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Hello, I'm back! I haven't blogged for awhile, so here's a peek at a Shark & Unicorn comic strip I had in the Funday Times awhile back:


Nice and icy for summer:



And I HAVE actually been on ice and looking at glaciers! (That's my little sister on the left, getting snow water for us to filter.)



I have loads to tell you about my trip to the Pacific Northwest but first I need to catch up on a zillion e-mails (because I basically ignored e-mail for two weeks). And do some roughs for my next picture book.... you can get a tiny peek at it in this photo Elissa Elwick just took of me in the studio. And here's a peek at freshly printed copies of her new picture book with Philip Ardagh which came in while I was away! We both have picture books launching this autumn (Little Adventurers for her, The Prince of Pants for me).



Speaking of which, I just saw that bookings are open for our Prince of Pants Cartoon Museum event in London on Sat, 24 Sept from 1-2pm! Definitely book tickets if you're interested (details on the website), as the workshop space only fits about 30 people, max. It should be rollicking good fun!

I only took a patchy selection of photos at last night's #SketchbookSocial, part of London Book & Screen Week, but you can check the #SketchbookSocial hashtag to see lots more from other people!









I stopped by Atlantis art supply on the way there and got some big chunky pastels. Always best to use totally unfamiliar materials when you're doing a spot of live drawing, ha ha...



The #PicturesMeanBusiness campaign for people to credit illustrators got a good mention, and Society of Authors has just now posted a plug for it.




Thanks so much to Katherine Woodfine and Claire Shanahan for organising! I hope it happens again! :)

A few drawings from this week: here's a magnet I made for Philip Ardagh's birthday. King Pugbeard! We see a lot of Ardagh these days in the studio because he's making FOUR picture books with my studio mate, Elissa Elwick.



Speaking of Elissa, here she is, also in magnet form, with her boyfriend Martin. He's very sweet and plays in a thrasher metal band.



And here's Elissa again, with writer Jeff Norton and editor of The Bookseller magazine Philip Jones. We were at the magazine's drinks party because I'm speaking about the #PicturesMeanBusiness campaign at their upcoming Author Day on 30 Nov.



Ah, and one more; I get lots of paper offcuts right now because I'm painting picture book pages that are only just a bit smaller than my paper. So here's a puddle boy painted onto one of the scraps.



If you're going to tomorrow's Illustrator Salon in London with Steven Lenton, I'll see you there!

One of my favourite things about reading a book is getting to go on adventure to somewhere new and exciting. And sometimes I don't like the book and it turns out to be a bad adventure, but sometimes it's BRILLIANT, which makes it all worthwhile. But it's fun to have other kinds of adventures, particularly when I'm working flat-out (finishing Pugs of the Frozen North right now). My lovely studio mate Elissa Elwick sometimes pops down to the shops and asks if I want anything, and we got into the habit of her buying a 'Mystery Drink', something she was pretty sure I'd never tried before. So we've embarked on the Mystery Drink taste adventure tour (also known as 'McIntyre drinks it so you don't have to'.)

First up: sugar cane drink. Sweet, a bit bland. Moving on. Rating on a scale of 1-10: 3



Two more cold teas with writing on them that looks Chinese. Also drinkable, but it gets more exciting. Rating: 5



Oo, now what is THIS? I bought it from the drinks cabinet in a Chinese shop on Deptford High Street, but the small-print English reads 'Deluxe Grass Jelly Dessert'. It turned out to have bits of black jelly in it, a rather nice sweet-ish drink and CHICKPEAS, which is a surprising addition to any drink or a dessert.
Rating: 5



This weekend, Stuart got into the swing of things and helped me taste-test another 'Grass Jelly Drink'.




Hmm, no chickpeas. Stuart said 'It tastes like flat Coca-cola with bits in it'. He didn't mind it, but said he wouldn't buy it himself. I rather liked it, the taste was gentle and nice and the jelly bits made it like something you'd get at a children's party, but more grownup-tasting. Rating: 6



If you buy this one, I'd recommend pouring/chunking it out into a glass or bowl, as all the chunky bits sunk to the bottom and were hard to suck out of the can. (And no, it doesn't taste like Branston Pickle, even if it looks like that.)



I went out to the high street to forage the next Mystery Drink: 'Wuhe Flavour Milk Tea'. I wondered (on Twitter) what sort of flavour 'Wuhe' is, and Alan Wyle advised me that it's a actually a place in Taiwan. So I read up on it:

The famous tea in Wuhe is 'Honey Black Tea', it doesn't mean that you add honey into the black tea. The tea leave is bitten by a tiny 'tea leave hopper', the saliva of the hopper interact with the juice of the leave, cause a scent of honey flavor, hense its name.

And you know what, it's VERY NICE! Well done, little leaf hopper. A lovely subtle sweet flavour and a nice, cold, full-bodied drink. Love this one. I think when you drink it, you're supposed to say 'WU-HEY!'. Rating: 8



Now apparently 'Mauby' is a Thing, but I wouldn't have known this unless I'd tried it and then followed the #mauby hash tag on Twitter. Right at the start, the taste was okay, but a split second later, the most horrible bitter aftertaste hit me and bizarrely, the only way to kill the taste was to keep drinking. But it was a very unpleasant experience. Rating: 2



Here's someone else's experience of Mauby:



Last up: Irish Moss (with oats). I think this was the strangest one. I thought the 'moss' would be something like the seaweed that's in McDonald's milkshakes, where it's just part of the consistency but you can't actually taste it. It would be a nice drink - sort of a thick, cold chai latte - except it has overtones of, well... dirt. You know that slightly unpleasant smell that hits you when you walk into a garden centre? Well, this is like drinking that smell. I don't get it.



But I made myself drink the whole can, just to see if the taste would improve. It didn't, but about fifteen minutes later, suddenly I felt VERY FULL. THEN I got it. This drink fills you up.



And then John Allison tweeted a video at me that he's seen on The Real McCoy on BBC2, and apparently Irish Moss helps with other things, too. ...Eek! Rating: 3 (but 8 for interest factor).



So thank you for coming on the Mystery Drink taste testing adventure with me. If you come across an unknown drink and want to share your taste test experience, tweet photos of it with the #MysteryDrink hash tag and let us know what you think. Or make a mini comic about it!

So FINALLY we're allowed to share the exciting news!!! Guess which amazing duo are combining forces and BURSTING into children's book publishing as a duo!!?!!



You may have spotted photos from our studio and guessed already that SOMETHING IS UP...



Yes, PHILIP ARDAGH and ELISSA ELWICK have a four-book picture book deal with Walker Books! They'll be called 'Little Adventurers' and they're already working on the first one, due to come out in June 2016.



Here's what Philip says about working together:

I'm really enjoying working with Elissa on Little Adventurers because it's such a collaborative process. Being a children's book author can be a lonely business. I began my professional writing career in an advertising agency, partnered with an art director. When I write for radio I work with producer, engineer and actors. The same for TV. You're one of a team. With my previous books, I've enjoyed working with my illustrators but they've joined the process late in the day. The words have been written, the story complete. With Little Adventurers - the basic premise of which was Elissa's in the first place - we're forever exploring ideas, reshaping, and playing around with text and pictures.



The line between writer and illustrater is blurred. We're both interested in pictures and words. And - with additional input from Deirdre and Maria in editorial and Jack in design at Walker Books - we're coming up with something none of us could have created on our own. And, on days I'm working in the Fleece Station, Elissa makes us nice lunches. What's NOT to love about our Little Adventurers collaboration?



Edit: Look! Just tweeted in from the Bologna Book Fair by lovely writer Lucy Coats! By Charlotte Eyre in the Bologna daily version of The Bookseller (with a mention of the then-secretly-titled RAILHEAD by Reeve). Oh, and here's a link to the Book Trade announcement!



I'm proud to say that I was there at Elissa and Philip's very first meeting, at the Discover Story Centre in Stratford, east London. Philip was in his usual fine form, photo-bombing his heart out. And yup, there's Elissa!



I asked Elissa how they kept in touch, and decided that working with this VERY SILLY MAN might be a good idea:

BECAUSE HE WAS SO ODD! His imagination comes spilling out! We kept in touch over Twitter and he'd occasionally throw out ideas for existing characters I had and our working collaboration kind of stemmed from there.

So what's your background, Elissa? I heard you were once a champion skateboarder!


ALL LIES! It wasn't very long, I managed to blag myself some sponsorship for a little while when I lived in Northampton. But when I went to uni, I got way more into drawing and now my skateboard collects dust. I studied BA Illustration at Bournemouth and my first picture book deal was with Macmillan, The Princess and the Sleep Stealer. I also worked as Resident Storyteller and bookseller at an indie bookshop in Clapham called Under the Greenwood Tree. That was a great experience because I got to learn about the children's book industry from the other side of the counter.

What medium you use to make your pictures?

I use a mixture of pencil, watercolours and my computer. It's been so much fun bringing the Little Adventurers to life. Here are some early sketches.



Ardagh & Elwick will be working with editor Maria Tunney and designer Jack Noel. In the run up to Bologna Children's Book Fair, she was on the phone with Jack, and I managed to get a few words with him, to ask what they liked so much about Elissa's work:

I love Elissa's work because she makes everything look adorable; she creates her own sweet world. She's created these four characters and it's really nice, the relationships between them.

Gary Northfield and I love having Elissa in the studio, she's always up for a laugh and a cup of tea (and doesn't get upset when I accidentally eat all her biscuits). Here we are at the launch of Gary's Garden, both wearing themed Chompy-the-caterpillar clothes:



Philip's already quite active with our studio: I worked together with him on the Discover Storycloud project and he wrote a nice quote for the front of Gary's new book, Julius Zebra (also with Walker Books).



Here's Elissa at her desk in the studio. When she's done a good run of work, she rewards herself by watching a short animation. (And here, with homemade pot noodles.)



It won't be so much of a secret, they've already been seen about town together and posting photos of themselves with SLEBS:



So Elissa, this seems like an amazing prospect! But what will be one of your greatest challenges, working together?



NOT TRIPPING OVER HIS BIG FEET.



You can follow Elissa on Instagram at @elissaelwick on Twitter, also as @ElissaElwick, and check out her website, elissaelwick.co.uk.



And Philip on Instagram - @philipardagh - and Twitter - @PhilipArdagh.
So keep an eye out, this team is set to pull off some pretty amazing stuff...



Be sure to check out their new joint blog!

Today the writer and illustrator Elissa Elwick came over to my place for lunch. (Elissa's doing a picture book for Macmillan and you'll surely be hearing more about her soon.)



I always get overexcited when people come to visit me and thrust cake at them and show them all my picture books, but she likes cake and picture books as much as I do, so it was all good. Then we made a some drawings! Theses two are like that game Consequences, except we didn't fold the paper over, we just swapped the papers round a few times and added bits.



Here's us doing our best Muppet faces. I am showing her Champignon Bonaparte by Gilles Bachelet, which is one of my all-time favourite picture books. It's the life story of Napoleon, but told as if he were a mushroom instead of human. It's essential reading.