I can add the rest of these monkey screenprints now as the AMAZING new human they were made for is born and in possession of her monkeys (and an oddish long-nose bear which really taxed my sewing skills).
In other news, I have an EVENTS PAGE and some events (more to add shortly). Hope to see you soon!
Tag: animals
Monkeys in the gap
I am having a gap. In a gap it is best to do THINGS. THINGS can include working on stories that nobody wants yet (maybe they are too weird or long, maybe nobody has seen them), and drawing, and seeing how monkeys work as screenprints.
By which means I learn the shocking truth that better-drawn monkeys make better screenprints. So the one with the umbrella stays insipid.
Resident Illustrator with a parrot on her head
I spent most of last week in Chester Town Hall, as resident Illustrator at WayWord festival – an eight-day-long parade of half-term excellentness, organised by the lovely people at Chester Performs. My favourite thing was the cardboard den workshop (inspired by The Girl with the Parrot on her Head):
Mark Carline took lots of other brilliant photos too. This one’s mine and not so good but I did particularly like the robot-rabbit den:
I also did a reading and talked about how I came to make picturebooks:
And there were two more workshops in which we made animals to go on our heads. The animals were AMAZING. Here’s The Boy with the Jaguar on his Head and The Girls with the Tasmanian Devil and the Pink-faced Polar Bear on their Heads:
On my final day at the festival Kate Pankhurst and I made two completely new books in a picturebook jam. One of them started like this (me then Kate):
As resident Illustrator I also got to loiter around drawing all the other goings on – from an amazing range of author events to giant chess and never-ending free crafts. Some of my festival drawings are on the WayWord site but here’s the queue for Shlomo, followed by Alex Wiltshire talking about minecraft:
I felt very lucky to be there and very well looked-after – Chester Performs put on a grand show (and are incredibly good at collecting cardboard).
Llamas and monkeys
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.
