The strange old life of me

When everything in my family is going wrong I can always rely on my work to get me through (and some truly great friends). Today is a tough one, and I have worked all day long to keep it all at bay. So let me show you what has made me laugh today.

I have been to Clydebank library and Dumbarton library today, and have met some lovely nursery pupils. One insisted on calling me by my full name (countless pleas of CATEJAMES CAN YOU PLEASE HELP ME TO COLOUR-IN?).

This is a selection of what they drew

I think that Ella is ahead of her drawing years there, and the rainbow dinosaur is ace, obviously.

Here is me being a dinosaur, along with the dinosaurs of Dumbarton library. It is scary.

That's all for now. I'm sure that tomorrow will be a better day, after all, I am meeting some of my favourite people for hugs.

Lollipop and Grandpa are BACK!

I'm not sure what day it is, or indeed who the president of the United States is* at the moment, but I will make time to update my blog because I think it's fun.

This month I have been asked to do millions of other fun things too. Not only do I get to do loads of drawings and cover myself in ink, I will also appear on a panel of illustrators at a publishers' discussion group (I assume it will be exactly like Question Time), be offered as a prize in a competition with Scottish Book Trust (a dinosaur based event type prize, I should add) and go to London to see exciting people. 
It's important, as an Illustrator, to get out into the world of publishing and the related realm of books. I love doing all the chat stuff and talking about what I do because it is a pretty awesome job.

Quite excitingly...Lollipop and Grandpa are back for one more adventure and this one is great. It is set at Christmas which means I get to give them scarves again which I like a lot. Here is one of my 395727 scans. 

I always start my work with actual ink and paper like the old fashioned artist that I am. Then I spend a stupid amount of time scanning, during which time I drink gallons of tea and eat crisps. Then Photoshop makes it all look seamless and great. I like drawing Lollipop and Grandpa quite a lot which is just as well really.

Today it was warm and I was dressed for winter so I had my first iced coffee of the year, and a sosij sandwich and it was good. And if I didn't say that I enjoyed this delicious meal with Fraser then there would be something not right about my blog and he would cry.




*I do really.

I was adjacent to a weasel

Hello everyone! Here is a collection of photographs of things that have happened in my life recently and have made me laugh and stuff.

First of all we have a lovely fat Tyrannosaurus Rex. He was the only good thing about the review of my new book in The Guardian. The silly Guardian forgot to mention me (sadface) so instead of being all proud upon my return from swimming I was furious for about 4 seconds, and then ate my breakfast and enjoyed Mr Fat Dinosaur being the star of the page. Here he is. Fat.

Hooray, this was fun. On Saturday I went for a stroll in the town with pointy eared Fraser. I do enjoy a look in the window of The Treasure Trove on Castle Street. It's a shop that sells things that old ladies have made at home and then brought in. Kind of a terrible Bagpuss shop but without the Mice, or Professor Yaffle or indeed Bagpuss. Imagine my joy when I spied THIS character. He is called £4.50 Hen and I like his one knotted leg and his poor stitching. I did not buy him because I want other people to enjoy looking at him in his lonely zoo.

Oh I am all out of order now. Before all of this happened I sat adjacent to a weasel. This place has a wardrobe full of cakes and I had a cheese scone with Marmite and Fraser had the biggest piece of cake in the universe with peanut butter in it.

And finally we have this lovely drawing of Noah's fantasy hospital. I was working at the Sick Kids yesterday and we did a good workshop about what makes a good hospital. Noah always does work for us and his imagination is amazing. I told him yesterday that he is going to be an illustrator but apparently he is going to be a footballer. Whatever. For disagreeing he didn't get a Vimto sweet. I ate them all.

So that's my week in photographs. What a lovely time I had. I hope your weeks are all going well too. Bye!

Ignatius and the hot dogs

Today it is snowing and I am listening to Richard Hawley's songs that sound like my summer holidays in Lowestoft. I hope the sun comes back one day.
This week I am working on a mountain of beautiful commissions that have found their sweet way to me. I just realised that despite having worked endlessly (well, 10.30-6 with time for a long lunch and possibly a nap) for the past AGES I have nothing I can put on my blog because it's all for publishers and stuff. So instead here is a picture what I done for my fine friend Pointy Ear Fraser of previous blog infamy (he likes being in my blogs you see).
I recently read A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole at Fraser's recommendation and it was a truly excellent read. I love Ignatius and his silly ways, so I drew him for Fraser's birthday. He is having a look at some hot dogs.
So because I have nothing else that I can do a show and tell on, here is Ignatius.

HELP!

This week I am working at the Sick Kids on Wednesday and Thursday, and I am really looking forward to it this month. Linda and I have been planning away and now we get to work on a very exciting thing.

For those of you who don't know, the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh (Sick Kids) is a very old building. It is getting a bit sad now, so Edinburgh are getting a brand new hospital out by the new infirmary at Little France. The move is due to happen in 2017 and there are many plans afoot.
Part of my job is to document the old building, as well as consulting on the new building, and one way that we are doing this is by writing and illustrating a picture book about the move.

Linda has written the first part, and now we are asking EVERYONE for ideas about how they think the hospital should physically move to Little France. This week we will be scattering (neatly, I like Wombles) sheets asking for help and they will look like this...

If you fancy helping out then let me know and I will send you a copy of the story so far and the drawing sheet (you don't have to draw, you can write, or do both).

As well as this, we will be handing out Easter cards featuring this here illustration, and a poem by Linda on the back.

The last thing that we have been concentrating on is a Special Story book for a boy who isn't enjoying his injections so much. It is hopefully going to distract him a bit, and also make the hospital loads of fun. I hope he likes it. I am going to try it out on as many children as possible this week in the hope that they can all have one maybe. Here is a bit of it. I want to colour it in immediately.

That's all for now. It's snowing and I want some fish fingers. Before I forget to mention my pal with the lovely pointy ear...Fraser became an uncle today. HOORAY!

Werewolf Ear

I have just been informed that my pal and chip eating, beer drinking and chic partner in crime Fraser's werewolfesque ear is the star of my blog. By Fraser, of course. So in honour of this fact, here is a photograph that I took of it yesterday. I hope you like it. He looked a bit like a leprechaun yesterday apparently.

School MEals and a rabbit in odd socks

For the past few months I have been working with Vivian French, the level 2 illustration students of Edinburgh College of Art, and the P3/4s and P7s of Dalmeny Primary School. We have been writing recipes to instruct people how we would be created. Mine involved napping, swimming pools and lots of ink, amongst other ingredients.

Last week we had a great morning at the art college. All the pupils involved came to visit, and we had a big table full of plates which illustrated the recipes. We also had another table full of cake and I think that was my favourite one actually.

Here is a poster that I made. I contains self portraits of all the children involved. Some of them are peas and some of them are carrots and some of them are splats of custard. One of them looks like a criminal in the making, but I'm pretty sure he's not. 

As well as working on this project above, I have also been at the Sick Kids this week. There is a lot of planning going on still at this stage, so we concentrated on that this week. I now have a mountain of drawing to get done so that I can take in some Easter cards to hand out, and a special book for a boy who is struggling to have his injections. It really means a lot to me that Linda and I might be able to help him a little bit. Linda has written a lovely poem for the Easter card so today will be spent illustrating that. Here is a rabbit close-up from an illustration for a poem written by a patient at the Sick Kids. He wears odd socks and hides them under rocks apparently. I like his feet quite a lot.

Mark Jenkins, Dave and some weird flying thing

Sad times this weekend as the last episode of The Hotel happened. To mark the occasion, my fellow Hotel watcher and all round encourager of drawing, Mr Fraser, suggested that I should do some pictures of them as they bid us a tearful and karaoke-based au revoir. These are monstrous drawings and make me feel a bit ill, but I quite like them all the same.

Mark (bless him)

 Alison (kicks ass)

In other news, I had another two days at the Sick Kids last week. We shadowed a doctor on a morning ward round, I drew a pug for a lovely girl, and amongst other highlights, Dave was created. We run workshops when we are in the hospital for patients, parents, volunteers and pretty much anyone who likes drawing and writing. Last week I met Noah who is a bit of an excellent artist and he is also the owner of the best imagination that I have ever stolen ideas from. Above is Dave. He broke his arm doing Kung Fu (I think) and is now the host of Pat Plaster and Serena Syringe who are on a date. Yep. He is illustrating the story, ready for our workshop tomorrow. We worked on a story board last week. He just drew it in about ten minutes. Genius.

And one more thing...I drew this for my next Lollipop and Grandpa book and I have no idea what it is, but I like him.

National Libraries Day 2013

At the weekend we celebrated National Libraries Day. Libraries are very very important, and I love visiting them to run drawing and reading sessions. On Saturday I was at Oxgangs library in Edinburgh which is a lovely library, and has a great craft cupboard incidentally. 

I read one of my books, we drew some characters together, and then worked on a long drawing with an underwater theme. I started off working with 5 kids, but many joined in once they saw the fun we were having.

Here are two close-ups of the drawing. I hate snakes but I think David did a great job, and I also like his flying fish. Matthew was a bit of a shark expert.

Afterwards, I went to the pub with my werewolf-eared pal Fraser, and I drew an uncannily accurate picture of him. Apologies for the shadow, but we had drunk loads of beer.

Undone

Last year I was asked to do a very interesting hand lettering job by Quercus. My lovely friend Cat Clarke is a Young Adult author and has written three amazing YA novels, all published by Quercus, called Entangled, Torn and Undone (it is the official launch of Undone tomorrow and Cat and I are going to Nando's beforehand so double celebration there).

So back to Quercus...Without giving too much away about the book, I was asked to hand-write a series of 12 letters that appear in Undone, in a style that suits a teenage boy with very neat writing. This is harder than it sounds and I wasted about 17 trees-worth of paper. I also had to work to a template and start the line again if I messed it up at any point, which obviously happened loads. And I had to use a fountain pen for a good quality of line for reproduction, and it obviously needed to be legible at all times.

The letters become increasingly distressing and there are lots of scribblings and crossings-out and good messy bits.

I highly recommend that you read this book. Cat is a brilliant writer, and she is also a bad influence whilst drinking champagne. Look out in the book for a really rubbish drawing of a lamb, and a line about how Kai's hand was hurting from writing all the letters. How very true that was! I had a claw for a hand for too long after I finished the letters.