It's been a while since my last blog post.. I used to love reading blog posts and forums, if you're reading this, hello! 👋 I wanted to share a lovely project I was lucky to work on last year. I created a black and white illustration titled 'Stargazing' for the Book of Hopes, a collection of stories and illustrations on the theme of hope, edited by Katherine Rundell and published by Bloomsbury in answer to the pandemic, with proceeds going to the NHS Charities Together. The book provides words and pictures to comfort, inspire and entertain children. The ebook is available to read for free on the Literacy Trust website. The Book of Hopes 'Stargazing' I loved working on this illustration, not only as a welcome distraction in a worrying time, but also to find a home for a little character which had been popping up in my sketchbook for a while. I've nicknamed him the 'Snoogaloo'. Here he is in my sketchbook: As you can see in the top picture I've al...

Last month I was lucky enough to celebrate World Book Day with the wonderful Fosseway school. We chatted about what it means to be an Illustrator and discussed how picture books are made. Here's a little peek at my presentation showing the different stages of development when illustrating picture book spread 👀 (this particular spread is from 'Elephant's Pyjamas' by Michelle Robinson) Then things became a little bit more interactive... We whipped out the flip chart and got scribbling. I showed everyone how to draw the cheeky Monkey character from Monkey's Sandwich. Just check out these amazing Monkeys (I have some stiff competition!) In the afternoon I ran a couple of book building workshops, which involved constructing crazy stories together as a class by playing a fun 'consequences' style game. Everyone then illustrated a page of the story, which we assembled together in a picture book (now that's what I call teamwork) This story is c...