2 September 2014

The one where we turned off the internet….

As the kids go back to school, I thought I'd try and get back into the day to day swing of things by writing my own summer holiday notes.

I spent most of August on Anglesey, North Wales. It's where I grew up, where my parents still live and where we all seem to migrate back to in the summer to regroup, drink lots of tea and spend hours on various beaches.

Despite all this beach combing and fresh air, with several adults, teenagers, various aged children, 1 desktop pc, 4 laptops, 4 tablets and 3 smartphones in the house inevitably the internet wireless signal was working it's little heart out most hours. One day I really think The Internet threw a big strop and flounced off. Signals were intermittent and weak. So we did a rare thing and turned it off! After several moments of panicked teenage faces "I've got no signal!" everyone excepted it and looked around for what to do. After several pots of tea and a few laps of the garden on bikes, we turned to the bucket of pebbles that had been collected over weeks that languished by the back door. This is the result! 

The children's array of painted pebbles - Dr Who appears a bit as Peter Capaldi 12th Doctor was about to debut on
BBC1!




Then I got hooked myself and probably took it all a bit too seriously - in the most fun way I could!






Owls for my sister.























After about 4 hours we turned the internet back on and normal service was resumed. However it was great having all these faces and painted pebbles to look at. 

I'm as guilty as anyone at times for just sitting and scanning my phone and social media. Sometimes I think I really need to switch it off more often to actually create something unexpected. It was one of the most enjoyable things I've done in a long time. 

I might just leave a little face on the beach amongst the pebbles……













25 August 2014

Twinkle Twinkle what a STAR! .

I'm so excited to finally show you my new project with picture book legend Katharine Holabird and Hodder. It will be published on September 4th.


Introducing - Twinkle! - A new little fairy with a cheeky twinkle in her eye - always ready to try new things and often getting it badly wrong!





Twinkle is my first fairy, and in all honesty I feel that it took me a while to 'connect' with my own fairy magic. My teenage years were full of writing miserable poetry and concentrating of being a hippy with goth tendencies. This seeped into my illustration. I loved shadows, dark colours, sinister and quirky imagery. Even my first few picture books were a delight for me, revelling in Witches, witches cats, magic and Dragons. 



However, before I went all dark and shadowy I loved fairies as a small child. I once dreamed of getting married wearing beautiful fairy wings. I often devoured the original flower fairy books. My favourite was May (my birthday), the Daisy fairy (all the hours making daisy chains left a lasting impression) and the Bluebell fairy as I lived near to a woodland covered in bluebells and used to spend many hours there in the carefree 1970's. I also remember spending lots of time in my Nains small back yard gazing at the fuchsias after she'd told me they were flower ballet dancers, which they really were. 


And so, around 32 years after I'd gotten over my fairy-flower love - I felt pleasantly surprised when Hodder mentioned to me the possibility of illustrating a new fairy character from the pen of the well-renowned Katharine Holabird. At first, I really believed that I couldn't do it. I felt that I wouldn't be able to make it pretty and magical enough. I suppose I was scared I wouldn't do it justice.  However, after a bit more thought I felt that it would be a new challenge and I set about re-connecting with my inner fairy. 

I needn't have worried. Having my studio in the garden, it seemed all set up for me. All the childhood fun was just waiting in the back of my mind just waiting to come out. I even remembered that when I  did get married I wore a huge sparkly daisy in my hair and had a simple bouquet of white daisies.





After playing around for a while with characters, I concentrated on nature and all its shapes and colours.





 Fairy wings were dragon fly wings, all delicate and vibrant with colour. 





Fairy dresses were flowers. 

Twinkle (Daisy) - I think Twinkle was always going to have a daisy dress in the back of my mind.



Twinkles friend Lou-Lou (Primrose)



Twinkles friend Pippa (fuchsia)



Fairy houses were seed pods and conkers. 






Fungi and toadstools became a fairy school and houses. 



All of this close up of nature culminated for me in my favourite spread of the book - the endpapers. Endpapers are often my favourite part of creating a book (see previous posts in the archive). Endpapers for me are a 'free' to explore things that don't have to necessarily move on the story. However with Twinkle the endpapers seemed to be the key to everything. I wanted to draw a tree in which all the fairy seed pods were hanging. Then it came to me. What if the whole of Twinkles world was set in a huge magical tree? We all decided to go for it. It was the first spread I coloured and I feel that it set the tone, colour and village plan for the whole world. 
Endpapers
SparkleTree Forest (detail)
Maybe the beginnings of Twinkle were laid decades ago amongst the flowers of the back garden and the woods? After all this re-connecting with nature and after using nearly every shade of pink I could conjure up from my colour palette - Twinkle is ready to shine! She's a great little fairy full of feisty fun and a hint of clumsiness. 


with a great array of forest animals who aren't afraid to show their feelings! 




Twinkles world is everywhere. Just a walk in the woods or the garden will show you. Next time you find a conker shell, a seed pod or even a beautifully coloured leaf maybe, just maybe……you've stumbled into Twinkles part of the forest?