A Christmouse Gift

I've been seeing a lot of really cool painters online recently and it made me want to have a go.  This week I took a morning off from photoshop and dug out my old paintbrushes and some gouache paint, which I've never used.  Using different types of paint is a real learning curve, I'm more used to oils (although I haven't used them in 10 years), but what I did love about gouache is that it dries very quickly.  As someone who smudges everything this is a real advantage.  I also like that you can repaint areas that have gone wrong very easily, which is a must when you're new!  I didn't quite get the thin layers of paint I wanted but this was only my first go and I'll definitely play around with them some more.  The draw of painting for me is the looseness, my book work tends to be very precise and I wanted to move away from that.  All of the finishing details are in pencil because I love the texture of coloured pencils and I can control them far better than a fine brush.

It's only little.

Here are a few of the process shots.  The final image is A6 and I used Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils because I happen to have a box and they're really lovely to draw with.

Sketch and first layer of paint

More paint

That's enough paint!

Details

I seem to have an obsession with drawing mice at Christmas.  I like this one, she's pretty cute.  

Hopefully more adventures in paint will follow.

Fireworks

Have a happy bonfire night.  Stay safe, stay warm and don't forget to look after your pets.

Happy Halloween!

I took some time off from making my book yesterday to draw a little spooky something.  As ever, I had elaborate plans for what I was going to do but I decided to just have a play for once and I'm pretty happy with this little spook.

I even had time to draw some pumpkins.  I don't get time to make many gifs but I like to make them now and then.  This one was fuelled by halloween candy.

Here's the image before animating it.

Happy Halloween everyone!

The Bookbug Picture Book Prize 2020

I'm very excited that The Station Mouse has been shortlisted for The Bookbug Picture Book Prize 2020 run by Scottish Book Trust.

Three books are shortlisted and put into Bookbug bags which are given to every Primary 1 child in Scotland.  The children then vote on their favourite book.  This is the reason that the prize is so amazing, every child gets three books to read and to keep.  Scottish Book Trust are amazing at getting books into the hands of young readers and I'm really proud that The Station Mouse gets to be a part of that this year.  Huge thanks to everyone at Scottish Book Trust.

You can read about the other amazing books shortlisted this year here  and there's a video of each author reading their story.  

You can watch my reading of The Station Mouse below or click here.

Going underground

I've been playing around with black and white images again.  I've never really found a way of working that I'm completely happy with but I quite like this one.

Tyrannosaurus-Wed

Two of my friends got married a few weeks ago and I made this print for them.  I thought I'd perhaps leant too heavily on the fact that they both like dinosaurs but one of the wedding readings was A Lovely Love Story by Edward Monkton (the tale of Dinosaur and the Lovely Other Dinosaur) so it turns out they are the dino-nuts I believed them to be.

Seas and leaves

I've been playing around with some limited colour palettes just for the fun of it.  It's an interesting challenge and I like the problem solving aspect of it.  My books are very much planned out, outlines are drawn in pencil, scanned and have to be tidied, and with so many colours to choose from it can take a lot of time to finish a page.  For these everything is created completely digitally.  I don't really plan out what I'm going to draw beforehand so I like that I get to make it up as I go.  It's a faster way for me to work.  I also never really play with pattern so that's fun too.

I've been playing around with different ways to colour black and white images and I've found a nice digital brush that I like.  It's a lot faster than my usual method so that's a bonus.  Here are a few of my experiments.

Welcome to Hartlepool

This is my competition entry based around the story of the Hartlepool monkey.  Being a children's writer I wanted a happier ending to my story.  I wondered what would happen if a monkey spy really washed ashore and set out to infiltrate a town.

The Hartlepool Monkey

The AOI has collaborated with The Northern Illustration Prize looking for works around the theme of 'monkey' but more specifically in response to the story of the Hartlepool monkey, if you choose.

I've made a comic for my entry.  Here are a few of the panels, in no particular order.

I'll post the full comic once the competition closes.

A little sketch