Advice for New Writers & Illustrators

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)

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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!!

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:

Printer's Dummy

Remember I was rushing to get my Baby Can Bounce! artwork done in time for Egmont to show it at the Frankfurt Book Fair? 

Well, the other rush was for them to get the scanned and 'digitally finished' work from the first book Baby Goes Baaaaa! mocked up, so that too was looking its best. The idea is that the pair presented together will more effectively attract all those lovely (and essential!) co-editions at Frankfurt. 

On Saturday morning, a jiffy-bag popped through the letterbox (you know how I love them...). Inside was what they call a 'printer's dummy': a one-off mock-up of the book, using the actual paper and the proper digital artwork (rather than the publisher's print-outs). 

This gives me a very accurate idea of how the final book will look, and this is what the Sales team at Egmont will flashing around at Frankfurt as we speak! I love the shiny stock we've used throughout the book and the curved page edges.

One thing which we hope will help to sell the book, is my research into how essential it is for language development to practise phonics with very young children. We've included some great quotes on the back to point this up and have even created a spread at the beginning with advice on how to get the best from the book, by enjoying exaggerating the sounds and getting baby to join in. Hopefully this will also make it a very useful tool for the Early-Learning library services.


Baby Goes Baaaaa! is scheduled for publication in April 2012 and can already be pre-ordered from Amazon. 

The Denbighshire Duo Take to the Hills

My new PA has been in post exactly 6 months, which means he is out of his probation period! As a reward for good(ish) behaviour, I thought we could have a little 'firm's outing'. I had a 3-day festival in North Wales to do last week, so I took him with me. 

I've been invited a few times before, but usually go on my own. I stay in the manorhaus in the historic town of Ruthin and from there visit as many different libraries in the region as we can fit in, meeting local school groups. 

The lovely Bethan at Denbighshire Library Service always looks after me really well and I have a lot of fun. The idea this time was that, while I was out strutting my stuff during the day, John could wrap up and head into the hills for some walking. 

That was the plan at least...

On the Monday, while I was having a great time with the children at Denbigh Library (above), John went for his 1st walk and managed to do his back in. No idea how: it just went. On Tuesday he found a physio, on Wednesday it was worse, so he hobbled to a GP. Painkillers, lots of painkillers. Still worse!

Conte experiment on the flip chart

Each day I had to abandon him after breakfast, to go and do my various workshops and storytellings. The manorhaus was at least a very comfortable hotel to be abandoned in (thanks Bethan).

I've developed a new technique for the flipchart by the way: instead of using a felt tip pen, I experimented with black conte. It's a far more 'honest', drawing style to show the children and conte shows up really well, even allowing for shading, without being as disastrously smudgy as charcoal.


On Wednesday afternoon, my festival events finished. We should have driven home, but John could barely stand, let alone drive. We couldn't stay on as the manorhaus was closing for a few days, but every B & B in town was either full or above a pub, with stairs John couldn't climb. Ruthin Library's caretaker offered us a bed in the caravan on his drive at home if we were desperate (the Welsh are so lovely).  


Eventually, Bethan found us a room at the grand Ruthin Castle - the only place with both a room and a lift (one of those cage-style ones, with the pull-across doors you get in Hitchcock...). John was so spectacularly crippled as we crossed the foyer, the staff immediately offered us an upgrade (every cloud...). We stayed 2 extra nights while John rested and drowned his sorrows:

I spent the whole time hanging around the hotel's various lounges with him as I felt too guilty to abandon him again. I helped pass the time by sketching the dead things on the walls and the general opulence. 

There were some extraordinary carved fireplaces, mostly dark wood but some stone:

By Friday lunchtime we decided to brave it. John shouldn't really have driven, but it seemed the only way and we couldn't stay forever without selling his body (which wasn't worth enough in it's present condition). 


We made it home safely and John does not seem to have suffered any lasting effects from the drive, although he is still hobbling around the house with a stick and can't yet manage the curved stairs up to the studio - how convenient is that? 


We'll have to see, but if he is permanently broken, I may have to get a new one...