Show and Tell: The Picturebook Makers

The artwork for Bertie form Not Me! is currently on display at the Ruskin Gallery in Cambridge as part of an exhibition celebrating the first ten years of the MA in Children's Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art. Some of the work is by past students like myself, some is by tutors and visiting lecturers from the course and some is by established picturebook artists such as Axel Scheffler, Alexis Deacon and Oliver Jeffers.

The private view was last night- I took some phone pics of some willing models pretending to be interested! They are illustrators Lisa Wilkens and Marion Lindsay (my studio buddies) and Jim Butler who teaches on the BA Illustration course at Cambridge School of Art.

Waterstones Event

I will be doing an event at Waterstones in Cambridge from 11.30am to 1pm on Saturday 7th May along with the lovely Ellie Sandall (Birdsong). There will be readings and activities so for more details and to reserve a space please go to the Waterstones website here.

A young reader

These adorable pictures were given to me today by Bobby who works as a librarian and storyteller in Cambridge. She tells me that this young fellow (her grandson) is a big fan of Not Me! Thank you so much for the pictures - he is so cute and also has superb taste in picture books!

Wordfest Creations

A big thank you to everyone involved in organising and participating in my session at the Arbury Community Centre. It was part of Wordfest, a weekend of events in Cambridge. A special thank you goes to the children who brought their work up at the end and let me photograph it. I was really impressed with how inventive everyone was - they created brilliant characters and thought of great story ideas too!

Cambridge Wordfest preparations.....

I am busy preparing a lucky dip for my Cambridge Wordfest event this Friday. There are three envelopes: one contains how your character is feeling; two contains what your character is wearing; three contains what your character looks like. I hope it works......I will update you after the event!

A blast from the past!

My mum is having a big clear out at the moment and is finding some surprising items! This is a phone pic of a project I began in the first term of my BA in graphic design at Middlesex way back in 1990. We had to design and make a room set belonging to an artist of our choice. I started designing a room for Paul Klee but then moved on to Matisse. The quality of my wood cutting is really poor - we had to make the whole thing out of wood and I was really scared of using the machines in the workshop! That explains why I only ever managed to make a letter knife in woodwork at school!

Now that I've taken some pictures it's being recycled....