Exhibition with a parrot on its head

Yesterday I put up an exhibition at Pickled Pepper, Crouch End’s specialist children’s bookshop. I framed eleven of the screenprints I made for my first picturebook, The Girl with the Parrot on her Head, and they’ll stay on display all summer, until August 31st. It’s great to have a chance to show the artwork, especially in Pickled Pepper’s lovely event space.
Exhibition at Pickled Pepper Books

The first week of the exhibition coincides with the Crouch End Festival (5th-14th June) so there are lots of other things to see and do if you visit then, including a Girl with the Parrot on her Head reading and craft workshop on Saturday 13th June.

The pictures are hand-made screenprints, and prints from the same editions (so almost the same as the framed/published prints) will be for sale. If you’d like to read more about the illustrations, I wrote a guest blog for Walker about making the book.

An update: now there’s a Girl with the Parrot on her Head window too!
Window displayPickled Pepper window

Monkeys in the gap

I'm thinking about itI am having a gap. In a gap it is best to do THINGS. THINGS can include working on stories that nobody wants yet (maybe they are too weird or long, maybe nobody has seen them), and drawing, and seeing how monkeys work as screenprints.

By which means I learn the shocking truth that better-drawn monkeys make better screenprints. So the one with the umbrella stays insipid.

Monkeys butterflyMonkey whohoo!Monkeys umbrella

Four months of not nothing

I have not done nothing since May, not quite.
Talk to the mouse
For one thing, in August I got proofs of The Girl with the Parrot on her Head:

The design and printing are lovely, thanks to Walker, and it will really be a book on February 5th (pre-orderable even now!).

In the meantime I am finishing my second book, which now goes by the name of ALPHONSE, THAT IS NOT OK TO DO! Here are Natalie and Alphonse watching bad TV:
And telly was awful
This book is mostly face acting and involves a lot of drawing the same monster MANY TIMES:
Who invited elephants? And the one with the orange dot gets it: