An Illustrator's Life For Me!

Life Drawing with Charcoal

2012-01-29T09:59:00.000Z

Life drawing was great this week. John is such a fantastic model. He takes it very seriously indeed and practises holding unusual positions in preparation for his sessions. He has a book on tai chi, so before each of our 2 minute poses, he was doing the moves then suddenly freezing, striking a series of very tricky poses with his arms straight out in the air:

We always do lots of these to warm up, which is my favourite part, as there's no time to do anything but trust to instinct and just draw, relying totally on hand/eye co-ordination and not really 'thinking' at all.

We then a couple of 10 minute ones, before a longer pose of about 40 minutes. The long one is usually my weakest, as the time makes me hesitant and I tend to over-complicate. So this week I decided to go with charcoal and think more about tone than line for a change. Good fun but VERY messy!

After the session we all nosy at each other's work. John got out a sketchbook: when he is not modelling. he sometimes draws. I was blown away - wonderful drawings, very simple but totally incisive and rich with sexy marks and lines. He's says he's been doing it about a year - wow.

First School Visit of the Year

2012-01-27T10:44:00.003Z

On Wednesday I got up early and took the train to Crewe, from where I travelled into Shropshire to spend the day at Longland Primary School: 4 small schools in the area had clubbed together to invite me to do a couple of workshops with their Y5 and Y6 children.

It was a really good day - the kids were great. We looked at creating characterisation. Sketching in conte, I showed them my 'starting-with-a-snowman' idea, then demonstrated how they could draw their character moving (by running round the perimeter of the classroom - keeps me fit!). Then they each created an illustration with a running character, adding elements to weave stories into their drawings, ready for a writing session in class.

On the way home I was lucky enough to be sitting opposite the wonderful old man at the top. Luckily he was mostly staring out of the window, so I was able to look properly and get a pretty accurate sketch. I'm finding the clandestine sketching more tricky these days: my varifocal specs give the game away as, to keep everything in focus, I have to move my head up and down, not just my eyes!

This was the last drawing of the journey. She curled up in her seat and fell asleep just as I finished the old man and I just got her done in time before we came into Sheffield.

The Lull Before the Storm...

2012-01-25T10:30:00.000Z

My new-improved, doggie-story has now gone off to the publisher (cross fingers...). I probably won't hear anything for a week or so at least. I am still waiting for my other publisher to send me the suggested page layouts for the next book I'm to start work on any day now: between us, we have to tame all the work I did last year and squeeze it into a 32 page picture book!

It's weird having a lull just before you know you are about to be really busy. I have a couple of events later this week, but school visits won't really kick off until next month, so John and I have been going through all the bookings I've got coming up, making sure timetables are all resolved and trains are all booked.

I'm also using this pocket of time to write down another idea that's been knocking around in my head, about a koala, but that's way too new to share for now.

What I can share though, are some more pages from my Kerala sketchbooks: I've at last got time to do more scanning.

These drawings were all done in Tellicherry. We were taken to visit the obligatory fabric shop, but first, to my delight, we were shown the weaving and spinning sheds where the fabrics were created. It was like Northern England before the Industrial Revolution, except the hand-operated, wooden looms were all operated by women in beautiful saris. The low-ceilinged room clacked and banged noisily with the sound of wood on wood.

In a neighbouring, smaller room, women sat on wooden stools, spinning:

I showed each sketch to the women I drew, getting their names, and briefly stopped production in my corner of the factory, as everyone wanted a look and pass the book around. We bought John a lovely, brilliant orange, linen shirt before we left.

When the guide said he was taking us to a 'beedi' factory next, I expected beaded jewelry (and inwardly yawned). But it turns out a beedi is a kind of cigarette, and the 'factory' was very interesting indeed. In a big wooden building, long rows of women sat with trays on their laps, twisting tobacco into dried Ebony leaves, which they clipped into an appropriate rectangle shape with scissors. On our way out, the woman in the office saw my drawing, and gave me some freebies - shame I don't smoke!

The sketch at the top is in town - I stood by the side of the road and soon drew a considerable crowd. They all watched quietly and even shooed away a beggar. After a while I stopped worrying about my handbag hanging at my side - I knew they'd give short-shrift to any pickpocket. I really loved the people of Kerala who were always positive, interested and helpful and I never, ever felt threatened by crowds.

Just to finish (and to make you feel as jealous as possible), this is the view from the house where we stayed with a family in Tellicherry. Horrible eh?

Mad Hatter's Tea Party

2012-01-23T10:00:00.000Z

On Saturday we did something rather special...

It was the 34th Worldwide SketchCrawl Day but, here in the UK, it was way too cold to work out on location, so we tried a new idea. At 10am, the Sheffield SketchCrawl team all brought their best crockery and silverware, plus a food contribution to our house.

Pam raided the local antique centre, so we had very posh candelabras, some extraordinarily themed tea-pots and a very unusual, Russian tea-urn that looked not unlike a prototype diving bell:

We had so much wonderful stuff, we were able to set up three tables around the house, all heaving with food and packed to capacity with suitably crazy props.

And since it was a Mad Hatter's tea party, we all wore hats (some of us had several hats to choose from and so changed throughout the day).

Once we were set up, we all sat round the tables and drew. I decided to stick to my Inktense watercolour pencils, which are great for very quick but very colourful work.

There was so much going on, I didn't get around to doing a headcount, but there must have been 20 - 25 people in all. We were all concentrating so hard, it was surprisingly quiet most of the time.

Except every 15 - 20 minutes, when John stood in the hall and rang a bell, shouting 'All change! All change!' and (despite some sighs of despair) everyone moved round one seat, and began a new sketch.

Every so often he, and our invaluable helper Wendy, served mugs of tea to everyone - quite a feat, since one table was upstairs in the converted spare bedroom and the third was set up in my studio, way up in the attic:

Rumours filtered down to those in the dining room that some of the sketchers at the upstairs tables had given into temptation and began nibbling, so we stopped for elevenses and all tucked into the goodies.

At lunchtime we were spoilt for choice. People wandered up and down between the rooms investigating all the different food on offer. Several sketchers had baked specially. The Davies family had made biscuits stamped with letters, laid out on a plate spelling SKETCHCRAWL, as illustrated here by the wonderful Andrea Joseph:

Andrea had created jars of potted-eyeballs and allotment-antipasti, all beautifully packaged, with hand-drawn labels in her own inimitable style:

After lunch we swapped rooms, so we had different things to draw, but John was just as vigilant with his bell, so there was no time to get complacent!

You might remember me mentioning our very talented young member, Tom, who has come to almost every event since we started in 2009. Well it was great to welcome his younger brother Harry with us this time too:

Joshua, aged only 9, was also taking part for the first time, and worked steadily all day, producing some lovely drawings:

We drew until about 3.30, when people started to wilt. So we had more tea and squeezed in yet more cake (gorgeous brownies Tom and Harry...).

Then we took all our sketchbooks into the living room, spread them out on the carpet and - very excited to see what each other had done - dug in with relish! Here's just a sample:

Postscript: just been sent a photo of the biscuits, which were brought all the way from Hull - there's dedication!

If you want to see more of the work done, take a look at our Facebook group SketchCrawl North.

Drawing Cats

2012-01-20T11:00:00.000Z

I have spent much of this week revising a story I was working on late last year. Remember, I took the train to London to pitch it in person to publishers? Well, I had a very positive response from one editor, who made a couple of suggestions for additions, before she takes it to their acquisitions meeting, which is where she must pitch it in turn, to the rest of her team.

The story features a little gang of doggy friends, who play together in an alley. The action also brings in a neighbouring gang of rats. The editor felt it would really help the fun if the local cats also got involved. This seemed like a great idea, so I've been designing some characters. They are, of course, supremely unimpressed by the dogs:

Ideally, I'd have liked to have done this before now, but things were very busy in the run-up to Christmas, getting Baby Can Bounce finished. Then of course, John and I were lucky enough to have a our lovely long break in India... So, before I knew it, it was the middle of January!

All the new drawings and the re-plotting was done on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday was spent scanning the new additions into Photoshop, along with the original sheets of sketches, notes and the handwritten text which I took to London in November. These were fine with me there to present them, but I needed to slightly reorder things and tidy them all up a little, to make it easier for my editor to show the sheets to other people without me present.

It now comes out at 6 sheets of A3. I haven't illustrated everything - I don't think that's necessary at this stage - but there is a sketch for all the important events and characters.

Let's hope she still likes it!

Robin Hood's Bay in the Frost

2012-01-18T10:00:00.000Z

Yes, I know it's very decadent, having only 2 minutes ago got back from our big adventure in Kerala, but John was desperate to get off to the seaside for the weekend and I thought, well... why not?

I'm so glad I did, as the weather turned out to be perfect: crisp and frosty but clear and mostly sunny. We went for a walk along the cliffs and the beach for 3 days running.

Despite it being mid January and the ground being frozen solid, there was almost no wind, so it was warm enough for me to sit and sketch. These were all done using the Inktense pencils from Derwent. I'm still learning how to get the best from them, but I feel I've really started to turn the corner now and mastering a new medium makes the sketching so much more interesting.

Robin Hood's Bay is a bit special to us: it's the first place John and I ever went away together, it's the place we got engaged and where we spent the first night of our honeymoon. We were there for our wedding anniversary last summer, when we discovered Friday folk night in the upstairs room at Ye Dolphin, so we went back this time and had another lovely evening.

Steve and John were the mainstay and kept us entertained until almost midnight. They were a great double-act, singing mostly funny songs, to the accompaniment of a banjo, violin and mouth-organ. Thanks guys - fabulous stuff.

I love to draw to music and of course love to draw people, so spent the whole evening sketching away and nobody seemed to mind at all. It was like a one-man SketchJam!

This is Jeff below, who runs the show, as well as singing a few songs himself. He remembered me drawing at the club before, because after that previous visit, I let him use a little painting I did of the outside of the pub, to illustrate the cover of the folk club's newsletter.

This lady didn't sing, but must be a regular, as I remembered her from the summer too:

We had only started off with the idea of a B&B on that Friday night, but the weather was so wonderful we stayed Saturday night too. But then we discovered that our B&B ran a '3 nights for the price of 2' deal during off-season, so it seemed wicked not to take advantage of it...

Invitation to a Children's Illustration Exhibition

2012-01-16T18:02:00.000Z

Last week, I received an envelope full of invites to the opening day of the new show Picture This! in Gallery Oldham.

The show is already open to visitors, but the official opening day is not until Sat Jan 28th, when there will be all sorts going on, incuding a talk and a children's storytelling by Yours Truly.

I am chuffed that, though the show includes work by some very big names (Shirley Hughes, Anthony Browne, Jez Alborough...) it's one of my illustrations from Giddy Goat that has been chosen for the invitation. What with that and my Giddy Goat / Itch to Scratch giant jigsaw, it feels like it gives me a fairly high profile in the show, which is fab.

Anyway, consider yourselves all very much invited. The day kicks off at 11am. Here are the various brilliant events you can attend as well as seeing the exhibition itself:

11.00 my talk (for adults and older children)
11.00 - 12.30 illustrator Katie Viggers - free monoprinting workshop
12.00 Sculptor Martin Shaw talking about his work
1.00 my storytelling (suitable for 4 - 8 yrs)
2.00 Photographer Charlie Meecham talking about his work
2.00 - 3.30 illustrator Katie Viggers - free monoprinting workshop
3.00 Social Historian Sean Baggeley - a tour of 1876 Oldham, using the Oldham Panorama photograph.

Last Day at University

2012-01-13T10:00:00.000Z

Yesterday was the final day of my latest batch of teaching at the university. That's it for the time being and I can't say I'm not pleased - 2 half days out of each week is quite a distraction, on top of my other out-of-studio events.

On Wednesday morning each of my illustration students took turns to present their finished project work to me - they had just 5 mins each (I set a stopwatch!). Then on Thursday morning I had to grade them all and write feedback.

It's interesting being on the other side of the fence: I can still (just about) remember what it felt like to be the one doing the presenting and worrying about what grades I would get.

How strange to think of everything that has happened since then, none of which I could have predicted (especially since my degree was in Printed Textiles and not Illustration!).

In case anyone's interested, all the above sketches were done using the Inktense water-soluble pencils that Derwent kindly donated. They were all finished on the spot, whilst waiting for, or riding on the bus. I've found the Inktense pencils are great for real quickies, especially if you select just 3 or maybe 4 colours to work with.

An Afternoon Drawing in the Market

2012-01-11T11:00:00.000Z

I just love drawing markets and what better place than India? It's such a great excuse to get in amongst local people, doing their everyday jobs, and as soon as you draw, they welcome you into their lives just a little, and that makes it so much more rewarding and memorable.

These sketches were done on my very last afternoon, in Angamaly, near Cochin. I started with the veg stall: stuffed with sacks and crates of veg in all shapes, sizes and colours, many of which I'd never seen before.

This is Ajilal, who was the man taking the orders and the money for the veg. His fellow workers nominated him to be drawn and then ribbed him shamelessly throughout. When I was done, John and I were fed as many finger-bananas (literally finger-size) as we could eat, while someone nipped my sketchbook to the photocopy shop.

I was then dragged into the garden of a man who happened to live next door. He showed me his caged bunnies, guinea pigs and budgies and offered them for me to draw. It felt bizarre, and was not quite what I'd had in mind, but I gave it a go while his wife, Rosie, stood and watched. He bought me a bottle of mango juice to cool me off, which was very welcome by then.

This man was deep-frying food round the corner, in a massive wok. It was a fiercely hot and horribly humid day and the extra heat was making me run with sweat, though I was standing several feet away - how he kept smiling I'll never know.

Time was getting on and the afternoon's fish catches arrived, so I moved to the next street, where fishermen crouched on the pavement with small tarps at their feet, where their fish was laid out. I started with the man below and began to draw quite an audience.

The fisherman was disappointed I didn't get his head in (though pleased enough to take a photo on his mobile phone). So the man sitting opposite him insisted I did him next and that I made sure his face was showing.

By then I had quite a crowd (John counted 25), and we were entirely blocking the narrow road. Soon the other fish men were all lining up to be done and I had to plead fatigue to get out of drawing everyone. They took pity on me and one of the men bought us both a cup of sweet tea off the chai man (with an urn on a bike).

A wonderfully memorable, final afternoon, full of laughter and sudden, brief friendships.

Bewilderingly Back to Earth

2012-01-10T15:19:00.000Z

So far it's been a week of trogging through all the emails that have built up while we've been away, opening the post, checking the diary and generally getting my head back into gear. It's the sign of a good holiday when you get back and work feels like something you vaguely remember you were up to once, but you can't recall anything properly.

I've started scanning a handful of my sketches, so I'll pop them on tomorrow morning, but here are some quick monkey sketches in the meantime. They were a little bit scary, but also very cute, though a right nuisance to locals, as they would steal anything sweet.

It's back to work with a bang tomorrow though, as I'm back teaching at the university for 2 half days, so that should sort me out and get me in gear!

Kerala in India - Quite a Christmas!

2012-01-09T17:39:00.000Z

On Saturday we got back from three fantastic weeks, touring Kerala in southern India. I filled 4 sketchbooks, so there is plenty to show you but, of course, we got back to 500 emails as well as the big pile of envelopes on the mat, so it's going to be a while before I can put an e-sketchbook together.

In the meantime, here is a couple of sketches I did in Punnathoor Kotta Kovilagom - a place where 64 elephants are kept and trained for work in Hindu temples. Keralan elephants have a unique pink face with black freckles, so I had to get my paints out, which of course turned me into just another attraction, as far as the Indian visitors were concerned.

The Keralan people are the friendliest and most welcoming I have ever come across in my travels. Absolutely everyone we met was delightful (and also honest, despite some obvious poverty). Stunningly beautiful scenery too. Plus there's the gorgeous food... (I have put on weight and all my trousers are too tight!).

More to come!

Life Drawing in the Fridge

2012-01-05T10:00:00.000Z

Yes, that's what it felt like last time I braved the KIAC life drawing, down at Kelham Island, just before we broke up for the holidays.

I knew it would be cold, since it was well chilly before the weather turned nasty. So I put on yet more layers, a scarf, my fingerless gloves, a woolly hat and even - horror of horrors - shocking pink leg-warmers under my jeans (left over from an 80s fancy dress night, honest).

We all felt so sorry for the poor model. Several extra heaters had been brought in, to make sure he was kept nice and toasty but, unfortunately, every time they were all plugged in together, it blew a fuse! He was a true professional though and took off his clobber anyway. He insisted on sticking it out to the end of the session, even though he looked frozen.

He struck some fab poses too, using a big stick to support himself, so he could spread his arms wide, or twist into interesting shapes for 10 minutes at a time.

By the way, remember I mentioned before about the massive scissors hanging in the space? Well, here they are. In the background, you can just spot my friend and fellow SketchCrawler Les, trying to block some of the broken windows with paper, to stop the wind howling through:

Selling a Picture Book to the Bookshops

2012-01-02T10:00:00.000Z

People are usually surprised when I tell them that it generally takes around 18 months for a picture book to go from being some pastel drawings on my desk to a finished book that they can find on the shelf of their local bookshop. This is because of all the work that goes on behind the scenes, most of which is done by the sales team.

There are an extraordinary number of children's books published each year, so there's only room on the shelves for the average bookseller to carry a fraction of what's available at any one time. Which is where the salesmen come in.

To ensure that Baby Can Bounce! is one of the lucky titles selected by Waterstones, W.H.Smiths, Blackwells etc, they must sell the idea of my book to them, long before people in the real world know it exists.

As soon as the proofed version of my book is available, they will use that for their sales pitch but, before that, they use sheets like the one above, which try to convey as accurately as possible, how totally gorgeous, and absolutely essential to their stock, my book is!

This sales sheet for Baby Can Bounce! is the one that the Egmont team have been taking out in the lead up to Christmas and will be flashing about again, as soon as the holiday is over. Good luck team!

Merry Christmas One and All!

2011-12-25T10:00:00.000Z

I hope you are all having a lovely holiday. I hope you had a wonderful day yesterday and are not feeling too sick from over-indulgence. I'm being wonderfully decadent and taking the whole Christmas and New Year off. Hurrah!

I am still drawing of course, so there will be plenty of sketchbook stuff to show you, once I get myself back into things in the studio, but for now I am enjoying my holiday.

See you at the other end!

Drawing People in the Pub

2011-12-22T10:00:00.000Z

Last week's life drawing class at Kelham Island was unfortunately cancelled at the very last minute. My sketching friend Les always gives me a lift and he didn't know so, come 6.30, he turned up at my door anyway. It would have felt a bit of a let-down to just do nothing, so we decided to take our drawing gear to the pub instead.

The Gardener's Rest at Neepsend is a fab pub: really friendly, totally 'real', but also quite arty. They display artwork and photography on the walls and they often have music sessions, both impromtu and otherwise. It's where we always go after life drawing, so it was the obvious choice for the evening.

To start with it was very quiet in the main bar: just us, Pat the landlady and a couple of her regulars, including George in his flat cap. But it soon warmed up.

We picked a good night - a large group arrived for a works 'do' for someone called John, who was quite a raconteur, telling jokes and keeping the whole bar entertained. He played great guitar and sang some good singalong classics. I love drawing to music and even better if I can sing at the same time!

There were various very good musicians amongst the company who all did several turns, but the star of the show was Mo Andrews. Les and I were scribbling away throughout the performances, but when Mo opened her mouthed, we were both stunned into stillness. Her gravelly, blues voice could belt it out, but also be totally captivating and truly beautiful in the quiet numbers.

Magic evening. Thank you to everyone!

Dashing for the Finishing Line...

2011-12-19T10:00:00.000Z

The rescans for Baby Can Bounce! came back last week (remember the problems we had?). The colours are definitely truer now, with more 'ping'. All good news, except having to do them again put us well behind schedule, especially with Christmas looming...

It meant I had to strap myself to my computer, get my head down and digitally cut out these last few illustrations at record speed, so they could get to the printers before everyone waved their offices bye bye and got stuck into the mince pies and whiskey.

The trampoline cover piece above was straightforward (apart from swapping a green reflection on the trampoline for a purple one, now he's not naked!), but none of the 3 pieces we re-scanned from the inside have been especially quick or easy. The Baby can tickle monkeys at the top were unusually fiddly, with lots of edges. Baby can sniff / splash has been a headache because of the puddle splash:

The main problem was trying to work out what colour it should be and how much of the background colour to allow through, to make it translucent and 'read' as water.

I thought redoing the Baby can dig crocodile would been a particular pain, as cutting out the textured sand took an age the first time: it's so close in tone and colour to my pastel paper. Then I had to play around with my sand colour until it successfully blended into the hard yellow ground - it looks yellow on the pink, but is actually quite pink once you put it on yellow (if that makes sense!).

In the end though, I managed to short-cut a lot of the work, by being sneaky and dropping the re-scanned animal characters on top of the sand background I'd already worked on from the original scan.

Phew. Sometimes I LOVE Photoshop!

Weston Park Meets Dr Sketchy!

2011-12-16T17:33:00.000Z

This time last week was Sheffield SketchCrawl day. We spent the morning in Weston Park Museum (where we SketchCrawled last year). I started with this rather sad and dried up octopus, laying down the watercolour first. I never have the patience to wait for paint to dry, so carry 2 sketchbooks, so I can start a new page in the meantime:

We were happily chatting and drawing the various dead things, and the time just flew, so there was barely time to finish this little skull before we had to leave:

I ate a cheese sandwich on the move (after first dropping on the pavement), as we had to walk into town to take part in something a little different: Sheffield's first Dr Sketchy session.

It was a good job we were punctual, as the little room above the pub was full to bursting! Everyone was very excited. We weren't sure what to expect; all we knew was that it was a cross between burlesque and life-drawing.

Then the women appeared - in basques and flapper gear, fishnets and little laced boots. Red lipped and false-eyelashed to the hilt, they struck poses for us to draw, which lasted from 2mins to 15mins at a time. It was very colourful, so I was really pleased I had brought a small selection of watercolour pencils with me.

It was an incredibly intensive couple of hours, but we had a great time and produced tons of work in a very short time. Every so often, we held up our sketches and the models got to choose a winner. I won a prize for this one:

They had various prizes to choose from and I won this cute beret:

If you want to see more of the sketches I did, they are here (watch out by the way - some are even raunchier than these!)

Designing the Back Cover and a How-to-share-this-book Page

2011-12-15T10:00:00.000Z

Quite a while ago, I planned the design for the front cover of my newest book Baby Can Bounce! and with Sarah, my designer at Egmont, finalised exactly how it would look, before creating the actual pastel artwork. But I've had so much on, I happily left it up to Sarah, and my Editor Peter, to decide what would work best on the back cover:

As you can see, they did a fantastic job. We've got some great quotes that underline how useful the book will be for baby's development, which will hopefully help to sell it both to the bookshops and to book-buying parents.

The snake and the panda are a couple of the illustrations which Sarah has re-used from the inside. We have also re-used some of the illustrations for a special, extra spread at the beginning of the book, offering advice to the reader (the shadows are not right yet - they are early versions of the scans):

Baby will get much more from the book if the reader engages them in play while reading, having fun sharing the activities as they go through the pages, and making a game from the way they say and repeat the words. We created a similar spread for Baby Goes Baaaaa!

In both cases, I got a lot of advice, as well as suggestions for the text, from my Early Learning contacts in the library service. A big thank you to them!

Becket School: Workshops with Older Kids

2011-12-13T10:00:00.000Z

Last week, it made a nice change to work for 2 days in a secondary school. They are so BIG compared to primary schools!

I visited Becket School this time last year, but it took some doing: thick snow stopped all trains for a while. They invited me back this year and it did start to snow again, but fortunately we got away with it.

I was working the whole 2 days with Y7 students (1st years). We started with a lecture to them all - around 170. Above I am talking about characterisation: how you can use pointy or round shapes to suggest evil or vulnerable creatures, and how carefully chosen clothing can give hints to a character's personality.

In the talk, I follow the process of the creation of a picture book, using various examples from my backlist. These are roughs for is Big Bad Wolf is Good, and I am talking about how important it is to consider the position of the gutter (spread centre line).

The rest of the 2 days was spent doing the same 1 hour illustration workshop over and over, working my way through all the individual Y7 classes. As characterisation is so important to picture books, we looked at how to create animal characters, accessorising them to help make them individuals and using facial expressions to show what they're thinking.

To show how to add realistic movement, I climbed up on a table in the classroom (Health and Safety Officers look away now!) to demonstrate 'running legs' and how to draw them:

Each day I had a yummy lunch in the Learning Centre then did a 1 hour, drop-in session for anyone who wanted a chat. On Friday I had about 25 turn up, so it was a bit crazy, but on the 1st day, it was just me and Edwood (hi Edwood) so he got a 1 hour, one-to-one masterclass.

A big thanks to Mrs Webster for inviting me back and looking after me so well. As she stayed with me through many of the sessions, she was probably drawing animal characters in her sleep on Friday night!

Illustration Exhibition: Giant Children's Jigsaws

2011-12-11T10:00:00.000Z

Sadly, my one man show in Salford, Llamas in Pyjamas, has come down now, but the mixed show, Picture This!, has just opened at Gallery Oldham - hurrah! Things have been so crazy-busy that I haven't been to see it yet, but Anna, the curator, has sent me a couple of photos of the huge, vertical jigsaws they have created from a couple of my illustrations.

The first is my hairy friend Big Gorilla from An Itch to Scratch, written by my slightly less hairy friend Damian Harvey:

On the other side of the board, is another jigsaw, created from a spread from Giddy Goat by Jamie Rix:

Fantastic, aren't they? Can you recognise what you're looking at in the 2nd one? Well, once the pieces are all in the right place, it should look a little more like this:

If you're interested, I am going to be doing a day of events in the exhibition space, as a sort of after-Christmas, late opening event. It's happening on Saturday January 28th. I'll be doing a talk about my work for adults and slightly older children, then later a storytelling event for younger ones. Contact Gallery Oldham to reserve a place. See you there!

Studio Visit with Lydia Monks

2011-12-09T10:00:00.001Z

Thursday morning was my last bit of university teaching before Christmas, so while I was in town, I thought I would drop in on my good friend, fellow picture-book-person Lydia Monks. I'm sure you all know her gorgeous work: she both creates her own award-winning books and also illustrates the work of other authors, including Julia Donaldson.

We have been friends for years, but Lydia has very recently moved into a snazzy, new studio-space that I had not yet seen, so I was of course dead curious for a peek. I left John doing my accounts, leapt on the trusty no. 22 bus and did my couple of hours at Sheffield Hallam, then walked down the road to Lydia's new place. Gorgeous isn't it? She has tons of space and a huge window with a great view out over Sheffield:

But, can you guess who bunked off his duties and arranged with Lydia to meet me there? Honestly, I think an official, warning is imminent. Or maybe a pay cut...

After our tour-of-inspection, the three of us went out for lunch and a chin-wag. Lovely. We even treated ourselves to cake.

And then, sadly, we had to wave Lydia goodbye, hop back on the 22 bus home and get back to work (yes John, that's means you!!).

Life-Drawing to Thrash Metal

2011-12-07T10:00:00.001Z

The normal problem with life-drawing venues is that there's never enough space. Everyone is usually crammed up together, desperately trying to find a spot where they can see over someone else's head or drawing board. Not so at the K.I.A.C. sessions I've been trying out in Kelham Island for the last couple of weeks.

The space is in a massive disused factory, so big that the organisers pitch a small, family tent in one corner, complete with sofa, cushions, heaters and lamps, where the model poses. The front of the tent is left open and we all huddle round just outside, with the achingly empty space at our backs.

I say 'huddle', as that is the best description. The drawback to the venue is that it is FREEZING. K.I.A.C. are slowly mending windows, but there are still a few broken ones left and the room has no heating (hence the model's cosy tent). The rest of us have only our multiple layers of clothing to keep us warm: we work in fleeces, hats, scarves... I even wear fingerless gloves!

There's a great feeling of camaraderie though and we all warm up at half time with free mugs of steaming tea and bourbons. They have some great models too. So far they've both had great bodies to draw, struck some fabulous poses and kept very still. It's always interestingly lit too (thanks Sam). The drawings here are sets of 2 mins and then 20 mins.

The other surreal thing, if all the above strangeness were not enough, is that the next-door space is used as a rehearsal room by musicians. It is very odd indeed for our little band to be silently concentrating on drawing a naked woman, with thrash-metal screams blasting through the wall!

Oh - and there is a massive model of a pair of scissors suspended from the ceiling behind us: part of Sheffield steel-making past. Weird but wonderful.

December SketchCrawl: Weston Park Museum and 'Dr Sketchy'

2011-12-05T10:00:00.000Z

For anyone who would like to join in with a fun day of sketchbook-filling, we have another SketchCrawl planned at the weekend. We are all meeting on Saturday December 10th at 10am at Weston Park Museum.

We had a very successful SketchCrawl there last year so I'm sure we'll have fun.

The museum is free but bring a packed lunch, as the cafe can get very busy at lunchtime on a Saturday.

After lunch, things are going to be a little different to usual: we will be splitting into 2 groups, as some of us will be walking into town to take part in a Dr Sketchy event:

We have never done this before, so I can't vouch for what it will be like, but it sounds fun: sort of 'life-drawing meets burlesque' I think. The theme is 1920s America and the models will be in costume. Apart from that I'm not sure what to expect - we'll soon find out!

Those who don't want to do Dr Sketchy will either be staying in the museum to draw or walking into town with us, but continuing the SketchCrawl in Sheffield Cathedral.

At 4pm, anyone drawing in town will get together as usual to share our work, probably at The Great Gatsby bar, since the Dr Sketchy people will be there already. So, dust off those sketchbooks, sharpen those pencils and get yourself to Weston Park on Saturday. See you there!

Going Bug-Eyed: Creating Vignette Illustrations in Photoshop

2011-12-03T10:00:00.001Z

I have been chained to the computer lately, finishing the artwork for my latest book Baby Can Bounce!. I normally like to keep weekends work-free, but last weekend I had my nose to the screen all day, both days.

When the scans of my illustrations come back from the repro-house, the characters are of course still on my pink pastel paper:

The idea is to drop them on the same range of colours as Baby Goes Baaaaa!. Sarah, my designer at Egmont, tried out various possibilities, most of which I think worked really well. I made suggestions for a couple of changes, which she agreed: it's very much a team effort at this stage.

Once the colours had been decided, I then had the job of 'cutting out' the characters in Photoshop, to get rid of the pink paper. This little character is illustrating Baby can shake:

And that's not quite all: because the illustrations were drawn on pink, they don't necessarily 'sit' properly on the new colour straight away. So another job is to make any tonal or colour adjustments needed, so it looks as though I always intended it to be on that colour. This is always most obvious with the shadows at their feet.

It's a pretty tedious job all round, and this time it seems to have gone on forever. It's good that I have enough knowledge of Photoshop to be able to do it myself though, as the pastel edges make things far trickier than it would be with most other media. This page is Baby can share:

But...

Though I've been working with professional scans, done through Egmont, I was worried that the colours seemed a little milky. Neither I nor the publisher had the actual artwork to compare; it was still with the repro-house. I could see from my colour palette on the previous Baby Goes Baaaaa! scans that things were not quite right, but my deadline was tight and I didn't have the time to hang about. So I pumped up the contrast a bit, just gently, and did a tiny bit of 'dodge' and 'burn' work.

Yesterday, the artwork arrived back at Egmont and they were finally able to compare. It was immediately obvious that I was right. Take a look at Baby can dig below. Left is an in-house scan, adjusted to mirror the actual artwork, right is the version from the repro-house:

We have decided we don't need to re-scan them all (thank goodness: I don't think I could face repeating last week). Luckily, my re-balancing in Photoshop has brought most pics back to life, so they are good as new. However, the croc above and one or two others are particularly bad, so they do have to be done again. A bit unfortunate: cutting out that sand was a nightmare!

If you want to know more about the specifics of how I do the digital 'cutting out', have a read of this post, from when I was working on the scans of Baby Goes Baaaaa!

Hippy Dude Chases Taxi Through the Streets

2011-12-01T10:00:00.000Z

This week has been another busy one...

I started it by spending all weekend locked up in the studio with my nose to the computer, working on my Baby Can Bounce scans in Photoshop, cutting out vignettes and then tinkering with the digital images, to help them 'bed in' with the coloured backgrounds we have dropped behind:

So, as you can imagine, I was already feeling a little jaded on Monday morning, when I had to drag myself out of my warm, cosy bed at 5.15am (!!!) to make a 6.30 train to Durham.

Now, this wouldn't have been so bad if I wasn't still recovering from particularly late night on Saturday. It was my good friend (and fellow illustrator) Lydia Monks's birthday, so a group of us donned fancy dress and went to a 1970's themed party. Arriving home in the wee small hours, we staggered from the taxi, went to let ourselves in, then realised... I had left my handbag in the back of the cab, whose tail lights were just rounding the corner.

John made chase (in full 70's gear, including a wig), but to no avail. So: no door key, no mobile, no way in. Once we'd finished swearing, John scaled the fence and broke a window at the back of the house. The tale did have a happy ending: once indoors, I phoned my mobile and the taxi driver answered. His next fare had found my bag and handed it in, so the cabbie drove straight back to us and returned it.

But I digress...

The reason for the early morning trip to Durham was to spend the day at Annfield Plain Junior School, helping with their project on superheroes. It was a small school, so after a PowerPoint talk to everyone, I was able to work my way through all the classes, helping the children to add life and movement to their superhero characters.

I now always use a conte stick to 'sketch' on the flipchart during illustration workshops, rather than the felt pen I use in storytellings:

I have realised that it is important to show children how to use a pencil to sketch in simple shapes beneath their drawings, which encourages them to draw more naturally and helps them to get by without the constant use of rubbers.

It was a lovely day. I was feeling quite droopy though by the end, so didn't have the energy for that many sketches on the train home. I finally fell into the sofa at 7pm and then vegged with telly for the rest of the evening.

Mr Wilkes Saves the Day

2011-11-30T10:00:00.000Z

Last week was really hectic. As well as my two sessions at the university, I also travelled to Huddersfield to talk the Youth Libraries Group, then on Friday I was out again, taking the train to Lichfield in Staffs, to spend the day at Highfields Primary School in Burntwood.

The children had ordered 60 signed books, way too many to carry, so I had to post them and the parcel exceeded the maximum postal weight! Since big book orders are always the sign of a proactive school, I had high hopes for the visit.

They didn't disappoint: what a great school. It had a really happy feel about it. The children were so excited. I met all KS1 first, for a mega storytelling, then all KS2, for one of my PowerPoint talks about how books are created from scratch.

At lunchtime I scoffed a jacket potato in the staff room, then set to signing yet more books for all the teachers for Christmas presents. It was probably the most fun and friendly staff room I've been in. What a very silly bunch. I threatened to blog the things they were talking about but most of the banter would be unrepeatable here!

In advance of my visit, Mrs Morris the Literacy Coordinator, had organised a big reading challenge for the whole school. The classes were battling it out to see who could read the most by the time of my visit and the prize was to have an extra session with me in the afternoon.

The winners in KS1 were Class 2, so we had a fun hour together reading Bears on the Stairs and designing monsters. It was a dead heat between 2 classes in KS2. I don't normally do workshops for more than one class at a time, but we broke the rule and I worked with all 60 children together in the hall, showing them how to create animal characters and how to make them run across the paper.

I forgot to pre-order my taxi back to Lichfield Station, half an hour's drive away. The trains were only one an hour and the journey takes nearly 2 hours, so at 3.15pm, when we discovered there were no taxis to be had for another 45 minutes, I was desperate. Step in Mr Wilkes, the Head (yes, that's him on the left), who chivalrously dropped everything and whisked me safely to the station in his car. What a hero!

As you can see, the long journey each way meant lots of time for drawing. Hope you like them. I was especially pleased with Leopard-skin Coat Woman.

Children's Illustration Competition: Winners...

2011-11-28T10:00:00.000Z

Remember the children's illustrations that were created as a response to my exhibition? Children were asked to create there own picture book character, inspired by the show.

Well, after much deliberation, I am finally ready to announce the winners (drum roll.....)

First Prize goes to Eloise (who is just 4 years old!) for Rose the Monster Princess:

I really like all the details, especially the pink hairspray and the green, slimy hand-prints on her pink dress from her green slimy hands. I think a monster princess is a fabulous idea and a great character for a story.

Second prize goes to Emmy for the Purple-Lipped Snapper Firetail:

What a great character and so unusual. I like the colours: the blending to create the fire and the red sky with the green sun, which makes it look like he might live on an alien planet. Oh, and I especially like his panicky face.

Runners up are Sofia for Roo in a Shoe (don't you just love those trendy pumps?):

...and Emily for Gemma the Short-Necked Giraffe:

...and Athena for Gerald the Camel:

You can see all the entries on the Salford Gallery's Flickr site.

Unfortunately, my Salford exhibition has now come down but, if you are interested in children's illustration, I'm sure you will enjoy Picture This! Illustrating Children's Books, which has just opened in Gallery Oldham, and is on until March 11th.

TADO at Hallam University

2011-11-26T10:00:00.000Z

This week, I started a short block of Illustration lecturing at thelocal Sheffield Hallam University.I'm doing just 4 hours each week until mid Jan: thereisn't time to do it as a regular thing, but now and then it's fun and addsvariety to life. This time last year I taughtlife drawing for a few weeks and also worked with last year's 3rd years, helping them develop their FinalProjects.

This time I'm with2nd years. My first session was on Wednesday, but there was aone-off talk by the Sheffield-based illustrators 'TADO' scheduled during my session time, so I had a veryeasy morning, sitting with the students, listening to TADO talk about their work (and sketching, of course).

TADO are in fact Katie and Mike (above), a couple who met at art school 10 year ago.

Since then, they have had meteoric success and work with various massive companies all over the world. Their frenetic scenes and offbeat characterisations have been applied to everything from Orange ad campaigns, flip-flops, Gola bags, toys...

They are in fact obsessed with toys and this is their illustration of themselves at play.

To be honest, their work is not really my bag, but it is extremely well done and they work unbelievably hard. One big job had them both busy grafting all day and half the night, 7 days a week, for several months. They were barely out of the house, apart for mercy-dashes for food, and their neighbour thought they had gone away on a long holiday!

I had a lecturing slot at Hallam on Thursday morning too, when I had a proper session with real teaching. The students are beginning a new project based on the Cultural Olympiad music event Alight, so my role was to try and help them remove the creative brick wall that you get when panic sets in and to suggest ways they might unlock their ideas.

The university is only 10 minutes on the bus (perfect or what?) and, on my way home on Wednesday, I spent most of that time sketching this man (quite a feat, as it was extremely bumpy):

He smiled at me, so I showed him the drawing and we chatted until he had to get off, just the stop before me. He emailed me when he got in: turns out he works in web design for Sheffield Council: hello Toks!

Pitching Children's Stories to Publishers

2011-11-24T12:30:00.000Z

Remember the dog story idea? Well, I took it down to London last Friday and showed my sketch sheets to a couple of my editors. It's always a wee bit scary, pitching a project that you think is really fun, and hoping that other people think so too.

On the train down, I did my usual people-sketching, which takes so much concentration that it is a great way to take your mind off thinking too much about how things are going to go.

I enjoy going down to London. It's 20 years since I lived there and a great many things have changed, but in some ways it still feels the same and I feel very at home travelling about. I do like the buzz of the frenetic activity that is going on everywhere; I even enjoy the craziness of the tube, but these days that mad buzz is more fun as a visitor than if I had to live there every day.

It turned out to be a really positive day. I read my story aloud to give it as much life as possible, I even did all the voices! One publisher in particular was very interested (hurrah!).

She liked the unusual idea behind the story (which I can't divulge of course, at this stage) and she loved the humour. There is a little bit of extra work to be done before she takes it to meetings, to try and sell the idea to the rest of the team: I have to add in an extra section, involving some cats.

I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into that, but I still have so much else on at the moment that I haven't had a moment.

Anyway, once all the important stuff was done, I just had time for a quick culture-fix: an hour's whip round Tate Britain, before I had to head back to St Pancras for my train home.

I enjoyed my sketching again on the way back, as you can see. Definitely a very positive day (thank goodness!).

Bear in Tights!

2011-11-23T15:27:00.001Z

I had another of my nice surprises through the letterbox this morning: a lovely, hand-drawn card from the children at St John's School where I spent the day doing a storytelling and illustration workshop with the children earlier this month.

I love their illustration of a bear in a crop-top, rainbow skirt and black tights:

Thank you too, St John's - what a nice thought. I'm so glad you enjoyed our day together: me too!

NCBF: A Whirlwind of Storytelling!

2011-11-21T22:44:00.000Z

On Sunday afternoon, just over a week ago, I packed a suitcase and a sketchbook, then hopped on a train to Newcastle, where I was staying right through until Wednesday afternoon, doing loads of storytelling for the Northern Children's Book Festival.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to do any drawing on the way: the train was full of drunken football supporters, so I thought it wiser not to draw attention to myself!! Not to worry: there were other sketching opportunities during the festival, as you can see.

I have done the NCBF many times before: it's one of my favourites. I love spending 3 days steeped in stories; I love all the excited children I meet; I love (and am in awe of) the extraordinary way librarians transport loads of authors and illustrators to vast numbers of children, all over North East of England.

This year, instead of staying in a hotel, I was put up by Ann Key, ex chair of the NCBF. She gave me a bed, cooked me lovely dinners (with home-baked cakes!) and kept me company in the evenings when I got in from my events. We had loads in common, so it was a real treat. Mind you, most nights I was so tired I was asleep by 10pm.

Each morning, bright and early, I travelled to a different part of the region to read my 3 latest books: Dragon's Dinner, Stinky! and Bears on the Stairs.

On Monday it was N. Tyneside, where I was looked after by Lesley. We had a great day: I saw 180 children from 3 different schools. Between them they bought 135 books (!), so many, there wasn't time to sign them all on the spot (not drawing a picture too), so I took them back with me and was still signing at 7pm.

Lesley remembered from last time I was there, how much I love the sea so, after the last event of the day, we wrapped up warm and went for a walk along the front. The tide was in and the waves were really crashing down - fantastic!

On Tuesday, Ann drove me to Hexham, where I changed cars, then Kim drove me way up into the wilds of northern Northumberland, where are there are lots of small rural schools, who clubbed together for my sessions. The best of all was Kielder First School, with just 10 pupils in total - that's the whole school! They were lovely (hello guys).

Kim and I had a gorgeous pub lunch at half time in the pretty, historic village of Bellingham (mushroom madras - yum yum). I probably had garlic breath all afternoon (sorry kids!).

Wednesday was a very early start - I was up at 6am. I had to pack up my suitcase then at 7am Ann drove me to Newcastle station where I caught a train to Middlesborough for the day. Because I was drawing the people, I noticed how at 7.30am the train was full of men, who all got off at Hartlepool for work, which was where at 8.15am, it re-filled with women.

I had a fun time in Berwick Hills Library in the morning, then again in Acklam Library in the afternoon, meeting 170 children in three 1hr sessions.

The end of the day was a crazy rush though: the children didn't arrive until quite late, so we got a little behind. It was my own fault - I should have finished earlier, as I had a huge pile of books to sign. I didn't have time to sign them all properly, as I had a taxi waiting at the library door to take me to Darlington to catch a train home. I just managed to draw a little picture in each book before I literally ran from the library, coat under one arm, suitcase in the other!

We made it in time (phew) and I was able to catch my breath once I was safely underway. Luckily this time the train was full but peaceful, and I was able to get my sketchbook out and draw all the way home.

Thanks to everyone who looked after me, drove me around, humped flipcharts and big boxes of heavy books back and forth, took me to lunch etc and especially a huge thank you to Ann Key for her wonderful hospitality!

Baby Can Bounce: the Cover is Sorted

2011-11-19T10:00:00.000Z

Sarah, my designer at Egmont, has finished the cover design for my new book. The stripy text I prepared and scanned is all done and in place, the baby croc has his pants on (!) the new strap-line is in place (although that still might change: we're not sure if it's too educational sounding) and the colour is...

...yep: yellow.

This is quite funny. Though I was the one who stuck out for yellow originally, when the guys at Egmont wanted lilac (because I thought it would work better with the green croc), I changed my mind when I saw the lilac mocked up. Typical then, that the consensus at Egmont should now change to liking the yellow. It's especially ironic, given that I had to change the cover of Baby Goes Baaaaa!, which I conceived as yellow from the start, to a duck-egg blue. Hey ho.

If you want to read about how the cover was designed from my scratch, take a look at my initial sketches.

Publication for Baby Goes Baaaaa! is April, which will be here in no time. Baby Can Bounce! is following close on it's heels, in early summer.

Children's Illustration Competition

2011-11-17T13:23:00.000Z

While I was having breakfast the other day, a massive parcel arrived. Inside were various things coming back to me from my big exhibition, which came down last week. Not the framed artwork though - that's all going into storage at Tameside Gallery, ready for another airing, planned for the not too distant future, but all the roughs and sketchbooks have come back to me.

Also in the parcel, was a pack of entries to my children's illustration competition:

Visitors to the exhibition were asked to design their own picture-book character, inspired by my show. We had over 32,000 visitors in the 3 months the show was up, so there were an awful lot of entries. Since not everyone could win a prize, I painted 4 picture frames onto the gallery walls, at child height, so the children's work could be displayed alongside mine, and gallery staff kept putting up the best entries, as a changing display:

The guys at the gallery also helped me enormously by shortlisting the entries down to the top 50 (quite a task I should think) and it was these 50 drawings that I got in my package. They were all so lovely and all so different, with ages spanning from 3 years old through to 12. How on earth to chose!?!

I have whittled the 50 down to my top 10, but can only chose 5 winners. SO hard. I am still musing... Watch this space!

Up to My Armpits in Red Stripes!

2011-11-15T10:00:00.000Z

A messy morning last week! I had to clear my desk and put all my story sketch sheets well out of harm's way, to quickly do another funny little bit of artwork to patch into the cover of my latest book Baby Can Bounce!.

Those who have been popping in regularly, will know that this is the sequel to Baby Goes Baaaaa! (due out in April next year). To give things a softer, more cuddly feel, Sarah, my designer at Egmont, suggested I created a cute, spotty texture for the main title text of that book, by hand drawing spots in pastels, to match the pattern on the lamb's romper suit:

We want the typography on book 2 to have a similar feel, but be slightly different, so stripes seemed like a good idea, to match the little stripy swimsuit the crocodile wears.

The worst job was measuring and drawing all the stripe guidelines, in fine pencil. Then I just had to colour in a block of pattern: the actual letters will be created later, by a sort of digital-collage process.

Just like when I created the emergency crocodile pants, I scanned the stripe artwork here in the studio, then emailed it straight to Sarah, so she could create the stripy letters at her end. Here's how the title looks with it's new stripes:

It's been all very ASAP, as Egmont are creating a quick version of the cover of Baby Can Bounce! in advance of the rest of the book, so they can pop a little pic of it into the back of Baby Goes Baaaaa!, which is going off to the printers for proofing any minute now.

Book Illustration Videos: I'm on YouTube with Shoo Raynor!

2011-11-13T09:51:00.000Z

Remember our ill-fated trip to North Wales? Well, one thing that helped take our minds off our problems was the pleasure of spending time with Shoo Rayner, who was doing the same festival as me, and so staying at the same hotel as us for the 3 nights.

It was lovely to have breakfast and dinner together every day and chew the fat (though not literally I hasten to add - the food at the manorhaus is gorgeous). It's so rare to get real time with fellow authors and illustrators, we always have fun comparing notes (comparing 'horror stories' from dodgy school visits is also a fave!).

Shoo is very into creating exciting ideas for the web at the moment, and has for some time been making little films about how he draws. His latest project though is to create filmed interviews with other illustrators and authors he meets on the road. So, while we were together in Ruthin, he asked me if I would mind doing an interview. What fun!

The hotel let us use their restaurant one afternoon after our library events were over. Shoo set up a tripod and I collected all the bits and bobs I had with me for my talks with the children. Then we just chatted about them. All very relaxed. I drew Stinky! on camera which turned out really well (phew!) NB Don't be put off by the fact that this film starts with the same intro as above - it changes:

At the end we did a signed-book swap on camera - a nice touch.
Unfortunately we made one boo-boo: when we were shooting close-ups of my sketchbooks to edit into the interview, Shoo mistakenly turned the camera off when he thought he was turning it on, so we didn't get those.

Roll Up, Roll Up, for the Amazing, Burping Headteacher!

2011-11-11T11:00:00.000Z

I had rather of a day of experimentation when I was out and about on Tuesday.

First up: I took a couple of the Derwent Inktense pencils and a waterbrush with me on the train to Wilmslow, for a change, to try new techniques. In the top sketch, I tried to be less tight and concentrate more on mark-making.

The man below clocked me drawing him immediately:

I didn't show him the sketch, since I wasn't sure he approved, but I showed the brother and sister in the notes. The little girl got out some colouring pencils of her own, so I dug out one of my bookmarks for them: another of those nice little experiences with strangers.

I did a few things differently when I got to St Anne's Primary School too. It was a pretty small school, so I decided it might be fun to work with everyone together in the hall. Apart from my PowerPoints, I don't do this, as the children at the back are too far away, but at St Anne's it worked really well. I read Class Two at the Zoo then we sang a song where the children pretend to be anacondas gobbling each another up.

At the end of the song, I always ask if there is anyone who can help me with the last verse, by doing some really foul burping. Normally it's one of the boys, occasionally a girl, but never before has it been the Head! I have to say, she was magnificent, playing her part with aplomb (if through embarrassed giggles).

I spent the bulk of the day with Y4, talking about my work, then getting them designing characters. After lunch I helped them build illustrations around their characters.

Then we tried something new again: children volunteered to stand up and spin stories around their illustrations. I used to think children would be too self conscious, but actually they are all desperate to be chosen.

One new idea came from Mrs Thomas: when it came to writing things down, we used post-it notes instead of regular paper. This broke it into manageable pieces, but also meant we could juggle about different aspects of the stories.

We finished off with the whole school in the hall again, but with some parents as well this time. I read Stinky! so I could have the fun of getting the whole school to be flies.

After some book-signing, Mrs Thomas whipped me back to the station. Everything was fine, until I got to Stockport...

It's always a problem when I change at Stockport - there are definitely imps on the line in those parts. First the train was late, then we had a frantic, last minute platform change. At least it wasn't cold.

The funny thing was, to pass time while waiting on the platform, I checked my phone and... there was an email from the man I had drawn that morning! He couldn't have been upset with me after all, as he'd spied out my name from the bookmark I'd given the children, then gone to the trouble of looking me up, all so he could ask to see the picture I'd drawn of him! How nice.

Creating Doggy Personalities

2011-11-09T09:30:00.000Z

I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself. Despite a lot of distractions, I got my head down last week and started to get my act together properly as the days wore on.

At last I am drawing properly and I have managed to visualise the whole of the new story that John and I have been brainstorming. My doggy characters have grown tighter and more focussed the more times I've sketched them and I feel that each member of their little gang now has a quite distinct personality.

I used my new book to choose different breeds that suggested personality types, then worked on further reflecting that in their body language, their voice and general demeanor. In this sketch though, they are having a bit of an argument with the dog above:

There's also a gang of rats in the story, most of whom are actually quite amenable, all except their rather scary leader.

We decided it would be funny to make the chief rat character a girl, and giving her a really girlie name would make her funnier still, so she is called Rosy.

I have more school and festival visits coming up in the next 2 weeks, but now I have got warmed up, I am going to try and keep the stories going and begin work on a princess idea that has been in my sketchbook for a while. It's reassuring to feel I have at least made a little progress though.

Trains, Hats, Paninis and Palm Trees: Sketchcrawl Time Again!

2011-11-07T13:43:00.000Z

The SketchCrawl team met again this weekend. We got together at Sheffield Midland Station on Sunday morning.

We had a great turn-out, with some people coming from further afield to join us. Everyone was chatting excitedly and raring to go.

We drank coffee in the Ritazza cafe in the forecourt for the first hour, sketching people, the station building and the views through the window. I warmed up on Matthew:

Then I did a quickie looking out at this lovely autumnal tree. I tried out the Inktense watercolour pencils Derwent gave us - they are really zingy and lovely and soft to use, although I've never worked with watercolour pencils before, so I need to do far more experimentation.

It was a wonderfully bright, sunny day, but quite crisp. As I was finishing the sketch, I spotted Andrea, sitting out in the cold under the tree, drawing the fountains. There's dedication.

We had a couple more hours to sketch around the station itself. I decided to be brave and do the long view down the line, from the glass-sided footbridge. It was hard to tame: there was so much going on. But having such strong shadows to block in really helped me find a way to make something of the chaos of information-overload:

After that, I went outdoors myself, but I walked all the way down to the very end of platform 5, where I could sit in the sun, and painted the one at the top. It was surprisingly warm (despite discovering that I'd forgotten my polystyrene mat and so had to sit directly on the concrete platform).

We walked up to the Winter Gardens for lunch, where I thoroughly enjoyed scoffing a mozzerella, basil and tomato panini (on gorgeous olive bread). Matthew (who loves drawing food) couldn't resist painting his panini first, but I don't have that kind of patience when I'm hungry!

I did a quick painting of a palm tree:

...but found I wasn't much in the mood for plants, so did a sketch of Tom next:

Who then did a drawing of me:

...drawing these hats in a shop window:

I also had a bash at the top of the Central Library building, looking out through the front windows of the Winter Garden. the light was still amazing:

We walked back down to the station and did at sketchbook sharing in the Sheffield Tap pub on platform 1. Some fantastic work was passed around. If you want to see some of it, take a look at the Sketchcrawl North page on Facebook.

We try and SketchCrawl at least once a month so, if you want to join us next time, drop me an email and I'll add you to our e-mail list, so you'll know when we are off again.

New Ideas for Children's Workshops...

2011-11-05T10:00:00.000Z

On Tuesday, I set aside my story writing, because I had an invitation to visit St John's First School in Stafford.

I've been to Stafford before and it's not the most direct journey from here by train, so I set the alarm early again, and was away at 6.45am (don't you just hate getting up in the dark?). At least I got lots of train sketching done, as you can see...

St John's was a tiny school, only 70 children in total, so we divided them into 2 groups. I started with a chat to the 28 children in Y3 and Y4. For the first time, I used PowerPoint on the classroom's interactive whiteboard, which meant I could show all my illustrations, without having to lug so many books on the train.

The same group then did an illustration workshop, drawing characters. Children often use rubbers too much, so I experimented with a new tactic. I demonstrated on the flip chart in conte, rather than drawing with a felt tip. This is much truer to the way I would draw characters in the studio. As part of my usual 'start with a snowman shape' exercise, I used the conte to show how you can sketch faint shapes loosely, to give yourself a rough guide, before you draw anything too definite.

I demonstrated how easy it is to correct mistakes without a rubber, by adjusting things as you go along and, because conte is blacker then pencil, they could all see my sketchy lines, even at the back. I wanted them to see how, even though the sketched lines were sometimes in the wrong place, those fine, sketchy drawings behind the final, more accurate line work weren't mistakes you had to rub out, but instead made the characters look more alive.

After the workshop, I gobbled my school lunch down really quickly (veg curry, then jelly - yum), because I had loads of books to sign for the children and there wouldn't be enough time at the end of the day, as I had a train to catch for the long journey back.

Once the dinner-debris had been mopped up from the floor in the hall (come 1pm in any primary school, it always looks like a pie shop has exploded), we got all the Y1 and Y2 children together for a storytelling. I read Bears on the Stairs and Stinky! to them (my current faves) and I did lots of flipchart drawings, as usual:

The children played the part of all the flies in Stinky! (40 children waving their arms and buzzing sounds exactly like a swarm of flies), then they all designed their own monsters that might lurk at the top of the stairs, instead of the bears in Julia Jarman's version of the story. There were some really scary ones!

I had a fabulous day. It was lovely to discover that all the children had already been shown my website and were consequently all really geared up for the visit. My publisher had been contacted, so the school was plastered with posters of all my books (thanks Gullane). The school sent letters out in plenty of time, so that 3/4 of the children ended up buying a book. They even invited parents in at lunchtime, to coordinate with my available signing time.

Thank you to Mrs Lane and Mrs Mawdsley for my lifts to and from the station, and thank you to all the children and staff for making me feel really welcome.

Oh, and thank you to John for doing all my sketchbook scanning this time - I've got a lot on at the moment, so wouldn't have been able to show you them without his extra pair of hands.

Writing and Sketching New Stories

2011-11-03T10:00:00.000Z

I have been stealing a few days here and there to generate new story ideas to pitch to my publishers.

I started bouncing ideas around with John a few weeks ago, when we were trapped in Wales and we have since treated ourselves to a couple of 'working lunches' at a local cafe, to bat things about some more. It's so much easier with a second head, as it stops ideas from stalling so often and somehow, being in a different, more lively environment helps to get things motoring (well, that's our excuse anyway).

Then I started to enlarge on our ideas, by creating some sketch sheets. I've learnt from past experience that, as an illustrator/author, pitching text-only stories to publishers is not the best route to success: I can see how funny the illustrations are going to be, but it turns out other people can't see into my head! So, for my last 3 books, I have sketched out the various characters and lots of the key situations, which helps to bring the story to life.

I always hate the first couple of days on a brand new project though. It should be fun and exciting but, in truth, I always begin by entirely losing the ability to draw, so it's like pulling teeth and I get rather stressed and grumpy.

Which is what happened this time. John and I had come up with what we thought was a good story idea, but I kept stalling on the character sketches. The story features a gang of dogs and, for some reason, I've always found dogs tricky.

So I decided to warm up by re-visiting a text for which my characters were already sorted. I had the fundamental narrative written and sketched too, but I could now see several places where things were confusing, or not sharp enough. It's amazing how much more easily you spot the weaknesses in a story when you've been away from it for a while (just like you can in a drawing).

I got on much better with that project. I gradually began to do more drawing and less rubbing out and swearing! So, this week I have gone back to my troublesome doggy characters and am having, slowly, more success. John found this great book in the charity shop too, which is proving really helpful:

It's especially good, because, as well as having lovely, big, clear pictures, it also shows the dogs in a wide variety of positions. I usually get my reference from the net, but everyone snaps their pet dog face on!

I'll let you know how I get on. At least the slow pace of the visualisation is also providing time for the storyline to mature.

Looked After Children: Zombies, Cannibals, Vampires and Football...

2011-11-01T10:00:00.000Z

Drawing at a flipchart can be a scary business for an illustrator if you ask for requests. At an event on Wednesday, for looked-after children and their carers, I found myself drawing, amongst other things, a wedding with a variety of animal guests in dress-suits; a boutique full of escaped zoo animals all trying on different outfits; a vampire beach scene, complete with a cannibal witch and zombie cat; plus this view of the Sheffield Wednesday football stadium, with animal teams:

Each year I am part of this wonderful event, called Bag-a-Book Day. Free children's books are given out, but there are also drumming workshops, face-painters, cheer-leading workshops, stilt-walkers, glitter-tattoos, puppets... there's even a free lunch for everyone!

I'm billed as doing storytelling but I mostly draw at the flipchart for whoever drops in. I've found the best way to grab the children's interest is to ask them what they would most like to draw, then draw it for them on the flipchart while they draw along. Hence the list above.

The event is held in Sheffield Wednesday football stadium and I have my own little room - normally an expensive executive box - which has a perfect view across the pitch. Makes me wish I was into football. The view came in handy for the above drawing though.

At the end of the day I am always completely shattered. Apart from the strain on my drawing skills (!), I am on my feet pretty much all day and it's hard to take a break as I am going with the flow and, once the flow starts, I'm swept up in it until throwing-out time at 4pm.

It knew it was all worth it though when a group of girls, who had been with with me for much of the afternoon, presented me with this thank-you note they had all signed while my back was turned at the flipchart. Thank girls - you're welcome!

Advice for New Writers & Illustrators

2011-10-30T09:27:00.000Z

I have always felt it important to pass on to aspiring illustrators and authors the experience I've gained over the years. The problem is, I am getting quite a lot of emails these days, asking for specific guidance. With the best will in the world, it is hard to give individual replies, let alone provide real feedback in the supportive, yet honest way people deserve.

Most of the advice people need has in any case already been covered by the many articles I have written here, or in the short films I have on my website. If you use the Hot Tips label of this blog, you will capture most of the specific advice articles, like how to build a children's book folio or what to do if you have written a book that requires illustrations.

Under Hot Tips you will also find articles on doing school visits and on drawing in public. I have also included or ones I feel provide particular insight into the business of children's publishing: you just need to click the label then scroll down until you find what's relevant.

Reading back through the blog generally though will give you a very good feel for how the business of writing and illustrating children's books works and help to give you an idea of what the relationship between illustrator / author and their publisher is like.

Please understand that I can't possibly look at your work and give feedback, there just isn't time, and please don't email me directly with a problem until you have read everything I have already provided. It's not that I am not interested, I just have to get on with my own work and life throws out enough distractions as it is.

Good luck everyone!

Illustrator Visit: Taking to the Hills (Come Rain or... Rain)

2011-10-27T10:00:00.000+01:00

We drove into the wilds of Shropshire last week: another crack of dawn start (groan). It was a beautiful run though and, once again, I watched the sun rise. After 2 hours, we arrived at our goal: Whitchurch CE Infants.

After a nice cup of tea, I waved John goodbye and, while I got stuck into a storytelling with a hall full of 6 year olds, John donned his boots and strode off into the hills.

It rained. Boy, how it rained. The school hall had huge windows and I watched the rain beat against them. At lunchtime, tucking into a nice warm school dinner, I texted John: 'How are you doing?'. It came back: 'Wet'. No surprises there.

I had a lovely day, as usual. Though I was still hanging on to my cold, my voice pretty much held up. I read 4 different books, sang 3 songs, drew animals of all shapes and sizes, plus one pirate and one 'gloopy monster' (to the kids' design). I gave out badges as prizes and bookmarks as keepsakes and did my Bears on the Stairs chant poem with them.

After school, we sold quite a few books, which always makes me feel loved. As I was signing, John emerged. He was smiling, but he had no socks on - they were a soggy lump in the boot of the car.

By the way: not sure I ever showed you the cute little Bears on the Stairs badges that Andersen Press printed for me. Sweet aren't they? I give them out to the children who play the role of the bear (growling and burping) when I do the chant poem.

Unfortunately, it took us 4 hours (!!) to get back home to Sheffield: rush-hour (hour??) traffic. Despite that, and John's crinkly toes, we both agreed that we had enjoyed the day. We weren't long out of bed though!

Inspiring Children's Writing Through Illustration

2011-10-25T10:00:00.000+01:00

Last Monday, I had to set my alarm clock to wake me HORRIBLY early in the morning. It's so hard now it's dark! I had a 6.45 train to catch to Lincoln.

I was visiting Y5 and Y6 at Leasingham St Andrews Primary, where I'd been asked to do illustration workshops that would inspire them and set them up ready for writing projects.

I had the wonderful luxury of spending half a day at a time with the children. They were such bright kids too. Once I'd talked a bit about how books are written and illustrated, I set them off creating their own illustrations, revolving around a character they designed. We mimicked the way I'd shown them that I work: first doing quick sketches, then a rough, working towards a more finished drawing, adding more details and more ideas each time.

I demonstrated how to draw a character bending over, looking at the ground, finding a small object (I'd made them choose an object earlier, before they knew why). We talked about what the story could be behind the encounter: whether the object was lost or deliberately placed there to be found, whether the character would take it with them, whether it was a lucky find, or perhaps very unlucky indeed...

We created a landscape around the character, presenting more narrative possibilities (where has the character come from? Where are they going?). We then used weather conditions to create mood and add tension.

I had great fun and really enjoyed adapting my usual workshop ideas, trying something a little different. I hope I get to read some of the stories!

As always, I showed the children the sketchbook drawings I'd done on the way there (like the man at the top). On the way back, I did the boy above and got into a lovely conversation with the woman next to me, who turned out to be an illustration student, specialising in... yes, you guessed it - children's books! (what are the odds..?)

Worldwide SketchCrawl Day at The Hepworth

2011-10-23T12:30:00.000+01:00

This time last week I was out with my fellow sketchers, taking part in the 33rd Worldwide SketchCrawl Day.

The Sheffield SketchCrawlers decided to join forces again with our sister-group in Wakefield, organised by Helen (above), and we all spent the day together, this time drawing in the Hepworth Gallery.

It's a lovely, very modern building, not been open long and has a great collection of sculptures and paintings. They were unfortunately very picky about what materials we could use in the gallery: not only no paint or ink, but no pastels or charcoal (which I'd really fancied using for the sculptural shapes. We even had to have our tin of Derwent pencils 'passed' by the manager!

Unfortunately, there was not much time to look round properly, or there'd have been no time left for drawing. I'm going to go back though, as it's a smashing gallery.

This abstract piece really appealed, as it had so many complex but subtle curves, plains and shadows, but I haven't got it right at all:

I had another go, using some coloured pencils from our shared Derwent tin, but that wasn't really any more accurate. Hey-ho - at least being so abstract, nobody can tell!

We had a great turn-out, so Helen booked us a whole section of the gallery's cafe for lunch, where we filled several tables and rewarded our morning's endeavours with some very nice nosh:

We were once again very lucky with the weather, so instead of drawing inside the gallery all day, as we'd anticipated, we were able to venture outside in the afternoon.

The gallery is right on a river. You have to cross a wide bridge to get to it. I wanted to stay in the sun and discovered that from up on the bridge I was able to get a good ariel view of some of the outdoor sculptures:

It was so summery, some people sat on the grass to sketch...

I tried that too, but in the end I stood up, so I could get this view over the wire fence towards the boatyard across the river. I decided to have a go with the tin of pastels which Derwent had given us, since they wouldn't let me loose with them inside the gallery. I had taken a sketchbook of tinted, lightly textured paper especially:

I spent a fair while on it, interrupted by bits of chatting and taking photos. Suddenly I realised there was just 20mins to go, so ran back inside and whizzed round, bagging a couple more:

Afterwards we did our usual sharing of the work. As at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, we had a space set-aside for us to use. The quality this time was probably the best ever. Some fabulous stuff was done and, as always, everybody had tackled it very differently, which makes it so interesting.

By the way, if you want to find out about up-coming events in our region, or see what we have produced at recent SketchCrawls, we now have our very own Facebook page, SketchCrawl North where you are very welcome to join us - we are a very friendly bunch!

More Freebies from Derwent!

2011-10-22T09:00:00.000+01:00

Remember when Derwent sent me some samples from their pastel ranges to try out recently? Well, I was a bit cheeky: I figured, 'don't ask, don't get'...

I've often thought that it would be nice if people who come to my SketchCrawl days, who often stick to regular pencils to sketch, could try out new art materials. But it's a costly business, buying media to try out, especially if you don't get on with them and it turns out to be wasted money. So, I asked Derwent if they would be interested in sponsoring us.

And those lovely folk up in beautiful Cumberland said 'yes of course', and sent me another big box of tricks! There are two huge tins of pastel sticks and similarly big tins of their coloured pencils, plus two sample tins of their Inktense watercolour pencils (I've heard they are great, but never tried them before now), and even two tins of metallic coloured pencils. Good eh?

But that's not all... They also sent us a selection of sketchbooks:

Since we almost always get members of the public approaching us when we are out sketching, and they often want to join in, it will be lovely to be able to carry a spare sketchbook that they can borrow. Most of the ones Derwent have sent have serrated pages, which means people have the choice of leaving their sketch in the book for us to add to our gallery, or taking it home with them. Perfect.

Thanks Derwent!

Illustration Exhibition: Packaging Up More Artwork

2011-10-20T09:30:00.001+01:00

More news - I am going to have work in another exhibition!

This time it is a mixed show, called Picture This! and will be at Gallery Oldham. It looks very new and shiny, doesn't it? I will be in the company of such greats as Anthony Browne, Shirley Hughes and Jez Alborough, so as you can imagine, I'm feeling very excited.

My one-man show comes down on November 6th (boo!), but this new one opens on November 26th (hurrah!) and will be up until March 2012, so that's all right then.

Because the timing of the two shows is so close, it seemed a lot easier to choose completely different pieces to be mounted up for the Oldham exhibition. I have selected 8 spreads, each from a different book. They may not hang them all, as it depends on how space pans out. We'll see.

John helped me package everything up and Sean from the gallery came with a van to collect them.

They have asked me to send some sketchbooks, so I've chosen 3 with slightly different kinds of sketches in: one of predominantly my train portraits, one mostly watercolour and a baby A6 one of bits and bobs:

They want to display some roughs too. I never used to keep roughs (believe it or not, I used to bin all the initial drawings once a project was done!), but have found relevant and interesting ones that match the spreads I've selected from 3 of the more recent books.

The aim is to have them in glass cases, to show the idea and drawing development behind the finished illustration.

Another exciting (and very flattering) bit of news, is that the gallery have chosen two of my images to be made into a massive puzzle. Its a sort of interactive, vertical jigsaw (a bit like connect 4), and the plan is to have the image above, from Giddy Goat on one side, and my itchy gorilla from An Itch To Scratch on the other. How brilliant is that?!

I will be doing some workshops too, on January 28th, open to the public, so watch this space for more details.

Drawing a Picture Book: Itsy-Bitsy Book Cover

2011-10-18T09:00:00.000+01:00

Remember the issues we had with Waterstones not liking the yellow cover which I originally designed for Baby Goes Baaaaa!? Well, I thought we had sorted everything with the new duck-egg blue cover, but I suddenly remembered something...

On the inside, there is this illustration of Nana Croc reading to Baby Croc. Now, whenever possible, I include my own books in my illustrations. Cheeky, but why not?

I thought for Baby Goes Baaaaa! is would be sweet if, instead of one of my other books, Nana Croc was reading the actual book she was in! Clever eh? Except trouble is, that book no longer has a yellow cover... Uh-oh.

Remember the patch I made for Baby Croc's bare bum on the cover of Baby Can Bounce!? Yep, you guessed it:

It was so very tiny, it was a bit of a nightmare to do, but quite cute, I think you'll agree. When it was finished, I scanned it in and pasted it over the professional scan of Nana Croc from repro. Then, in Photoshop, I tinkered with it until it fitted like a glove. What do you think?

Monkey's Tea-Party: Children's Workshop

2011-10-16T20:06:00.000+01:00

I have been sent some lovely photos by the folks at Salford Gallery. Amy Whitehead, the gallery's Learning Officer, has been working with local children. She organised a children's workshop based on my Llamas in Pyjamas show and they created this fab group collage inspired by my monkey's tea-party illustration, from my picture book, Stinky!

I love it. It's so crazy and 'full of beans', just like monkeys in fact!

The children who worked on the collage ranged from 10 years old right down to 9 months (apparently the baby's mum got him undressed, and he splashed around in the green paint on the background!!).

It's pretty big too. They worked in paint, pens, pastels and collage. One boy had never used pastels before and enjoyed himself so much, he said he was going to ask for some for his birthday!

You can read my blog posts about the exhibition here and see photos here. If you are interested in exhibiting my children's book illustrations in your borough, please get in touch as my show is designed to tour so always looking for new venues.

Oops - a Naked Crocodile!!

2011-10-14T10:00:00.000+01:00

You will remember that I sent off all my completed artwork from Baby Can Bounce! on November 1st, the day before we left for our mis-adventures in Wales. The guys at Egmont emailed to let me know it had arrived safely (phew) and said they loved it (double phew).

But...

They also noticed something we had all overlooked: the baby croc on the cover illustration had a bare bum!

On the illustration inside the book he was wearing little bathing shorts, but for some reason I had forgotten to sketch them in on my roughs. And even though Egmont had the roughs for about 2 months, nobody there noticed either!

This cover image is needed in a dreadful hurry, because it needs to be featured on the inside back cover of book 1, which is about to go to print.

So, I decided the quickest way to solve the problem was for the artwork above to be sent away for scanning as scheduled, but for me in the meantime to create a 'patch': basically, a little pastel drawing of the shorts to scan here in the studio, ready to dress his little, green bum with, when the proper, high-res scans come back from repro.

It felt very silly to do, and reminded me of the cut-out clothes for dress-ups we used to get when we were kids, with little paper tabs to attach them to a cardboard doll (am I showing my age..?).

In the meantime, I have made this little mock-up which will help Sarah, my designer at Egmont, to experiment with background colours: