Winter Blues

 Heres my finished #illo_advent for 2020

Have a lovely Christmas.  See you in 2021!

Some of the designs are now available as a set of notecards.  Click here to go to the shop.

Illo Advent

Every year on Twitter a bunch of illustrators get involved in #illo_advent.  The task is to draw an image every day leading up to Christmas.  And all things festive are welcome.  

I've done the advent in the past and have learned that by limiting my colours and the size of my images it's a more a more achievable and enjoyable task for me.  It also means that I don't spend hours on each one.  That can happen.

This year I'm using two coloured pencils (polychromos, if you're interested) and white gouache.  The images are about 2.5cm wide by 5cm tall so there's no room to fuss.  I'm trying to draw something I see every day so my village and the surrounding area feature heavily.  

Here are my Winter Blues...so far.

They're hard to photograph well but here's a shot of a few of them together.

Click here to see my ghost of illo_advent past.

And...closed!

 Thank you to everyone who supported my shop this year.  It's closed over the holidays but it'll be back open again in 2021.  See you then!

OPEN!

My shop is officially OPEN! 

Again.

These shelves have been dusted and new things have been added.  There's a shop button on the right hand side or you can CLICK HERE

 

Drawing and Activity Sheets

Since many people are now at home I have made all of the worksheets from my books The Station Mouse, Pigeon P.I. and Life Is Magic available to download on my website.  There are drawing activities, colouring in and puzzles too.  Stay safe and wash those hands.

You can find all of the activity sheets here click here!

If you don't have a printer many of the activities can be viewed onscreen and then drawn onto paper, like the How to draw Maurice below.

Here are some examples of what you'll find...

I've also added How to make a Thaumatrope from Life Is Magic. 

 If you have a copy of the book then check under the hardback dustcover or scan the QR code in the back of the paperback to find your own instructions.

And the winner is...

The Bookbug Picture Book Prize 2020 winner was announced yesterday and I'm happy to report that The Station Mouse won. Woohoo!

The beautiful trophy was made by Emily Hogarth

Every year Scottish Book Trust give all of the primary one children in Scotland a Bookbug bag containing three shortlisted books.  This year Scottish Book Trust gave out an incredible 189,000 books in these bags alone.  That's 63,000 bags!  The most wonderful part of all this is that young readers get three great books of their very own to keep.

The winner is picked by the readers too, which for me is the loveliest part.  It's really nice to know that the people you write books for are actually enjoying them.  Thank you to all the schools who took part, all the libraries that helped out and to all the pupils for voting.

Here is the announcement video.

Huge thanks to Liam, Heather and Jonathan who made this video, and to Hannah who filmed the shortlist videos, you who were all so helpful and supportive.

Maurice and I are off to celebrate with our favourite things, cheese and cake.  Maybe there's a way we can combine the two...