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.

Nice things

I hope 2025 is treating you well so far. I've had some nice news: Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure has been long-listed for the Children's Literature Festivals Book Awards 2025. It nice to be in the company of so many other lovely books.

In other news I'm cracking on with a new picture book and Watts and Whiskerton book three.

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.

Cover reveal!

Today I'm excited to share the cover of the next Watts and Whiskerton mystery: Sabotage at the Fete Cake Bake.

Budding detective Watts is back in Little Gossip to visit the Whiskertons and attend the village fete bake off. He's looking forward to a fun weekend, but then disaster strikes when the ovens flood with batter and accusations of sabotage begin to fly!

Who's responsible for the cake catastrophe? And why would they want to ruin the competition? It's up to Watts and Pearl to solve the curious case. But can this dog and cat detective duo find the proof in the pudding? 

The second instalment in an adorable new highly-illustrated series bursting with mystery and mischief for readers aged 5+!

Sabotage at the Fete Cake Bake is publishing in April 2025 and is available for pre-order by clicking here.

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