Merry Christmas One and All!

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

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...

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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'

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

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

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.