BICKIDS Competition

Last month I had the pleasure of being invited to be a judge in the annual competition run by BIC -- the BIC PICTURE -- to find talented young artists amongst Britain's primary school children. My fellow judges were children's TV presenter Kirsten O'Brien, and colour expert Cecile Parenton, who heads the children's division of BIC. The winners have just been announced.

The theme was 'What I want to be when I grow up,' and the ambitions of the nation's children ranged from becoming a mad scientist to a roller coaster designer. If this small sample is representative, there'll be lots of footballers, astronauts, dress designers and chefs around in the future!

It's not as easy as you might imagine, picking winning pictures from a room full of shortlisted entrants, and there were several (good-humored!) arguments along the way. We had some really lovely designs to sort through though, and choosing an overall winner was especially difficult. Well done to all who took part. Congratulations to all the age group winners, and especially to Laura Burton who won the main prize. Laura wants to be a children's book writer, and with her winning picture she's made an impressive start.

I've pictured a few of my favorites here, but this is a link to the BIC Kids website, which gives more information: http://www.bickids.com/index.php?p_sa=actualite&p_actu=1 and to the Flickr site which shows more of the winning entrants: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebicpicture.

No Line!

I've just received the proof copy of a book I wrote and illustrated for OUP earlier in the year -- a re-telling of the Elves and the Shoemaker. It was a bit of a departure for me because I decided to do away with a holding line, which for a long time has been the way I've preferred to work in Photoshop. I rather liked the result. The pictures felt fresher somehow.

I think a dissatisfaction with your own style is something that most illustrators feel at some point or other, and I've certainly jumped about more than most in an attempt to find a perfect formula. This approach made me re-examine the way I added shadow and texture, and I even found myself drawing the roughs in a slightly different way, aware that I could do more than usual with elements such as candle light... if that makes any sense. Anyway, I felt I was using a different part of my brain, which was enjoyable!

Michael Rosen Illustration

I was recently asked to illustrate a story by Michael Rosen for a book that’s being put together on behalf of the Bristol Children’s Hospital. Contributors include Jacqueline Wilson, Alexander McCall Smith, Julia Donaldson, Michael Morpurgo, Anne Fine, Nichola Bayley, Quentin Blake, Michael Foreman, Emma Chichester Clark, Nick Sharratt and several others. The story is called 'The Worst Cough In The World', and this is the illustration I came up with. Nice to work in black and white again. It's the first purely B/W illustration I've done in ages.

Dog Did It! out today!

I'm pleased to announce that "Dog Did It!" is released today! It's written by Lynne Garner, illustrated by me and published by Piccadilly Press. The story is about a troll who eats too much green worm soup and tries to shift the blame for the ensuing series of farts onto his pet dog. But Dog doesn't like being the fall guy and plots revenge...

We're working on a sequel at the moment. Look out for previews at the Bologna Book Fair.

Here's a double-page spread of Boris the Troll guzzling his green worms. Yum!

Full-ongna for Bologna

It's been a very busy period for me. I've been doing lots of work in time for the publishing extravaganza that is the Bologna Book Fair. Held this year at the end of March, it's the biggest book fair in the world devoted to children's publishing.

I've been working to produce artwork for three books. Two of them feature my little character Hugo and his madcap scientist family. In the first book they build a giant robot and in the second, a rocket ship. These will be published by Scholastic next year. The third book is a sequel to 'Dog Did It!' written by Lynne Garner and will be published by Piccadilly.

Here's a sneak peek at a spread from 'Hugo and the Robot', showing the family as they begin to cobble together a few bits and pieces they've found around the workshop...

Merry Christmas

Festive Greetings to one and all!

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home

Library Closures

Libraries are closing all over the country. Our town lost its small library two months ago, just one of many. Just as worryingly, there is a pervasive trend to reduce the number of books on shelves and replace them with banks of computers. This means a profound disenfranchisement for many people of older years who don't have computers, don't know how to use them and yet retain a deep love of books.

My mother is one such person. Recently when she visited the large library in the town close by, she went to the floor which had always housed the bulk of the books for years and was surprised to see only rows of computers. She asked where the books had been moved to and was pointed to the back of the room, where she found that a couple of shelves were all that remained of the library's repository of books. The rest of the collection had been sold off cheaply to make way for the computers.

Libraries seem to be seen as soft targets and councillors up and down the land, under great pressure to reduce costs, are slashing the amount of money available to the library service. This is cultural barbarianism. It's taken well over a hundred years to provide the country with its many libraries. It looks as though it will take but a few months to destroy a large proportion of them.

Jeremy Hunt MP and Ed Vaizey MP are the two ministers at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport who are responsible for over seeing the well-being of libraries. I urge anyone who reads this to write to these people, and to their own MPs and protest as strongly as possible about this disastrous policy.

Also you can contact Alan Gibbons and become a signatory to his Campaign for the Book  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=43030635058. Alan is currently sending an open letter to the ministers and requires more signatures. People like Philip Pullman, Michael Rosen and Jacqueline Wilson have already added their names.


Other links: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/28/library-closures-catherine-bennett

http://www.whoatemybrain.com/2010/12/thoughts-from-reluctant-library-user.html
http://davecousins.blogspot.com/
http://notesfromtheslushpile.blogspot.com/2010/12/bye-bye-libraries-bye-bye-civilization.html
Katherine Evans