Out now!

Watts and Whiskerton: Sabotage at the Fete Cake Bake is finally out! 

It has been published today which is strange because it feels like it's been out forever, only because I've known about it so long and I finished the book several months ago. But it's nice to know readers can finally get their hands on it.

For those who don't know, this is the second book in the Watts and Whiskerton series. They are a detective duo (and best friends) and each book is its own mystery so you don't have to read them in order, but it doesn't hurt. 

It's perfect for new readers, budding detectives and young bakers.

I'm currently working on the final art for book three so I'd better get back to it.

Back cover design

Watts and Whiskerton: Sabotage at the Fete Cake Bake (book two) is publishing next week. Here's a little look behind the scenes at the back cover design.

One we're ready to design the back cover the art director will send me a file with all of the words that will be on the back, as well as the space the barcode will take up. It's important not to put any important illustrations under these. And it's best to leave the areas under text as blank as possible.

I then send a selection of sketches to the art director and we decide which one will work best.

Cover ideas

For this book we actually used one of the drawings I'd sent as a possible front cover. The tent provided a nice blank space for the text to sit and the barcode box made a perfect table for the cakes to sit on. We wanted to make sure we saw some of the delicious cakes from the baking competition. These were actually my favourite things to draw.

I will then draw out the chosen design with everything exactly where it going to be. The art director will check this and I will move on the colouring the page.

This is the final image. I wanted to hint at the sabotage by showing the cakes weren't as perfect as the seem at first glance. There's also a sea of cake batter (which will be explained inside the book.) I'm really pleased with the way the cover turned out. The falling bunting frames to text space in a fun way while hinting that something has gone wrong. 

Here's the final cover on the book.

Sabotage at the Fete Cake Bake is published by Piccadilly Press on April 24th and is available for pre-order now. Perfect for detective fans and young bakers. Just ask in your local lovely bookshop. Or you can order by clicking here.

Meet the Bakers

Watts and Whiskerton: Sabotage at the Fete Cake Bake (book two) is publishing next month and I thought I'd show some of the character design sketches. I don't properly start work on character designs until I'm about to begin the final artwork, which feels a little late, but I like to get to know them in the roughs stage. By drawing them over and over again their personalities start to appear so I leave any final decisions until I'm done with this stage. Here are some of the sketches and final drawings.

Roughs stage

This is Fleur Wheatley. She's a great baker and last year's winner.

Character design

Fleur Wheatley in the book

Character design

Mrs 'Cookie' Cutter is the Whiskerton family's cook and she takes no nonsense.

Character design

Whip Lightly competed in last year's Fete Bake but has yet to win the title.

Character design

Ms Partridge is due to compete but is unable to attend. She gets her chance later on though.

Character design

Mayor Dove is in charge of proceedings. Hopefully nothing will go wrong!

Final art in the book.

Sketch

When Ms Partridge fails to arrive Mr Dove, Mayor Dove's husband, is forced to compete. 

But how will he do?

Final art

This image was to help me keep track of how tall the characters were compared to everyone else.

I'm sure everything will run like clockwork at this year's fete bake, but if it doesn't we have two excellent detectives around.

Published April 24th.

Available for pre-order now by clicking here.

Pre-orders really help authors so if you have already ordered a book thank you so much.

Cover design - Sabotatge at the Fete Cake Bake

For the past few weeks I've been working on the cover artwork for Watts and Whiskerton book 3 (which I have to keep under my detecting hat for now.) Instead I thought I'd show you how the book two cover was made.

The first thing I do is think about what the book is about, and how to show this on the cover. This book takes place at the Little Gossip Fete Bake so I wanted to included baking equipment, a cake, some detective items, and to try and show that something had gone wrong. I make sketches of all my ideas and send them to the art director. Here are the sketches I sent.

The art director will then send me one or two images back that she thinks works well. The other sketches aren't wasted though, for this book one of them was used for the back cover.

This is the sketch we decided would work best for the cover. 

The next step is to draw the image and items at the correct size and to make sure there's room for the text to fit. You'll notice the image has changed slightly. Pearl gets a chance to bake in this book so I thought it'd be fun if she mirrored Watts' costume but with a baking hat instead of a bowler, and a spoon instead of a magnifying glass. I was unhappy about the bunting layout too so I adjusted that.

Once the art director is happy that everything is in place I start the final artwork. Utensils and shelves of equipment were added to fill out the background. I tried a few different expressions on each of the characters and we spent a lot of time perfecting the colours. Here is the final cover.

Watts and Whiskerton: Sabotage at the Fete Cake Bake is publishing in April, but is avaliable to pre-order here. Please support your local bookshops when you can. 

And if you missed their first adventure, Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure is out now. Have a look in your local library or a friendly bookshop near you.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone! It's 2025. I signed my first book contract in December 2014 so I've now been making books professionally for ten years. 

This would be a good time to tell you what I've learned but every book feels different, and I still don't think I have it all figured out. I do know that my way of making books has changed dramatically in some ways and is still exactly the same in others.  At the moment I'm doing a lot of digital drawing, something I couldn't have done when I started making books. I could barely use a tablet with my laptop! But I still use Photoshop to arrange my images and make the final art.

My first picture books (and most since) have pencil outlines but I've started to use a mix of pencil and digital lately, for time more than anything. I spent sooooo long tidying pencil lines on some of those books and for my Watts and Whiskerton series there isn't time for that. There's 128 illustrated pages per book and since the colour is added digitally I decided to try and do the outlines the same way.

This was quite a scary way for me to work. When I first started experimenting with the Ipad and Procreate I couldn't get results that I liked. As with everything, time and practice helped a lot. Here are a few of my brush experiments for Watts and Whiskerton. 

I experimented with Watts' fur with no outlines but ultimately that was time consuming too. So I made my drawings as simple as I could, and I tried to find a brush that looked like pencil. For the final illustrations in the book I have one brush for all of the outlines, one for blocks of colour and one I like for shadows. Keeping it simple seems to work best for me.

I'm not sure if these early drawings use the brushes I use now but the look is pretty similar. It was only once I made these images that I was confident I could make the whole book look the way I wanted digitally.

Who knows how I'll be working in ten years' time!

Fun photographs

Last time I posted it was to reveal the cover of Watts and Whiskerton book two. You can read all about that here. Book two is now completely finished. All the illustrations are done and it is off to the printers, and book three has begun. I've just handed in my very first draft.

So in a way I feel very far away from book one, and I forget to tell people the things I like about it. So here are a few things I like.

Throughout the book I make reference to the facts that Watts' parents are famous detectives, and we get little glimpses of the work they've done.

I really love creating headlines and image of them at work. This one corresponded to a written joke that I cut out of the book for space. It was about how Watts' parents got distracted by a case when he was born and filled in the baby name section on the form wrong. That's why his name is Watts Watts.

This was to show how successful they are, and how little Watts can sometimes feel a little sidelined.

This was a fun way to show why Watts disliked the jungle without having to explain it. I like when illustrations can do all the work for you.

This one does actually accompany a story in the book. It's fun to think of the strange adventures Watts and his family have been on, and the scrapes they've gotten in to. 

What's really nice is that I get to continue making these in the later books. They're always part of the introduction and I like inventing more adventures for them.

If you'd like to read about Watts' own adventure Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure is available now.

Sabotage at the Fete Cake Bake is available for pre-order.

Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure

My new book, Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure, published last month. It's been really nice to see copies of it out and about in the world but I'm in the middle of illustrating Watts and Pearl's next adventure so I haven't really taken a moment to stop and properly appreciate that book one is out in the world. 

So let's a little look at the insides.

Watts is sent to Whsiskerton Manor for a holiday. There he meets his soon-to-be new best friend, Pearl Whiskerton.

Pearl gives Watts a tour of Whiskerton Manor. This was a fun spread to draw.

But soon a mysterious series of events occur and Watts and Pearl find themselves with four mysteries to solve.

    Are these four mysterious cases connected?

Let's have a look at the suspects.

 

Can you help Watts and Pearl solve the case?

Available now at lovely local bookshops or wherever else you like to buy books.

Why not try Rocketship Bookshop or Storytellers Inc

Pearl (Whiskerton)

This is Pearl. She's the Whiskerton half of Watts and Whiskerton, my new detective duo. You can read all about them in Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure.

Pearl meets Watts for the first time when he comes to stay at her home, Whiskerton Manor. She lives there with her dad, Count Whiskerton, and pretty much as soon as Watts arrives all sorts of strange goings-on start to occur. 

Pearl is incredibly smart and she loves mysteries, puzzles sand jigsaws. She really wants to be a detective. She persuades Watts to help her investigate the mysteries at the manor, and fills her new friend with confidence along the way.

This is the earliest sketch I can find of Pearl. At this point I had written 'Penelope?' beside her, but I wanted a more cat-like name so Pearl (Purr-l) was perfect. I've also changed her outfit. When I was looking through old-fashioned kids clothes I noticed a lot of them wore a version of a sailor suit, and it was so adorable I wanted Pearl to have one. I also got rid of her fangs. Some of the drawings in the book are so small that it was a detail that would get lost easily.

Right now I'm working on Watts and Whiskerton book 2 but book one is now available and you can buy it from your lovely local bookshop or by CLICKING HERE

The Week Junior Book Awards - Shorlist

 Today I was excited to discover that Wee Unicorn has been shortlisted for The Week Junior Book Awards 2024 in the picture book category.

Very exciting

I'm in very good company too.  I admire so many of the other authors and illustrators. Here's the short list:

You can see the full shortlist for every category by clicking here. 

Wee Unicorn is available wherever you buy your books. Hopefully a lovely local indie bookshop. But if you don't have a local bookshop then you can buy it here.

Watts

This is Watts. He's one half of Watts and Whiskerton. He's the main character in my new book Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure. Pearl (Whiskerton) is equally important, but Watts is a writer and he narrates each books for us.

Watts comes from a family of famous detectives but he's not sure if he wants to be a detective too. So when his parents venture off to investigate a case, Watts heads off to Whiskerton Manor for a holiday. There he befriends Pearl Whiskerton. She loves mysteries and persuades Watts to help her investigate a series of strange goings on.

Watts actually began life as Watson. I wanted to create a character in the tradition of Watson and Hastings, a slightly silly detective's assistant. In the story I was writing Watson was much older and through his investigation he met Pearl, who was young and smart and methodical, and much more likely to solve the case. I abandoned this idea quickly because what Pearl really needed was a friend to help her solve the case, someone as intelligent as she was. I realised they had to be the same age. And suddenly they made sense as a pair. 

We changed his name to Watts before the first draft was written. We wanted a W name to sit nicely with Whiskerton. My editor, Ella, suggested Walker because it had a nice dog themed link and I really liked it until I thought of Watts. I loved how it reminded me of light bulbs and bright ideas, and how his name sounded like a question. He is also the son of Mr and Mrs Watts so technically he's still a Watts' son. 

I can't find my earliest sketchbooks but here is a drawing from an abandoned early plot idea.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that this scene is still in the first book, just changed a little. This was drawn in pencil and then scanned into my computer. I love drawing in pencil but I do spend a lot of time tidying the outlines. I decided to see if it was possible to get a pencil-like quality digitally since I had 128 pages to illustrate. Here's one of the first digital tests.

I was pleased with the way this turned out and decided to make my first book 100% digitally. It did save me a lot of time when I was drawing outlines. 

Another early test that I really liked had the characters with no outlines at all but I realised I had to draw the outline, colour the character and then remove the outline so I might as well save myself time and keep the outline. Here's a peek at the finished artwork.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure publishes on July 4th 2024 and is available for pre-order now by CLICKING HERE. Pre-orders really help authors because they show publishers and booksellers that there's interest in a book. And when it gets delivered you think, 'Ooh, a gift from my past self. How nice!'

Speech bubbles

My next book features one of my favourite things: speech bubbles. And my two main characters have their own designs.

I wanted both Watts and Pearl's speech to have straight edges to show they are logical and that they have something in common but I also wanted their speech to reflect their individual personalities.

Pearl is unpredictable, spontaneous and quite loud so her speech bubbles have sharp, oddly angled edges and are a bold colour.

Pearl

Watts is more considered, speaks softly and is a little unsure of himself so his have rounded edges and no colour.

Watts

I wanted readers to be able to easily tell who was speaking when they speak to one another, and on occasions when the characters are very small the speech bubbles help identify them. Like this...

Everyone else in the book uses the same soft pink bubble. To have too many variations would get visually busy.

This is Houndstooth the gardener.

Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure publishes on July 4th 2024 and you can pre-order it by clicking here.