Hatched!

It was really exciting to be invited to exhibit some of the original screenprints from Hilda and the Runaway Baby as part of a group show at the Hive library in Worcester. Hatched! featured illustrations from seven new books by four Illustration tutors at Worcester University: Piet Grobler, Becky Palmer, Stephen Fowler and me. Here are few photos by Steve Waldron:
Hatched! exhibition from above
The Hive is such an amazing space for an exhibition – or to just visit and read in. The children’s library has tunnels under the bookcases and a brilliant workshop space, where Becky Palmer and I ran some vegetable print-making sessions. It turns out you can do incredible things with carrots and cauliflower, so after the workshops we added the children’s prints to the main exhibition. Here are an owl and a rabbit followed by a purple bear.
Owl and rabbit Purple bearBanner printing

Hilda goes to Chester

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:

Photo © Mark Carline for Storyhouse
Photo © Mark Carline for Storyhouse

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.

Out now: Hilda and the Runaway Baby!

My third book, Hilda and the Runaway Baby, published by Walker Books, is available now!
Hilda and the Runaway BabyI should write a proper blogpost about this really – it has been a fairly epic process, during which I became very attached to this friendliest and reddest of pigs. However, I am printing monsters at a million miles an hour for my fourth book so I will just have to do it inaminute. Meanwhile, here is a post about how it was not the most sensible thing to screenprint and here are some places to get your very own Hilda in English or French.

Paperback parrot and delivering Hilda

The Girl with the Parrot on her Head is published in paperback today!
Paperback edition of The Girl with the Parrot on her HeadIn other newts, today I’m also taking the last bits of artwork for my third book, Hilda and the Runaway Baby, to Walker Books. Weyll, actually the endpapers will be the last bit and I haven’t finished them, but I can scan those myself.

I am a bit late delivering Hilda: I hadn’t really realised before I started making the screenprints how challenging this book would be. I’d already printed illustrations for half of the original version (made during my MA) but ended up re-doing everything, partly because we changed the format from portrait to landscape. There were one or two vignettes I could have kept but they were the easiest prints in the book (and besides, horrors – the wheels of the pram were unfeasibly small!).
So tiredWhat made it tricksy was the seven landscapes, all at different times of day and night, and the three village scenes, two of which had to be made at a tiny scale because of the size of my silkscreens. I am now much better at getting two eyes, a mouth and a nose onto a face the size of a lentil – but is this a transferable skill? If you need any bespoke personified lentils please do let me know. Here’s is a detail showing lentils printed yesterday (and Hilda, who I’m going to miss).
Detail of Hilda printHilda and the Runaway Baby will be published in 2017.