Last Saturday I had an amazing afternoon at House of Illustration, running a family workshop based on ALPHONSE, THAT IS NOT OK TO DO! After a quick reading, we did some giant collaborative adventure drawing – just like Natalie and Alphonse do in the book. Highlights included Natalie and Alphonse on their five-wheeled motorbike:
Squirrel and treehouse worlds joined by ladders, and a majestic giant bee
featuring cup-holder, chips-holder, sound system, umbrella and MANY SHOES.
Next it was time for monster puppets: here are just a few of one family’s horde.
We started with corrugated paper finger puppets, with all manner of multiple heads, horns, tongues, wings and other appendages.
There was even one with eyes on accordion stalks.
It’s interesting running events at House of Illustration because the great facilities and unusually long workshops mean you can plan more extended, open-ended activities, so I’d prepared various kinds of puppets to experiment with. There were accordion-beasts inspired by Chinese dragon stick-puppets, of which this was definitely the longest.
And this one has a wonderful expression.
There were also puppets with moving wings, mouths, arms or eyebrows made using split pins, but I seem to have no pictures of those. At least I can show you this brilliant new thing: a box-mouth monster with a monster baby inside, operated by hidden lolly stick!
Some people even got around to building theatres – I bet some ace plays were staged once they got them home…
Tag: making things
Monsters in residence at Mainstreet Trading Co.
Last weekend I went all the way to Scotland to paint a window and fill it with cardboard monsters – now there’s a thing I never could have imagined I would do. The window belonged to Mainstreet Trading Company, a beautiful book (and cake and soup and many thing) shop in St Boswells. I arrived with fourteen brushes, three kinds of tape, two kinds of glue, two kinds of string and four rolled-up paper monsters, feeling fairly daunted by the idea of making a window display worth bringing someone to Scotland for.
First I had to mount the monsters on cardboard (running out of both kinds of glue) and cut them out with a scalpel.
Then I convinced them to stand or hang in the window (thanks to both kinds of string).
And (now in a panic about having used up most of the day without actually PAINTING THE WINDOW), I sort of managed to get the smaller Alphonse to eat a copy of the actual book.
Finally I got around to using two of my fourteen brushes, and Mainstreet’s window pens, to help Natalie and Alphonse decorate the window. I did some of the drawings with my left hand, as I did for the monsters’ drawings in the book, and perhaps I should’ve done left-handed painting – except I think I’d still be there now (it took six and a half hours as it was)
and it was important to leave time for signing books and eating cake. Okay actually, I didn’t, so I had to eat my cake in the taxi, but it was Mmmmm. In fact, it wouldn’t be so bad to still be there now.
Family workshops at House of Illustration
House of Illustration have just published a guest blogpost I wrote for them about a workshop I ran there in May, based on The Girl with the Parrot on her Head. AND, I’ve been invited back to run another family workshop on 5th August with Becky Palmer, this time linked to their summer exhibition of Ladybird books, Ladybird by Design.
We’ll be asking: what if ladybirds had Ladybird books of their own? What would they be about? Heraldry? Leaves? Aphids? Microcomputers? How small would they be? Book online now and come and help us find out.
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).
Darrel goes to the gallery
This monster Darrel, from Monster Clothes, didn’t make it to Foyles Gallery until yesterday because I had some trouble with his dress. So then he had to come on the bus to work with me:
Then we did some admin:
And finally, made it to Foyles just in time to meet the other Darrel (that’s his hand):
Thanks everybody else who’s been to see too! Tis open til 5pm Saturday, more details on the MA show website.