Earlier this year I took my new book, Hilda and the Runaway Baby, to Wayword festival in Chester. It was my third year as Festival Illustrator so I decided to draw everyone as animals for a change.
I also ran three workshops. Paper puppets:
Stencilling onto tote bags (unfortunately only the space pigs are shown after the stencil came off, but just look at that narwhal!):
And story-making and drawing games:
Thanks to everyone at Storyhouse for having me AGAIN.
UPDATE: unfortunately this year’s advent comic has been cancelled due to non-availability of Becky, as they say on the Piccadilly Line. Very sorry, here is an elf by way of apology/distraction:
Original post: Mm, dubious title. Anyway, it’s the second of December! The traditional day for Becky and me to start late on our Advent comic! Howzat? Mm, middling. Previous years’ comics are here and also soon to be available as actual paper objects in the olde physical world (see below).
We will be selling 2014 and 2015 editions (plus variegated other stuff) on the Brolly Lolly table at House of Illustration’s Illustrator’s Christmas Fair on December 10th. 2013’s pie-based comic has to wait because we cannit find the proper files, curses!
I’ve just come back from having the MOST FUN being Festival Illustrator at Chester’s WayWord children’s festival for the second year in a row. This was my first chance to read ALPHONSE, THAT IS NOT OK TO DO! with children (even though it’s not published until 5th March), and to try some monster-themed drawing and making.
At one event we read ALPHONSE and The Girl with the Parrot on her Head and played drawing games together, just as Natalie and Alphonse draw together in the book.
I also ran a monster finger puppet workshop.
And another (with a lot of help from Nicola and Helen of Chester Performs) on stencilling onto canvas bags. It would have been hard to do screen printing (which is how I usually make my illustrations) in this workshop, unless everyone had printed the same image, but the freezer paper stencils were quite magic, and the resulting bags were so cool!
I spent the rest of my time drawing the festival – which was embarrassing as I’m heinously out of practice with observational drawing, but good for me. Here’s one of my drawings – visit WayWord for more (and next year, maybe visit the actual WayWord as it is ALL THE FUN).
Ho-HO! It is that time of year again when Becky Palmer and I start a day late on our gloopy pot of Christmas comic jam and continue posting a panel a day (sometimes with gaps and gluts) throughout advent. If your toast needs MORE jam, you can catch up with our 2013 and 2014 comics here or on Becky’s blog, and ahem well I’m to go first:
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.
