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Things are going pretty well on the new book, although the garden studio is officially closed now (sigh). I would SO much rather be outside in all this glorious weather than sat at my computer, with the blinds drawn against the sunshine. Hey ho.
The sample spreads I am producing ready for the Frankfurt presentation are going to be:
Sketching on trains (2 spreads)
How to sketch with colour first, then line (2 spreads)
Drawing eyes (1 spread)
These were decided on by the publisher. They know what the US co-edition publishers will be looking for. My art director has done sample designs for me to approve (which I'm afraid I don't think I can show you yet) and I have written all the text.
I have chosen all the sketches for these sections too. Unfortunately, all my sketches are scanned at low-res for general sharing, so the ones for the book all have to be re-scanned at 300ppi. I have set John onto that task and he has done the lion's share now.
One of the train sketches had to be redone, because I tinted it digitally, originally at low res (duh). I was experimenting with digital tinting in 2010. Above is the original pencil drawing, done in a 3B: my tool of choice back then. I used a very basic drawing tool in Photoshop and a limited palette to re-created the coloured version I did at the time. Below is the final tinted version.
The weird image at the top of this post is the coloured layer, separated out, which I thought looked rather fun and funky, but also helped you to see how the digital version was created.
Right - enough chatting to you guys: it's back to work for me!
You might think this question has something to do with the strange animal couplings from Jungle Grumble, but you'd be wrong. The answer to the riddle is... me, last week.
Okay, hopefully I didn't bear any visual resemblance to either frogs or mice, but my voice certainly did. Yes, I know, again. Almost every year it seems to happen to me. I get a cold and end up with laryngitis.
As usual for March, there have been so many visits booked in, I've just had to dose up on paracetamol and get stuck in. Normally I can blame the germy children I meet around World Book Day but, this year, I think I caught it off a friend the weekend before, because I got poorly on the very first Monday, 2 weeks ago. Groan.
By that Friday, the voice was seriously wobbly, but I was booked to do a talk first thing to a hall-full, at Sheffield High School. Luckily we got an emergency microphone rigged up so I could do the mouse-voice thing. Then, half-way through the subsequent illustration workshop, John suddenly appeared with emergency supplies: a big bottle of of TCP, so I could do some lunchtime gargling in the loos! What a hero. Unfortunately, I've been bathed in the delightful scent of TCP ever since.
It does help though and is probably the reason why I've not gone completely silent this time round. I had only two days of visits last week, on Wednesday and Thursday. I had hoped that the few days of rest would sort it out, but no - still the same. Oh well. John is enjoying the luxury of getting a word in edge-ways. Also being told off at a far lesser volume than usual.
I met some smashing children on both days and everyone has been very patient with my difficulties. It all seems to be going very well anyway, despite adversity. Maybe next week I will sound less like a squeaky frog...
Despite my occasional moans about the early trains I have to catch, I do enjoy the March school visits season. I love interacting with the children. The one big drawback to being an illustrator is that it is easy to spend far too long on your own in the house.
Before the days of school visits, when I worked as an editorial illustrator and in the early days of doing the children's books, I used to get a bit stir-crazy. Being an illustrator might sound glamorous, but mostly it's just day after day in four walls, with only a computer and a drawing desk for company. In fact, I first met John because I decided I needed to interact with the world, before I lost the power of speech!
I'd not long moved to Sheffield, so didn't know many people and thought teaching at the local art college might be fun and help me make new friends. It was actually pretty scary to start with, but I muddled through and ended up lecturing for about 7 years, going from 1 day to 3 days a week.
I taught all sorts - Printed Textiles (that's what my degree is in), Life Drawing, Print-making (a lot of learning as I went along), Photoshop (even more learning as I went along!) and, of course, Illustration. John and I shared an office and discovered we were living on the same side of Sheffield. I had to get 2 buses to the college, so John started giving me a lift home after work and the rest, as they say, is history.
I think this is one of the first paintings I have of John, from those very early days in the 1990's. We'd not been married long:
We've been married for over 20 years now, so some of it is a bit hazy, but I do clearly remember fancying him in his black leather driving gloves, during those lifts home from the college!
I didn't used to keep a sketchbook as addictively in those days, so this is a much later sketch: the slightly older model, with a few more dints (don't tell him I said that, will you?).
When I did my illustrator-in residence project for the ASCEL Conference last year, I met lots of librarians, which is always a pleasure, since librarians are almost as lovely as children's illustrators :-)
One of those I met, contacted me a little while ago and asked me to visit their library. So on Wednesday I took the train to Nottingham and spent a lovely day in Sherwood. There were no visible forests, nor merry men for that matter (probably a good thing at that time of day), though we did find a lovely deli for lunch and a lot of merry children from 3 local schools.
It didn't start well though. When I checked the departures board at Sheffield station, to find my platform, I discovered that the train I'd booked didn't exist. Not just cancelled - never was! Bit of a blow. A chat with Customer Services informed me there'd been a landslide near Chesterfield on Monday and all the train timetables in that direction had been changed. Wonderful.
Luckily, though half an hour late, I arrived just as the 60 children were filing into the library. Phew. My morning group was two Y3 classes, so I read stories, drew animals at the flipchart and generally played the goat (Giddy Goat, naturally). They were all lovely and I quickly forgot the stresses of the journey.
After lunch (with cake - told you librarians were nice), I had a Y5 group, so I talked about my work and showed them some artwork, like this monkey's tea party illustration from Stinky!. I also took roughs and books-in-progress (including a sneak-preview of Swap!), then taught them how to draw characters in motion. They too were a smashing group and asked me some brilliant questions, which is always very gratifying (if I have to answer 'what is your favourite book' one more time...).
I finished the day with something a bit different: an hour with the homework club. Normally it's an after-school drop-in session, with 3 adult helpers on hand to give assistance with any homework children have. Since I was there, it was billed as a creative writing workshop instead. At the start though, we had just one boy (with the 3 helpers, the librarian and me - poor lad).
It was okay though: I did him a personal illustration, adding all the elements at his direction, to use as the starting point for his writing and, thank goodness, before the drawing was done, five more children turned up. I showed them how to start a story in the most exciting way possible, and they all got stuck into a tale about a scorpion and spider who were trying to catch and eat a man in the desert.
The aforementioned lovely librarian bought each of the children one of my picture books as a special present to take home with them, which I of course signed, before heading off for the adventure of trying to find a train home.
It was a really positive day and a great start to the visit season (thanks Sarah!). It all kicks off in earnest on Monday - I'll be out every single day that week. Luckily I'll be taking trains in the opposite direction :-)
March is the busiest time of year for authors and illustrators who do school events. It's all because of World Book Day on March 7th. I've already visited children in Pinner, Telford, Leamington Spa, Sheffield, Manchester and Barnsley. Next week I am part of a 5 Schools Project here in Sheffield where I'll be performing in a theatre!
Because I am hardly in the studio at all at the moment, I don't have time to tell you about the specifics of what I've been up to, but anyone who reads this blog at all regularly, will know the kind of thing I get up to.
They will also know that all this travelling around has of course generated more train sketches.
I love showing them to you - it's so much better than just closing them up in my sketchbook and storing them, unseen, on a shelf in the studio. Since I've been on the move, John has been back at base-camp, scanning them in for me.
Mostly I am still using my watercolour pencils and waterbrush, though the black and white drawing is done with a 6B graphite stick, which I would recommend for it's lovely range of marks.
Having John working with me is invaluable at this time of year. If I'm not in the studio for days on end, I need someone to answer the emails, buy my train tickets, send out the invoices, tell me where I'm going next day and, most important of all, make me a nice cup of tea when I get home! Thank you John :-)
If you are interested, here are some of my hot tips for drawing people in public. There is also a short film about keeping a sketchbook on the film page of my website.
A rather unusual project has come my way...
Wakefield's central library is a brand new building (I did some storytelling to help celebrate the opening in November). There is a very long, very empty wall running through the children's library. It's supposed to be decorated with a mural. The mural was part of the original building contract, but the various designs offered were apparently awful and the librarian's rejected them all.
So, I got an email asking if I had any ideas. Everyone thought it would be a good idea to involve local children in some way, so I dedicated one of my long train journeys to giving it thought.
Which is why I was in Wakefield again this week.
I didn't really fancy painting onto the actual wall: that's very much out of my comfort zone, especially as it's over 12 metres long (!). Yikes.
My idea was to bring a couple of school groups into the library for illustration workshops and get them to draw (on paper) various animals chasing one another through the library (books flying everywhere, horrified librarians...). I would then take these home, scan in my favourites, and use Photoshop to combine them into one long, digital illustration, which I could simply send to a printer, to have made into panels, to attach to the wall.
Which all sounds kind of straightforward, doesn't it?. Hah! If only.
The workshops were the easy bit - they went really well and we had a lot of fun together. The children did some smashing illustrations, which they've taken back to school, to finish colouring in.
But, when the drawings come back next week, I have to play around, grouping them in different ways, designing the mural's layout. Which means I need to get the individual animals to a scale where I can move them around in a space the same shape as the actual wall. This is the tricky bit.
Even scaled right down, the wall is too long and thin to look at on the computer as a whole, but I don't have a real-life space anything like big enough to lay out the actual children's drawings on the floor. Hmmmm.....
Plus, even when I have somehow designed the mural and scanned in all the drawings, I'll need to create the final, digital artwork in several sections: even at one quarter size, the entire file will be so massive, it would crash the computer several times over!!
I'll let you know how things progress...
In the meantime, I hope you like these
watercolour pencil sketches, which I did on my way to Wakefield on Wednesday morning.
Last week I took the train to London and spent a whole day in meetings with various publishers, showing them the stories I have been working on recently.
I have worked with quite a few of the larger publishers over the years, although my new book,
Swap!, is being published by
Gullane, who also published my very first book
The Show at Rickety Barn. We've produced 12 books together in as many years, including the first one I also wrote myself:
When You're Not Looking!.
But I didn't show this latest batch of new stories to them because, at the end of last year, Gullane were put on ice by the company who owns them. The staff were made redundant and many ongoing projects were cancelled (luckily not mine - phew). Gullane won't be commissioning any books for the foreseeable future and my back-list with them is being handled by another publisher.
This is very sad as I have built up some great working relationships with the team at Gullane. Mine does sound like a dream job from the outside but, like all work, it's not always easy. From time to time you do get clashes of personality, break-downs in communication and frustrations that make you grind your teeth. But I can honestly say that the editors, art directors and designers at Gullane have always been an absolute joy to work with. Thanks guys.
Anyway, this is one of the reasons why I've been working so hard to put together my presentations. Not only am I looking for a home for some of the exciting new story ideas John and I have been working on together, but I am also on the lookout for a new publisher to fill Gullane's boots.
It all seemed to go very well at my various meetings last week, though you can never really tell for sure. One thing I've learned about publishing is that you mustn't count your chickens, even when they are hatched and squawking. In the world of children's books, there are still plenty of things which can go wrong!
I'll let you know if I have any good news, but it's
Bologna Children's Book Fair in a few weeks, one of the most important events on the picture book calendar, so everything else will be put on hold until that's out of the way. Luckily it's also
World Book Day coming up, so all my school visits will keep me well occupied in the meantime.
I really like this sketch, but it was nearly a right old mess.
I had been showing my sketchbook to some Y2 children in Leeds and did a quick demonstration of the watercolour pencils and waterbrush I use (kids always love it - magic paint). I must have not quite screwed the top back on my brush properly: when I started to use it later on the train home, I suddenly has a small lake on my sketch!
I didn't want to blot it off, as that would definitely ruin the drawing, so I blew on it, fanned it and tipped it back and forth, trying not to spill any of the inky water in my lap. It took the rest of the journey home to dry. I still had to walk through Sheffield Station wafting my open sketchbook back and forth in the air (what an attention seeker).
It's odd how it goes. Late last year, I felt like a commuter to Nottingham but, more recently, I seem to have been back and forth to Leeds a lot. I was there working with KS1 children on Tuesday and Thursday of last week, although the two events were unconnected. As usual, I was enjoying myself as much as the kids. It's such a great excuse to tap into the bit of you that is still 8 years old!
The real school visits season is yet to begin: there's always a surge around World Book Day. I am doing another couple of days next week, then have a week's grace before it really starts and I am visiting somewhere different almost every day for a fortnight. Luckily, I have just about finished visualising the new stories I need to show to my publishers, so everything is under control (phew).
I finished off a very busy year of author visits on Tuesday, with a really positive session at Farnborough secondary school in Nottingham (their art department is brilliant!). It was nothing to do with all the primary school visits I've been doing in Nottingham - just a coincidence.
This is a follow-up to a project I did in half a dozen Nottingham secondary schools a while ago, running illustration workshops with Y7 children. I was invited to go back to see a book the students had created as a result of the work we did together, and to give prizes to those involved.
While I was there, I did another illustration workshop. Trouble was, because it was a mixed group, some of whom had been part of the previous project, I had to do something completely new. I also had the added challenge that some children were with me all morning, whilst others had to come and go, because of other lesson commitments - tricky.
I decided to adapt a Giddy Goat idea that has worked well in primaries. We briefly recapped about how to use facial expressions and body-language, then they all created their own character balancing at the top of an A3 sheet, suitable terrified or show-offy. They were then challenged to balance as many different and interesting objects as possible beneath, creating a surreal tower spanning 2 or 3 sheets of paper. They really got the message and we had some lovely ideas, where different elements of the towers interacted with one another and with their environment.
I was chatting to the teacher afterwards and complimenting her on the inspirational environment she had created: wonderful artwork by the students everywhere. The current art rooms are in temporary buildings in the playground, because next year they move to their new build. BUT, it turns out they will not be allowed to attach anything to the walls in the new art room, no children's paintings pinned up, not even a staple to attach a line to peg work up. Formal display frames only, because the new-build funding involves private investment, so it won't belong to the school. How crazy is that?
I've been back and forth to Nottingham on the same train so many times recently that I've begun to feel like a real commuter. I even started to recognise the same people in the mornings.
These are some sketches from last week. I've filled half a sketchbook during this project (I was especially prolific on my wrong train adventure) and my favourite colours have been worn down to stumps.
It's been good fun (Y3 children are my favourite) and it's made a really nice change to work with the same group of children for a whole day at a time. Still, I can't say I'm not pleased to be back in the studio again after such a long stretch of nothing but school visits, interspersed with odd days of mad catch-up at the computer...
Which is what I have mostly been doing with the end of this week, though John has been great, holding the fort for me over the last few weeks, fielding enquiries, ordering books and writing all the invoices.
I am really looking forward to getting back to doing some actual writing and illustration on Monday morning (but not too bright and early...)
These are the sketches from my last couple of days of Nottingham story-workshop trips. That's it now. Just as well, as I started to go down with a cold last night. I dosed myself up with Paracetamols this morning and managed to get through the day without too much trouble, though I'm beginning to feel a bit iffy now, so I should probably get off the computer and go and slump in front of the TV...
Since my various bouts of laryngitis, I'm always a bit nervous about straining my voice on school visits when I soldier on through a cold. Luckily the Y3 children at Whitemoor Academy were lovely and I didn't need to raise my voice at all. Both the teachers were fantastic too. I got some lovely feedback from them at the end of my 2 days there, and left feeling very loved. A perfect visit to end on.
It takes about an hour each way to Nottingham. On the way there yesterday, I patiently waited for it to get properly light, which unfortunately took the first 45 minutes of the journey then, once again, I quickly drew the sunrise skies through the window:
I was in a secondary school for the day this time, doing an illustration workshop with a group of Y9s (a tricky age...), but it seemed to go well. I shared lots of tips to help with their drawing and they all came away with some good work to use towards an illustration they are each creating for their art BTEC.
It was only pure coincidence that the school which invited me, out of anywhere in the country it could have been, also happened to be in Nottingham!
Travelling back on the way home it was already dark, so I drew people instead of skies:
As I mentioned last week, I have got really into sketching the changing skies out of my train window. Here are a few more, which I did last week on my way to and from Nottingham:
I am back on the same train again today, so will hopefully catch another sunset and sunrise, and maybe even a storm like the one below:
I am really attracted to the transitory nature of the colours and shapes: I love the idea of having just a minute or two to capture what I can before it's all changed, or disappeared behind an embankment, or both.
The watercolour pencils have proved a perfect tool for such incredibly speedy impressions, especially in the tricky set-up of being on a train with limited space. Thank you Derwent for introducing me to them!
Afterwards, I got a tour of their new exhibition spaces. They have David Attenborough no less, coming to open the museum area, with its collection of weird and wonderful stuffed animals (including an actual crocodile imprisoned under the glass floor!).
It was quite a busy week, as the Wednesday was Bag-a-Book Day. I spent a totally crazy day with poet Paul Cookson, entertaining looked-after-children. It was even more bonkers than last year. I got the children creating funky, animal collages out of fake fur and Paul helped them make up funny poems. Then we cross-fertilised: I illustrated the poems on the flipchart, and Paul wrote poems about my drawings. Every now and then we would break into song. All good fun (though I was totally shattered at home time!).
This week, I did another of my 'creating stories through illustration' workshops in Nottingham. I've got nine more days to come, repeating the same event in different schools. There's a 2 week break first, although not really, since between now and then I am visiting a couple of primary schools in Leeds, then travelling up to the North East for 3 days at the Northern Children's Book Festival, including a joint Gala Day event with my friend and picture book collaborator, Julia Jarman.
Phew! Where on earth will I find the energy for Christmas?
By:
Lynne Chapman,
on 8/15/2012
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On Monday I was in libraries again, for the Summer Reading Challenge, doing events similar to the series of summer workshops I've been doing in Sheffield, but just a bit further up the road, in Derbyshire.
It was a very good thing I wasn't far afield, as I was a complete idiot that morning: I left my folder by the front door at home, the one with all the artwork I use to talk around. Not good. I realised my mistake as I was walking into Sheffield station, but there was no time to go back - my train was due in 15 minutes.
As usual, John came to the rescue. He drove my folder all the way to Brimington Library for me and hand-delivered it. He was so quick off the mark that he beat me there - what a hero!
This is me using some of the roughs that were in the folder, to explain the process of designing the big bear in Bears on the Stairs. I also showed them a piece of big, pastel artwork from Stinky! and read them Dragon's Dinner, deconstructing my illustrations as I went. Then it was time to get stuck into some drawing.
The children first learnt how to choose faces and body language to communicate emotions...
...then we all created lots of angry, sad, frightened, shocked, sarcastic and grumpy cats, dogs, bears, owls, warthogs, monkeys, hamsters etc.
After lunch my minder and I nipped down the road to Staveley Library, where I did it all again.
Both the workshops were really well attended: we had to squeeze everyone in, so a big thank you to the guys at the library service for their help with publicity.
By:
Lynne Chapman,
on 7/24/2012
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We picked the perfect weekend for our Peak District SketchCrawl, much against the odds, I must say!
Given how it's been this summer so far, I was getting worried that we'd be rained off, but it was lovely sunshine at 9am on Sunday morning, when a small group of us met at Sheffield Station and took the train off into the hills.
Half an hour later, at the tiny station of Edale, we got out and walked up the track to the new, state-of-the-art visitor's centre. We sketched there for 45 minutes, while we waited for other people to arrive.
On a different day I might have had a go at the unusual, rounded building, with its lovely 'green roof', featuring a stepped waterfall which runs down through it's centre, then cascades over the doorway and down into a little rock pool in front of the entrance.
But I had psyched myself up for countryside, so felt in the mood for hills not architecture.
So I perched myself rather precariously on a dry-stone wall in the car park and painted this:
Yesterday I was in Birmingham, doing events for their children's book festival. As usual, I wanted to draw on the train. I have about 6 sketchbooks that are almost full: just a few blank pages left at the end. That's a problem though, as the chances are I will run out before the end of the trip. That's why there are so many books on my shelf like that!
So, once again, I started a new sketchbook, only this one was a bit different: this was one I made myself. I wanted to try out Japanese book-binding as it looked simpler than ordinary binding and really decorative. So with the help of YouTube, I created this cute little thing above. It's a bit longer than an A6. I got the cover fabric by cutting up an Oxfam-shop shirt.
These are the sketches I did on the journey. It was rather a bits-and-pieces kind of trip, as not many people seemed to be in the mood for staying still for me. I had great difficulty on the way there, as the train was almost empty. I just had this man below, sitting right opposite me:
That's always tricky, as it's hard not
Here are some of the train sketches I did earlier this week, on my way to and from Selby, visiting Longman's Hill Primary School, which I mentioned last time.
Any regular readers will know that this is the way I always pass the time on my train journeys and that, if you see me on a train anytime and don't want to be sketched, for goodness sake, don't fall asleep:
If you fancy having a go at drawing people in public, take a look at this post which gives away all my hot tips for how to get started, the best places to try it, how to spot the people that will stay still long enough, and how to get away with not being noticed!
I also talk you through how I got back into using my sketchbo
You may be wondering why I've not told you how it's going with my new book...
Well, it's mainly because there's been another short delay. My publisher had some new ideas for changes which I wanted to see before I got too stuck into the detailed drawings.
I've been waiting for final layout sheets to come through, showing their revised ideas about the story's pacing and which text and images they'd like to appear on which pages. They arrived towards the end of last week, but I haven't made enough progress to show you yet, as I spent most of this week working in Nottingham, rather than in the studio.
I'll tell you about that another time, but for now, here's a selection of the sketches I did on the train during my 4 days travelling back and forth. Which brings me to my near disaster, first thing Friday morning...
Last week, John and I took the train down to London for a couple of days. You might have noticed that we've had several brilliant trips out recently. I am rewarding myself for working so hard over the last month and doing 22 days of workshops, talks or school visits out of 31! Pretty full-on: fun but exhausting, especially with all the travelling about.
We've been especially lucky with how this bit of 'reward' time has coincided with a heat wave. It seemed wicked to spent too much time inside, so we took the boat down the Thames to Greenwich, where we pottered and chilled.
Next morning though, we spurned the sun, leaped on the tube and got down to the real business of the trip: the Hockney exhibition at the RA. I've been so looking forward to it since we booked the tickets back in January.
I don't do as many writing workshops as I do illustration ones, so it made a nice change to do a day of them on Monday, with the KS2 children at the lovely Darton Primary School just outside Barnsley.
I am trying out some new ideas, so I did things a little differently to previous occasions. I drew a different illustrated scene on the flipchart for each class, with them suggesting different elements, then used that as the starting point for their stories.
To decide on their hero, I made each child write an animal on a piece of paper. Then we mixed them up in a bag, and handed them back out randomly.It was a two-day visit, so I spent Tuesday with KS1, doing storytellings. The children were all lovely and I was looked after really well (the Headmaster kept popping in with mugs of tea for me all day long!).
And I have to say, they had the best displays I have ever s
I couldn't resist this lovely old nun. She was sitting across the aisle in the row behind me, on my train coming back towards Sheffield last week, after a couple of nights away from home, working firstly with Reading's Educational Library Service and then at St Nicholas Primary School in Twyford.
Yes, I'm still travelling all over the place at the moment, clocking up the rail-miles and filling up the sketchbooks. I've had two stints of staying away overnight: I was only in my own bed for one night between the Reading trip and a couple of days up in Huddersfield area, doing mostly lectures.
Do you recognise the man above? By strange coincidence, I found myself opposite him the week previous and posted a close up of his face last time. Given I'm doing one-off journeys at random times, it was odd to not just be on the same train, but in the same carriage and only a few seats away! I couldn't decide if he was watching me draw him or just staring in my direction.
By:
Lynne Chapman,
on 12/13/2011
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Last week, it made a nice change to work for 2 days in a secondary school. They are so BIG compared to primary schools!
I visited Becket School this time last year, but it took some doing: thick snow stopped all trains for a while. They invited me back this year and it did start to snow again, but fortunately we got away with it.
I was working the whole 2 days with Y7 students (1st years). We started with a lecture to them all - around 170. Above I am talking about characterisation: how you can use pointy or round shapes to suggest evil or vulnerable creatures, and how carefully chosen clothing can give hints to a character's personality.
5 Comments on Becket School: Workshops with Older Kids, last added: 12/14/2011
By:
Lynne Chapman,
on 12/1/2011
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This week has been another busy one...
I started it by spending all weekend locked up in the studio with my nose to the computer, working on my Baby Can Bounce scans in Photoshop, cutting out vignettes and then tinkering with the digital images, to help them 'bed in' with the coloured backgrounds we have dropped behind:
So, as you can imagine, I was already feeling a little jaded on Monday morning, when I had to drag myself out of my warm, cosy bed at 5.15am (!!!) to make a 6.30 train to Durham.
Now, this wouldn't have been so bad if I wasn't still recovering from particularly late night on Saturday. It was my good friend (and fellow illustrator) Lydia Monks's birthday, so a group of us donned fancy dress and went to a 1970's themed party. Arriving home in the wee small hours, we staggered from the taxi, went to let ourselves in, then realised... I had left my handbag in the back of the cab, whose tail lights were just rounding the corner.
John made chase (in full 70's gear, including a wig), but to no avail. So: no door key, no mobile, no way in. Once we'd finished swearing, John scaled the fence and broke a wi
Remember the dog story idea? Well, I took it down to London a little while ago and showed my sketch sheets to a couple of my editors. It's always a wee bit scary, pitching a project that you think is really fun, and hoping that other people think so too.
On the train down, I did my usual people-sketching, which takes so much concentration that it is a great way to take your mind off thinking too much about how things are going to go.
I enjoy going down to London. It's 20 years since I lived there and a great many things have changed, but in some ways it still feels the same and I feel very at home travelling about. I do like the buzz of the frenetic activity that is going on everywhere; I even enjoy the craziness of the tube, but these days that mad buzz is more fun as a visitor than if I had to live there every day.
It turned out to be a really positive day. I read my story aloud to give it as much life as possible, I even did all the voices! One publisher in particular was very interested (hurr
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I love them all! :)
Thank you Gaia
Every person has the same-shaped upper lip. Interesting! Were thy all in the same family? Related?