The Case of the Blind Beetle…
A new Maisie Hitchins book has hit the shelves, this one is the 7th in the series and a special favourite of mine because it is so very yellow! This book has an Egyptian theme so I got to draw mummies, sphinxes and burial chambers which I can tell you is a first. Holly Webb has excelled herself this time and Maisie gets into more trouble than ever – it’s a good one! Here are some pictures:
Happy Halloween!
I do love a bit of Halloween. Here is a fairly hideous pumpkin brooch I made the other day out of Fimo – it has copper powder around the amazing glow-in-the-dark eyes! I was actually aiming for scary but everything I do tends to end up looking quite cute so I had to work quite hard to make this guy look like bad news. I think I sort-of succeeded. Happy Halloween!
Inky and Dotty
I have just finished my roughs for the next Maisie Hitchins book so it’s time for something a little different. This is one of the drawings I have been doing lately in my sketchbook. It was made with indian ink straight from the pot using the pipette to draw with. I rather like drawing like this because it is very spontaneous and a little bit uncontrollable. When the ink was dry I gave the drawing some colour using Caran D’ache neocolours which are another one of my favourite things. They are sort of pastelly but sort of oil-pastelly too and also can be watercoloury if you wet them! I know, it’s all a bit too much…
Queens of Hearts
I was looking through some old work the other day and came across these two loveheart ladies. They are made with collaged tissue paper, ink and coloured pencil. I can’t really remember what prompted me to come up with these but I always rather liked them!
Biscuit thinking about what to have for dinner
I have been working hard this week trying to finish the covers for the next two Maisie Hitchins books so I’m feeling in need of a little light relief! This little fellow strolled out of my sketchbook…
A storm of Dragons!
Over the past week I have been helping children from Cherry Hinton, Chatteris, Bar Hill and Cambridge to make colourful, crazily collaged, crafty dragons. We had a lot of fun at the library workshops, there were wings, claws and teeth and flames everywhere and the children created a spectacular array of fire-breathers! I’d like to say a very big thank you to Cambridgeshire libraries and to the lovely librarians who helped me with my dragon workshops. Another big thank you goes out to all the children who left their dragons behind so that the libraries could make Mythical Maze displays with them! Here is my dragon together with some of its new friends…
summer workshops
Next week is going to be a busy one for me with workshops in Cherry Hinton, Chatteris, Bar Hill and Cambridge Central libraries. I haven’t 100% worked out what I’m doing yet but it is very likely to involve cutting, sticking and generally having quite a lot of fun making monsters! The theme of this year’s Summer Reading Challenge is Mythical Maze so I’m going to be creating some monsters that haven’t been seen in a long, long time….Sort of like these guys:
Last chance to see…
Open Studios is over! The pictures are coming down from the walls which is making us all a little bit sad, but we did have such a brilliant time. We have a bit of a taste for it now and there is talk of doing a Christmas Open Studio too so keep an eye on our Derby Road Facebook page to see what we are all up to.
I am packing up some of the pictures I sold and getting ready to deliver them to their new homes, here they are for the last time…
The Last Weekend of Open Studios!
Here at 22 Derby Road we are preparing for another sunny weekend of Open Studios. Last weekend was a great success and we had a chance to meet lots of lovely people who said awfully nice things about our work – brilliant! If you are about over the weekend then do come and find us; myself, Nicola Killen, Ian Farrell and Neil Warmsley will be here at the studio from 11am to 6pm both Saturday and Sunday.
marion lindsay 