Off Up North...

I packed my bags again on Tuesday, but I've not earned another holiday quite yet: I am spending 4 days working in Durham, as part of the Northern Children's Book Festival.

I really enjoy the social element of the NCBF: instead of a lonely hotel room somewhere, a meal for one with a book, followed by sitting on the bed to watch rubbish TV (pause to wipe a tear...), all the authors and illustrators at the NCBF are put up in the same hotel. It's so lovely meeting new people, and each evening we get to have dinner together.

We're shipped out every morning to a different area in the region, to work in various libraries or schools, before being dropped back again at the end of the day.

I took the train up on Tuesday afternoon and started my visits in Hartlepool on Wednesday, then Durham today, S. Tyneside on Friday. I'll be up there until Saturday night though, because Saturday is a wee bit special: a climax to the festival called Gala Day.

There is a big Gala Dinner the night before in Stockton, with everyone involved, then we all strut our stuff the following day. I will be doing events with Julia Jarman on Gala Day. We've done this several times now, and it's always good fun and rather mad. We had a great time together in Edinburgh.

I'll report back next week, hopefully with some photos. In the meantime, these sketches were done on Monday, on my way to and from Lisburne School in Stockport. Hello to everyone there and thanks for inviting me to visit. It was lovely meeting you all!

Meeting a Flickr-Friend in the Flesh

Some of you may be familiar with Flickr, where artists keep on-line portfolios. It's a brilliant way of quickly finding other creative people out there, and keeping up with their most recent work.

It was on Flickr that I came across fellow illustrator Rick Tulka who, like me, is a tad obsessed with sketching people in public places (Rick's the one in colour in the montage above).

His character observations, drawn in pencil in a small sketchbook, are always exquisite, sometimes poignant, often hilarious. I love his eye for detail.

For a couple of hours almost every day, Rick sits sketching in the same Parisian Cafe: La Select.

So, when we decided to go to Paris for a few days, I thought it would be fun to look in on him. I was a bit nervous, but dropped him an email.

We got on really well and it was lovely chatting over a coffee (in La Select of course). We talked about the sketching, as well as all sorts of other things. Turns out, when Rick is not in the cafe, he works as an editorial illustrator, which is what I used to do too, before I got into children's books.

It would be nice to report that we sketched each other, sketching, but we both agreed that we hate drawing portraits 'on demand' and much prefer clandestine scribblings under a table.

Also, it hadn't occurred to me before but, because his work has more caricature to it than mine, Rick said he never ever shows the victims what he's drawn. Fortunately people rarely spot him at it either. Interesting.

I'm really glad I made the effort to look him up, and it'll be so nice now to be able to picture exactly where Rick's sitting, when I look at the new drawings he posts to Flickr.

Back to Work

We got back from Paris on Thursday evening (to torrential rain - welcome home). Then at 6am Friday morning, I had to get up to travel to Stockport for the day. Luckily it was a really nice school, so worth the groans and moans getting out of bed!

The children at All Saints Primary were all dressed as book characters, which always adds a slightly surreal element to proceedings. Another thing that made it a bit special for me was that, while I worked my way through the classes, the remaining children spent their time working on illustrations, as part of a competition.

The little ones all made lovely Stinky! collages. Another year group created tiny dancing sculptures based on their favourite characters from Kangaroo's Cancan Cafe. The children I worked with first thing, all coloured in their Giddy Goat illustrations, with him perched on impossible towers of assorted objects and creatures. Y6 tackled the tricky task of illustrating a proverb or well-known phrase in an interesting way. For instance, one girl drew goat astronauts, inspired by Giddy Goat, with the strap-line: "One small step for a goat, one huge leap for goat-kind". Great eh?

There was a prize-giving at the end of the day, where the best 2 children from each group got a certificate (signed by Yours Truly) and some chocolates. I'm hoping the school might be able to send me some photos of the work so I can show you.

Afterwards, I stayed behind to sign books, and was astonished to meet the niece of Paul Rissman, composer of the score for Giddy Goat the Musical! Mum had brought their copy of Giddy Goat already signed by Uncle Paul, so I was able to add my signature to it. Small world.

Sadly I've had no time to play with any colour for my train sketches. Maybe next time.

Jealous?

I have really enjoyed my break - we decided to whizz off for 3 days in Paris! It's over 15 years since John and I were last there, when we were first together.

It was a bit chilly for hanging around outside, so we pounded the halls of as many galleries and museums as we could fit in, before our feet withdrew their services in protest.

John was keen to visit the Louvre for the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo.

My favourite was probably the Musee d'Orsay, where they keep the bulk of the post-impressionist work. I can never get enough of it: the colour combinations make my blood zing! Totally inspiring.

It's astonishing too, standing in a room surrounded by paintings, every one of which is so famous that it's worth millions. Weird.

And we had to visit Monet's waterlilies of course. Fabulous.

The Orangerie is such a great space too: emanating calm in the centre of the city, like a secular cathedral to colour and light...

I took my sketchbook as you can see, but with such a short time and so much to pack in, I hardly opened it in Paris itself. At the top is a breakfast stop in a cafe, waiting for the Arts et Metiers to open. I highly recommend the museum: a massive collection of technological inventions through the ages, including the first flying machines, like this one:

Plus the earliest computers, all sorts of working models, and even Foucault's Pendulum, hanging all the way down from the apex of a chapel.

All the rest of the sketches were drawn on the Paris train, on our way back to the airport, or on the flight home, like these last two. Bit boring, so sorry about that.

I rather liked this pony-tailed man on the plane though, who was sitting next to John. Trouble was, John was in the way in-between us, and got rather tetchy about me keep asking him to 'sit back'! I managed in the end, though was annoyed that I ran out of page for the ponytail.

A Well-Earned Break (though I say so myself)

Yes, at last: a little bit of time off. I finished off all the most pressing stuff on my 'to do' list on Friday, and my next event, at a school in Stockport, isn't until this Friday, which has left nearly a whole week to play. Yahoo!

It's been an unusual, and exceptionally busy period for me, juggling lots of things at once, and trying not to let too many fall from my grasp, unlike my poor Rickety Barn cows:

I realise that I haven't had any real time off since I began the first sketches for my Bears on the Stairs project way back in June.

Actually, I have a little something planned, to help me relax properly and stop me just getting on with all that back admin (I haven't done my accounts in months - eeeeek).

That's the trouble with being freelance and working from home: there's always plenty to be getting on with, and I've never been very good at turning off.

So, I'll check in next weekend and fill you in on what I've been up to...

Illustrating a Picture Book: The Proofs

On Friday, a delivery van arrived, with a package that turned out to be the proofs of my new book: Bears on the Stairs.

This is the final stage for me, where I go through all the prints of my illustrations, checking for any issues, like blemishes, or incorrect colour-balancing. The colours are pretty perfect this time, which is a relief, as occasionally they aren't very true and need adjusting (and on one occasion things were so bad that the whole book had to be scanned all over again!).

There's something extra that's interesting with this project, though. Do you remember that, way back at the beginning, we were concerned about the story's end and made changes by adding the extra illustration above?

Well, Julia Jarman has thought about it some more and decided to also amend the text slightly at this stage, before everything is set in stone, to make the ending even stronger. The illustration above, chasing the parents downstairs, used to read:

"...they get them on the way down!"

But now it will read:

"...I bet my bears will get them on the way down!"

This may seem a simple change, but is rather clever of Julia because, given the remarkably familiar teddies tucked up with the boy in the final image, it underlines the idea that the bears aren't real, and are just an invention of a little boy's imagination.

The 'my bears' even hints that the whole thing may just have been a ruse for him to delay going to bed. Well done Julia!

Back from Reading

Well, it's been a very busy week for travelling - I clocked up 9 hours in the last 2 days.



I took a train down to Reading on Wednesday afternoon, but unfortunately had an awful seat for drawing purposes (very high-backed seats and only back views, mainly of people's knees!) so I read my Ian Rankin novel instead. I did these sketches on the way home the next evening.



I had a smashing day on the Thursday at St Finian's Catholic Primary. I kicked off with my PowerPoint talk to Y3 and above, which was great, as all the kids were then even more excited in advance of their individual sessions.

It was a lovely, varied day too: I followed the talk with a couple of storytellings for the littlies, an illustration workshop with Y3, then finally a writing workshop with Y5 (we wrote a story about a hedgehog, who lived in the wall of their classroom, and ended up accidentally jumping out into the Head Teacher's hair!).

It was a bit of a slog back to Sheffield. This is me distracting myself from the cold on Thatcham station, waiting for my connection. I didn't get back home until after 9pm, when John poured me a nice glass of red wine: what a star!

I have nearly a week off now - whoopeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!

To Wigan and Beyond!

Last night I got back from my trip to Millbrook Primary School near Wigan. It was a lovely visit, but quite a journey! I went down the night before, and drew these sketches on the train, as per usual:


Only time for a rather speedy bit of colour to a couple of them this morning, but will revisit the others when I've more time. Look at this guy's face - not sure he approves:


I did some storytelling with the little ones at Millbrook but spent most the day with Y3. I took my sketchwork for Dragon's Dinner and a piece of final artwork to show them. Then together the class wrote an amazing story all about a tiger who lived in a coconut tree. It turned out really well and we were all delighted. Then we did an illustration workshop based on Mr Strongmouse and the Baby, which I still enjoy doing, even though the book has sadly gone out of print.


On the way home, my taxi didn't turn up so, despite a mercy dash through the heaving rain in a teacher's car, I missed my train (we watched it pull out!). The lovely, lovely teacher drove me on another 20 minutes into Wigan, so I could try ducking and diving, changing at various places to get home sooner, but sadly it was all to no avail.


Having left school at 3.30, I finally collapsed on the sofa to have my brow wiped by John, at 7.15pm.

This afternoon I am off again: this time I'm catching a train to Thatcham near Reading to visit St Finian's Primary school tomorrow. This journey will be even longer. Off now to pack my bags...

Yet More Sketching in Transit...

Today I am packing my bags again and making my way to Wigan in Lancashire, where tomorrow I will be spending the day at Millbrook Primary School. So, poor John is on his own once more tonight (and will no doubt celebrate with wall-to-wall History Channel and bacon butties for dinner!

I will let you know how I get on later but, in the meantime, I thought you might like to see some drawings I didn't get to show you last week, from my journeys to Corby and Dungworth school.

Sketching the taxi driver above took me the whole journey to Dungworth School, about half an hour, because the roads were so bumpy: every time I went to put pencil to paper, we leapt and joggled about. Sheffield's roads are in a right state!

I got to the school a bit early, so had a cup of tea in the staff room. Everyone else was off teaching, so I decided to pass the time by sketching the chaos that was the staff room table. Then I showed it to all the kids I saw during the day!

Big Draw Dinosaur Day!

On Wednesday, I spent another day at my exhibition. The theme was Big Draw Dinosaur, so I concentrated on reading Gnash Gnaw Dinosaur! and showed people how to draw their own T Rex, like this one by Bethany:

I knew I'd have to draw lots of different dinosaurs on the flipchart too, so had to swot up on my other dinos - I haven't drawn most of them since I finished the original illustrations back in February of last year!

I sat on the train with lots of scrap paper and practiced drawing diplodocuses, pteradons, kronosauruses, stegosauruses etc. etc. until they were passable. I caught the odd person peeking, obviously wondering what I was up to.

This meant that I didn't sketch at all on the way there, but luckily did quite a few on the way back as you will see.

The day was great fun: I was on the go pretty much constantly, with a grabbed sandwich for lunch, but not even time to eat my banana! As well as my workshops there were other activities going on, including decorating dino foot-prints, which were then stuck onto two enormous diplodocuses on the stairs:

When it was all over, I relaxed with a coffee and a slab of excellent walnut cake at a local cafe, with an old friend who'd come all the way from The Lake District to see the show before it finishes next week. Thanks Mary!

Then I got my train home and began sketching: the man below is the one the hands above belong to. I think he was marking exam papers.

I wasn't very happy with this next sketch and nearly didn't scan it in, but when I'd played around with colour in Photoshop, it seemed to work a lot better, even though it's not a very accurate depiction of the subject:

This next guy was sitting next to exam-man, and was getting on my nerves. He kept changing position, so in the end I abandoned him altogether. But I came back, and almost finished him off just before Sheffield, which was when I noticed he was reading Plato. I was sufficiently impressed to forgive him!

Before I go, I'd like to say a special hello to anyone from St. Stephen's Primary who's reading - it was lovely to see so many children turn up on to see me. Your books are finally on their way by the way!