours are tricky, as it needs to be muted where the lights are off, but not dingy. I'm using a lot of blue and lilac shadows to suggest darkness without it being dark.

It's so cold in the studio though this morning, that I have had to stop and go and put on my Marks and Sparks vest and wrap a scarf round my neck, under my smock! My hands are really icy and so I have just made a nice mug of hot tea, so I have something to warm them on.

It's winter already!!!!!!!!!

Illustrating a Picture Book: Pushing On Upstairs

Hurrah! I actually did meet my target yesterday. Here's my desk shot last night:


I got all three living-room spreads finished, and before 6pm - just in time to qualify for watering the garden duties (actually a relief to be outside for a bit). All the spreads are sporting a full set of eyeballs:


I could almost hear the mieow of relief!

I felt the need to really push on today, so finishing the left-overs of the 'chasing' artwork can wait a while longer: I'm tackling another new room, the little boy's bedroom. I'm not sure I ever showed you this rough. It's the extra spread we invented for the end of the book, to bring things to a happier conclusion than Julia wrote originally for the text.

Spot the 3 stair-bears...

It's probably the most complex spread of the book, with all those toys, posters and patterns. When I drew it, I knew it would be a nightmare to colour in pastels, which are, to be honest, a totally unsuitable medium for such levels of detail.

But it felt important that the bedroom be especially cosy and comforting, given the previous scary spread, so what's a girl to do?


I've allowed myself 2 days in my schedule. This is how things are looking come lunchtime. Wish me luck: I may well need it!

Illustrating a Picture Book: Getting Organised

I worked hard on Bears on the Stairs again yesterday, listening to my talking book as usual. Below is my desk shot last night. I have to break for a haircut this morning, but then my target is finishing these three by tonight.


My final deadline is Oct 1st and I can't be even half a day late, as it's peak time for school visits and I'm in Selby first thing the very next morning! I love the visits, so it's great that bookings are coming in thick and fast: I'm already out every day from Oct 2nd to Oct 12th. Trouble is, there's a lot of associated admin to sort in advance, which I haven't got time for just now.

So, when John left at 5.45am Monday morning for a train to London, I got up too, and spent a few hours getting on top of admin before beginning drawing.

I went through back emails, creating an A4 sheet for each visit, with venue, contact details, train station, timetable, any ordered books etc etc. so I can spot which information is missing well in advance: I don't want to find myself the day before, not knowing the school's address!

By 10 o'clock it was all done and, feeling more relaxed, my drawing went well. Lots of deceptively time-consuming bits to negotiate though, like designing more pictures for the walls and books for the bookshelf:


Once again the pussycat (and this time Dad too) were left blind overnight. Both spreads are due for a blast of the dreaded fixative before I carry on, then I can put in the eye dots, as well as various patterns on things.

Illustrating a Picture Book: Taking Stock

That's the end of yet another week. Here's my Friday evening desk shot:

The artwork seems to be coming along pretty well, but it's tricky to tell if I'm truly on schedule. The living room spread I showed you earlier is almost finished:

Check out the open picture book on the floor, bottom left...

Shameless self-publicist that I am, I have used a page from the forthcoming Rumble Roar Dinosaur!, that should be published a little before Bears on the Stairs. Well, I have already established that the little boy is a dinosaur freak, so it fits quite neatly... honest Guv!

I know I said I would finish this spread around midweek, but for some reason, I ran out of steam before I'd quite finished the flowers in the vase or the cat:

Just like a couple of times before at this stage in a spread, I could tell I was slowing up, so I started something fresh to kick start my momentum again, and left our poor, blind, feline friend until later on.

There are two more living room spreads to do, so I got those underway, and speeded things up a bit. Since they are quite similar, I began working on them together, side by side on the desk, like I did with those koalas.

Remember I mentioned, I have a very tight deadline? Well, I needed to work out accurately if I was on track, so got out my diary.

Counting from Monday morning, I have exactly 13 working days left I can use. I'll need maybe 1.5 more days to polish off these 2 new ones...

Then there are 2 remaining spreads, which will take 2 days each; plus there are 2 single page illustrations: another 2 days; and 2 vignettes: a day and a half. Allowing a day for finishing off the running away spread and the odds and ends in the one at the top...

... makes approx 10 days drawing to do.

Then I need a day to cut all my mounting card and paper overlays, and half a day to mount everything, package it all and get it to the post office: 11.5 days. Allowing half a day for miscellaneous 'touching up', means I am in credit by just 1 day!! Yikes.

I try not to work weekends, since I'm working fairly late most evenings, but I'm glad they're there for emergencies...

Retiring From Service

No, not me, my smock...

Readers who've been looking in for a while may recall the special significance of the smock that I work in:


Pastels are a very messy business and, for over 10 years now, I have been wearing this wonderfully grubby old painter's smock, which used to belong to my grandad.

Here he is wearing it in the mid 80's, so it's probably been going for about 30 years! Before retirement, Grandad was a restoration artist (he worked on the ceiling paintings at Blenheim Palace, where he met the Queen) but he was also a fanatical painter, right to the day he died. He mainly liked to copy old masters in oils.

Wearing his old smock has felt like a lovely homage to him. Under my pastel dust there are still daubs of his oil paint, and putting it in the washing machine makes little difference to the grungy colour.

It even has little holes in the front where occasionally Grandad dropped half-smoked roll-ups into his lap while he painted, but was so deep in concentration, he didn't notice!


This is him painting much earlier: I can't believe he's in a shirt and tie!! The photo must predate the smock, as you can just make out a paint-splattered shirt hanging in the background. Perhaps he was posing for the photo and that's why he isn't wearing it. Check out that TV!

Though I don't believe in such things, I confess I have occasionally thought it would be nice if Grandad had looked in on me wearing his smock.

Unfortunately, after so many years of loyal service, the poor thing is finally falling apart. I've kept it going as long as possible but, as you can see, the cotton is actually rotting away. Sadly, the time has come to lay it to rest and christen a new one.

Here's me in the studio, testing out the new incarnation: smart, but not quite the same, eh? Don't worry: I'll keep Grandad's old one safe. I couldn't possibly throw it away after all this time.

Illustrating a Picture Book: Time Flies!

The weeks are whizzing by - I swear somehow we've been set to 'fast forward'! On Monday, I finally finished the spread that's been hanging around for ages:


Here is the 'running away' spread I started on Friday, as it looked come Monday night:


I then had to leave it, as this is my first brush with Mum and Dad and I wanted to choose their colours in the context of their major spreads, set in the living room. The kitchen decor too (lower left door) is impossible to second-guess. The bears are not finished because they are 'hand resting' areas to access the parents without smudging stuff.

So, Tuesday morning I started on the background colours of one of the living room spreads:


I thought a blue room this time - not done that yet. It's like being an interior designer, choosing colour schemes and even designing coordinating wallpapers and fabrics! This is how it looked by the end of Tuesday:


It takes ages, planning all the clothing colours too, bearing in mind not just this spread, but how they will occur in other illustrations I haven't done yet.

By the time you read this, I'll have spent another day on it, so I hope it's finished! I'll let you know how I got on at the end of the week.

Imelda Staunton Reads Class Two

A brand new edition of Class Two at the Zoo will soon be available with a CD! We are really lucky to have bagged the brilliant Imelda Staunton to read the story.

The publisher has created these designs for the CD and case, re-using my illustrations from the original picture book. They emailed them to me for my approval: this is always done when my illustrations are re-used in a different format.

I've illustrated Chapter books, which have occasionally become talking books, such as the Broomstick series, but this is my first picture book in this format, and I'm chuffed to see our reptilian friend hob-nobbing with all these celebs: first Robson Green, now Imelda. Ssssssssssuper!

This new edition will be in the shops from November 5th, with the CD sold as a package with the picture book, UK price £7.99. I can't wait to hear it!