Published today: Hamish takes the train!

Hamish takes the train is the story of a bear who wants to see the world and of his friend Noreen, a goose. It’s about trains and cranes and friendship and pizza and is available now from Two Hoots Books.

This book has been many years in the making – it took us a long time to decide how I should make the illustrations and in the end they look quite different to the screenprints in my other books. Hamish is illustrated with pencil drawings and black ink washes, coloured and assembled in photoshop. There are more images of the book and of the processes behind it on my Instagram but here is a gif of the layers building up and a picture of some of the ink washes:

BEARS BEARS BEARS

Is most of the text of Bears, by Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak – that’s a good book. Anyway, here are some bears:
Bears of the long nose genusI have never been very happy with the bears I’ve drawn before, so I thought I’d investigate the world of long-nose bears. And I like it.
Bears of the long nose genus
Okay so some of them are geese. The maths is because he rode over a list I was writing.
Bears of the long nose genusThen I screenprinted one bear for birthday purposes, though I’m not sure he’s got a proper grip on that balloon.
Brown bear with balloon