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…

September 22, 2014 0

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!

September 4, 2014 0

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…

August 21, 2014 2

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…

...a storm of dragons... — …a storm of dragons…

August 18, 2014 0

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:

August 7, 2014 0

Dragons!

Saturday is fast approaching which means I’ll soon be off to St Ives for the Bookjam to make dragons at the library! Here is a sample of the kind of thing myself and the children are going to be making – this particular beastie is rather cute but I’m hoping for fire-breathing, toothy, spiky, scaly and generally fearsome additions… Do come and join in, the event runs from 11am – 11.45am which should be plenty of time to create some fabulous dragons!

Not everyone is cut out to be terrifying... — Not everyone is cut out to be terrifying…

June 5, 2014 0

Dragons at the Book Jam!

On the 7th June I am going to be taking part in the St Ives Book Jam for the third year running. The theme for this year’s summer reading challenge is “Mythical Maze” which has inspired me to want to make DRAGONS! This year I will be holding a collage and drawing workshop at 11am at the St Ives Library and the children who come along will be making dragons from all sorts of collage materials including glittery stuff and anything suitably dragony that we can make stick.

I will be writing a bit more about this before the event but for now here is a little dragony inspiration to be going on with from my book Ready, Steady, Ghost!

May 28, 2014 0

Maisie Hitchins is on the loose again

I have new Maisie Hitchins books to report!

Holly Webb has been doing lots of writing and I have been doing lots of drawing and the result can be seen in the form of The Phantom Cat, The Feathered Mask and The Secret Tunnel which are all out now. As well as scampering all over London in her adventures, Maisie’s stories are heading over to America where the first book in the series “The Case of the Stolen Sixpence” is going to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in September. The Case of the Spilled Ink will be coming out in the UK in August too, but I can’t show you any pictures yet I’m afraid! For now here are the new covers:

May 8, 2014 0

Creepy House!

Today I visited Cambourne Library and helped children there create a rather excellent Creepy House collage for the Summer Reading Challenge. My book Ready, Steady, Ghost! is one of the selected titles this year which is very exciting indeed! It was great fun today and the children were brilliant – the best thing is that I get to do it again tomorrow at Comberton, then it’s Cambridge on Friday and Huntingdon on Saturday! Here is the result of all today’s drawing, snipping and sticking:

August 28, 2013 0

Absolutely terrifying Halloween Fimo creatures….!

Next weekend I’ll be holding a Fimo demonstration in the art department of Jarrolds department store in Norwich. In case you have never heard of Fimo, it is a polymer clay, which is to say a special kind of modelling clay which you can cook in the oven so that your models turn hard become permanent. Fimo is great stuff and I’ve been making things from it since I was a tiddler.

Fimo demos are always lots of fun as I show children and adults how to make all sorts of colourful creations from model animals to jewellery and everything in between. This weekend I will be limbering up my fimo fingers by making Christmas creatures for the demo, but for now here are some little horrors I made earlier…

October 27, 2012 0