Picturebook jam

Becky Palmer and I have previously done a comics jam or two, but here (for a present) we did the same with picturebooks. Here is Rita at Sea (first page me, second page Becky) while Abacus (Becky first) should be over on Becky’s blog. You will be relieved to hear both books fit inside one matchbox, making them exceptionally easy to transport and store, if not to decipher or make head or tail of.

Sneakery peekery

Here is first smidgen of the screenprints for my second book for Walker: it’s about some monsters called Natalie and Alphonse, and will hopefully be published in 2015.
Natalie and Alphonse
Natalie won’t always look this concerned, but, like The Girl with the Parrot on her Head, this book does sort-of feature an angry little girl – and a cardboard box. Hum. So, next book: cheerful little boy and the gelatinous dessert. Or, peaceable giant squid and the macrame lampshade.

Natalie and Alphonse grew out of these red and blue monsters, or shrank out of them in fact as they have got quite a bit younger. I am only just beginning to make the pictures and there is an awful lot to work out. When I last made a lot of simple monster-on-white prints, I found I was getting quite obsessed with their few bits of furniture or fruit: now it’s the same with Alphonse’s pushchair – he’s got five upholstery options. Oh but, I do very much like to draw monsters. NYAHAHA!

Monsters again


Eeshk, because I finished a book, I now have to make a new one – this is like actual work with my brain, or should be. It is quite scary to be back in the early development stages again, after over a year, although (with a lot of help from most excellent people at Walker) it is just beginning to feel like it might possibly be possible in the end.

These monsters were originally invented for our MA show catalogue, but now they need another book to live in. For one thing, a brand new mountain of amazing graduates is about to take over the world: their London show is at Candid Arts, Islington, from 11th-15th February.

The Nature

Recently I went to Finland with Becky to see the moomins and their house. Apparently, Finland also has wolves – luckily I did not know this or I might have stayed home and looked for a man with a load of bricks. So here is the first of two comics we drew, which tells more or less what happened to us in Helsinki. The next instalment can now be found on Becky’s blog. A few things may be obscure, such as how all brochures and some humans said the Finnish thing was to go and “be in the Nature”, how there were many gigantic inflatable ice-hockey players in Helsinki’s Narinkkatori, and how the wading stanley is an avid philatelist. Oh and the Finnish dinner is not really part of the story.