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I made a new lino cut print! It's a private commission and illustrates a poem called The Frivolous Cake by Mervyn Peake, from his Gormenghast book Titus Groan.

A freckled and frivolous cake there was
That sailed upon a pointless sea...



I didn't really have time to do this piece, and I did the first sketch quite quickly, to knock off a very small print. But then the client came back with a very reasonable offer of payment, so I decided I could get up extra early in the mornings and somehow fit in a more elaborate piece. So we decided to go with the second sketch. I really was going to say no, but I do love making lino cuts...



Here's some of the first cutting I did late one evening:




And here's the linoleum block, all ready to print! (I'd already bought some oil-based relief ink from Intaglio on Southwark Bridge Road for the lino cut I made for the Jubilee workshop with Rolf Harris.)



Can you see what it is? This is the fun bit, when I roll on the ink and the picture suddenly pops up.



So I lay the paper on top of it and rub the back of the paper with the spoon. Then when I peel off the paper, there's the picture, in reverse!



Since it's oil-based ink, I have to use white spirit to clean up.



I can never entirely clean the block, it always keeps traces of the ink. But it still looks kind of cool. So there you have it, a new lino print!




Other news: Do you live anywhere near Berkshire? One of Britain's top writers, Geraldine McCaughrean (The White Darkness, Peter Pan in Scarlet) has written a brand-new play which you can watch outdoors, from tomorrow. Bring your own picnic! Details here.



And my Oliver and the Seawigs co-creator Philip Reeve has some new treats online for you! Alex Fitch has interviewed Philip and Jodi Picoult on Resonance FM, which you can now listen to as a podcast here. I've only read one of Jodi's books, My Sister's Keeper, but I'm curious to read her first YA novel, Between the Lines. And I had no idea that she was only the second woman to write for Wonder Woman, who would've thought.

Two exciting things happened on the last day of the Jubilee holiday weekend. One of them was going to Birmingham's Book Bash festival and getting to see fancy Aston Hall and meet the Lord Mayor and a bunch of other great book creators.



The other was coming back from Birmingham to lots of nice tweets, texts, e-mails and a phone call from Stuart's Auntie Barbara, saying that they'd enjoyed watching me take part in Rolf Paints on the BBC. Hurrah! I didn't get to watch it on live telly, but Stuart and I watched it later on iPlayer. If you live in the UK, you can watch it for a week here on iPlayer. And the BBC has a Rolf Paints website here showing artwork from all the different artists and gives related links. I'm not sure if I'll be allowed to keep this video up, but I've copied some of the clips showing Rolf critiquing my lino cut print, and added a bit about comics artist Steve Marchant, so you could see his work from the day more clearly.



I've had a lot of people contacting me about a commemorative plate that Rolf mentioned on the show. I don't actually know anything about buying the plate, but I've sent an e-mail to the associate producer, asking her about it, and I'll post the information if I find out. The exhibition of our work runs from today until Sunday in the Old Vic Tunnels. (Details here.)


So more festival fun at Book Bash! I was doing a pirate event for You Can't Scare a Princess! so I drew the book's Captain Waffle doing some book bashing. Well, more like eating its cover off, but it's all in the same spirit.



Oo, and look, it's Nicholas Allan, creator of fabulous book The Queen's Knickers, Cinderella's Bum and loads of other funny picture books. Nick was in the news a lot recently because some glitch at Waterstone's had them accidentally printing out The Queen's Knickers on every receipt.



Heh, this picture made me laugh. It looks like someone made a bad smell.



A lovely visitor named Angela Masterson drew a portrait of me during my event and gave it to me:



Look, it's Peppa Pig! Poor Peppa, she really ought to turn sideways, I think her profile is much more flattering than full-frontal snout.



It was fun meeting Derby-based poet, writer and illustrator Chris White. He's been to Book Bash loads of times, and from the number of kids clustered around his signing table, has a real loyal local following.



Last time I was in Birmingham, I had a total blast with librarian Jen Bakewell. I was sorry not to get more time to hang out with her, but we still had a quick lunch together and swapped over the hat. And here's cookbook writer Fi Bird, who does wonders w

Here in Britain, it's almost the Diamond Jubilee weekend! And what better way to celebrate than to make a lino cut print of a mad corgi? Here you go: In corgis we trust. That's written in my best fake Google-translator Latin. I made this for the BBC! Well, actually, this was a practice run, the night before. I got a call awhile ago from producer Veronica Thorne, asking me if I wanted to spend a full day making a picture of the Queen to celebrate the Jubilee... with Rolf Harris!



Oh my. Funnily enough, because I grew up in America, I didn't really know much about Rolf Harris, except that he had painted a portrait of the Queen. And he's consistantly rated Britain's most popular artist (which irks the fine arts establishment to no end, so hurrah, good for him!).



I thought I'd better look my best for telly, so I bought a new work apron and stamped the corgi onto the front of it. The ink on it was still wet the next morning, so I tried not to touch it, then rub my nose and wind up with a smudgy face on the Beeb.



The Fleece Station studio has a proud history of monarch-related activities, generally involving yarn or silly wigs. So I figured I had everything I needed to do a good job on set.



Oh, and a new fancy hat. With which I surprised Mr Harris when I met him at breakfast.



When I told people I was meeting Rolf Harris, they all reacted very animatedly, and several people mentioned videos I absolutely had to go watch. Here's one from 1969, Jake the Peg. Poor Gary had to listen to me keep accidentally singing this in the studio for the next couple days. So fabulous.



And here's an episode from The Goodies, when they breed Rolf Harrises in captivity and they escape. The guy's originally Australian, but he's a legend here in Britain. (If you like, you can watch that Goodies show from the beginning here.)



So here was our set-up! We filmed in the vaults of the Old Vic, under Waterloo Station. Which was a bit tricky for the camera crew because the trains kept rumbling overhead. But they set up the area like a street party and it looked very welcoming and festive. They'd invited 60 artists in total, one for each year of the Queen's reign.



If you're interested, you'll be able to watch the whole show, Rolf Paints, on Tuesday, 5 June, BBC1, 6:30-7:30pm.





One of these artists was Anneka Rice. She was another person I didn't know much about, but Stuart told me she'd hosted a show called Treasure Hunt and another called Challenge Anneka. (She has a bunch of videos posted on her YouTube channel.)



And another one of the participants was fab comics artist Steve Marchant! Steve was the one who tipped off Veronica to me when s

Last night I spirited Stuart away from the Ministry of Magic and we went to The Illustration Cupboard to see an exhibition by Chris Wormell of his seaside lino cut prints. (You can see all the prints online here, and the show runs until 12 Sept.)



Stuart and I have always been fond of these prints; when we first got married, we went on loads of hikes in the Kent and Sussex countryside and almost always ended the day in a pub, where we'd admire Chris's prints on Adnams beer ads.



I love Chris's simple, bold colour fields, broken up with wonderful bits of texture, and his oil-based ink really glows across a room. Oil-based ink takes ages to dry, and his lino cuts have loads of different layers, so each print represents an enormous amount of time and work, because so many of them go wrong in the printing process. Chris uses a metal spoon to rub the backs of the prints to get the ink to take, I bet that's one worn-out spoon.



I made a lot of lino cut prints when I was first getting into illustration - Stuart would come home from work to find them drying on every available surface in the kitchen - and I'd really like to try some more. I recently found a whole picture book I'd made in linocuts, but I was just learning how to draw and it really is very bad, but nicely earnest. Gary Northfield (one of my studio mates) made lots of linocuts for his Illustration degree and the three of us in the studio keep talking about having a couple days of our own lino cut workshops. I''m really looking forward to that.







After we had a selection of very nice Adnams beers at the exhibition, we bought sushi from the Japan Centre on Piccadilly and had a romantic picnic on the grass in St James Park, only to discover afterward that the mosquitos had been feasting on our ankles. Oops.