I have known for a long time that it would definitely be good for me, in all manner of ways, to do concerted doodling every day. But there are always MANY THINGS to do – and they often wear more important-looking hats. However, this seems to be mostly where stories come from. So, despite all the THINGS, this year I am really trying to do it every day. Here are some of the llamas and monkeys that happened so far.
Here is a heap of my first book, The Girl with the Parrot on her Head, published by Walker Books on February 5th – which now, finally, actually feels quite soon.
Many exciting things will happen around the launch to help introduce the parrot, and the Isabel under its feet. For starters, I’ll be writing about the process of making the book over on Walker’s Picture Book Party blog. Then during February half term I’ll be working with children in Chester, making animals to go on our heads and incredible cardboard dens, as Resident Illustrator at Wayword festival. I’ll also give a talk and reading, document the festival on the Wayword blog AND do a picturebook jam with Kate Pankhurst! See: MANY THINGS!
Details of further events will follow soon – including something at House of Illustration which I think will be GRAND.
Following on from the pie-based Christmas comic Becky Palmer and I made last year, here is a new comics jam for 2014. We will be adding a panel every day of advent, in theory (it does appear to be December 3rd though, so we may not be to be trusted). You can read it over there on Becky’s blog too.
Becky Palmer and I have previously done a comics jam or two, but here (for a present) we did the same with picturebooks. Here is Rita at Sea (first page me, second page Becky) while Abacus (Becky first) should be over on Becky’s blog. You will be relieved to hear both books fit inside one matchbox, making them exceptionally easy to transport and store, if not to decipher or make head or tail of.
I was quite thrown by the appearance last week of The Girl with the Parrot on her Head as a REAL BOOK – there seem to be a lot of milestones in this process but this one made me feel quite giddy. Here’s Walker’s picture of the three editions:
The book will be published on February 5th by Walker, Albin Michel (France) and Aladin (Germany), and a year later by Candlewick (USA). It’s amazing to me, and funny, to see the translations and the differences between them – lamely I am having to get friends to help me with the French and German, but both seem to have been really nicely done. Yikes it is just really exciting.
The German “Enten, Hula Hoop” box necessitated this drawing for twitter:
And a most excellent response too.
I have not done nothing since May, not quite.
For one thing, in August I got proofs of The Girl with the Parrot on her Head:
The design and printing are lovely, thanks to Walker, and it will really be a book on February 5th (pre-orderable even now!).
In the meantime I am finishing my second book, which now goes by the name of ALPHONSE, THAT IS NOT OK TO DO! Here are Natalie and Alphonse watching bad TV:
This book is mostly face acting and involves a lot of drawing the same monster MANY TIMES:
Who invited elephants? And the one with the orange dot gets it:
Just some bears, three but not The Three. Or at least, I didn’t think of Them until now.
Here is first smidgen of the screenprints for my second book for Walker: it’s about some monsters called Natalie and Alphonse, and will hopefully be published in 2015.
Natalie won’t always look this concerned, but, like The Girl with the Parrot on her Head, this book does sort-of feature an angry little girl – and a cardboard box. Hum. So, next book: cheerful little boy and the gelatinous dessert. Or, peaceable giant squid and the macrame lampshade.
Natalie and Alphonse grew out of these red and blue monsters, or shrank out of them in fact as they have got quite a bit younger. I am only just beginning to make the pictures and there is an awful lot to work out. When I last made a lot of simple monster-on-white prints, I found I was getting quite obsessed with their few bits of furniture or fruit: now it’s the same with Alphonse’s pushchair – he’s got five upholstery options. Oh but, I do very much like to draw monsters. NYAHAHA!
Following on from last year’s snakes and skates, here is what a heap of illustrators, in Bologna for the bookfair, got up to during dinner at Trattoria Rosso (Bar 51 now has cloth napkins – pah!). First a shape game that turned into a story:
Then some shape-game people:
Then just some folks:
And some weirdery:
I don’t know why the class of 2012 (Zack, Trudi, Becky) are being so possessive of that second-to-last one – they were surely outnumbered by 2013 (Vic, Suzanne, Steve, Elena, Emily, Hannah, me), if not by staff and very welcome outlanders (Paula, Ariana, Saskia).
It was lovely to see Cambridge illustrators’ books – just published and not quite published – all over the fair, two graduates in the Illustrators Exhibition, and too many hundreds of other beautiful books to get excited about. And it is Quite Grand to see your own book there for the first time too. It is sometimes a bit intense though, and you worry that maybe someone has gotten hold of your squeegee and you better go home and see.
