Jargonisation

I was asked to do some drawings for someone in the business of selling International Education. The lecture to be illustrated was so full of indecipherable jargon that I began by making fun of the words themselves. To my surprise, the client liked it...

Carousel

This is an article, by Chris Stephenson, recently published in Carousel magazine.
Photograph by Claire McNamee.
Click to read.

Quentin Blake

There is currently a retrospective exhibition of the works of David Wright at Linden Artsmill in Hebden Bridge. His intriguing paintings are about to go on tour, as far as the new National Gallery in Pakistan. Previous exhibitions at Linden Artsmill include works of Paula Rego, David Quirke and Quentin Blake. I was delighted to be asked to open the exhibition by Quentin Blake during the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival two years ago and I also ran an Illustration Workshop that week. The picture is of Quentin Blake, Steve Childs and me, after a talk Quentin gave at the Artsmill during his exhibition and some of David Wright's paintings can be seen in the background.

Twenty Second Giraffe

The Children's Book festival at Rotherham this week had a packed programme and included Melvyn Burgess, Ian Whybrow and Ben Haggarty. Children and parents alike were spellbound by Ben Haggarty's storytelling although the content was sometimes dark and gruesome. At one of my visits to the Rotherham libraries, I was challenged by the children to draw something in 20 seconds... They asked for a giraffe.

Icelandic books

Some of my books from the "This Little Baby" series were published in Icelandic some years ago by Mal Og Menning. On a recent visit to Reykjavik I had a meeting with the publisher, Sig Gunnarsdottir. I was made very welcome and was thrilled to hear that Sig almost knew my books off by heart as she had read them so often to her daughter when she was small... And Iceland was amazing. Photograph by Neil Kemp.