At The Fun Fair!

I got asked to do an illustration sample page for a publisher last week and while I unfortunately didn't get the job, I really enjoyed drawing this spread. One particular animal keeps popping up in this picture; what is it? :P

Cryptids: Globster!

Ninja Skills: Posing!

Cryptids: Mongolian Death Worm!

Ninja Skills: Duplication!

Cryptids: Jackalope!

Ninja Skills: Romancing

Ninja Skills: Puzzle Solving

Draw Draw Draw

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior!

For the awesome Jurassic Dorks show that we held in December, one of my pieces was based on Mad Max 2 - a great post-apocalyptic film! I had such a good time drawing these and I really like how the characters came out on the photographic backgrounds. I'm now itching to do the same for Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome!

All-New Brains Etc!

I received a box of the new version of Brains Etc. from the lovely folks at Zeta Comics yesterday, and I have to say, they look awesome! This version has a lovely full-colour card cover and recycled paper pages. This version also has new pages and activities!

How do I look drawn?

Whenever I'm asked to do a self-portrait or provide a picture of myself for a website, I immediately go for a drawn picture. I don't photograph well and can do myself a little bit of justice (however inaccurate it is) with a cartoon version of myself. This is how I usually draw myself - not too insulting but not too flattering either.

How I usually draw me

I have recently started giving drawing lessons to under 11 year olds and had a brilliant time with 8 year old Lolita drawing faces and portraits. We started off drawing each other on a template and this is her wonderful effort:

How an 8 year old draws me

I love this drawing! She really captured my cheesy grin and I love the curly bits of hair at the top. I since discovered that we both share a love of drawing animals so next week's lesson will not involve any people drawing! I also recently dug out some of my old school books from the early '80s and found this rather disturbing self-portrait from 1986. I love that my 6 year old self thought I had a flat head, a brown neck and arm and blue fingernails. Go me! Needless to say, I find this rather amusing!

How my 6 year old self drew me

Interview and more books!

January is turning out to be a busy month, just when I was expecting not much to happen. I was interviewed by the awesome site, Fuel Your Illustration which is great, full of cool artists and other illustration goodness. I've also landed another kid's book through a publishers I've been wanting to work with for a while and I cannot wait to get started on the project! Hopefully it will lead to other bits through them and I really hope so because I love their stuff. I'm also working on another book about trains so the next few weeks are looking to be a bit busy. I'd rather it were busy than slow! :P

Something Weird Is Going On: Bad Grammar

This annoys the HELL out of me. If I ever do it myself by accident I spend the rest of the day ashamed and sulking.

A Cool Blog and an Odd Discovery!

I recently found a really cool blog called Strange Kids Club which appeals to me on every level! An awesome mixture of featured artists, films reviews and general geeky oddness found on the web, I thought I'd drop them a line.

To my delight, the lovely chap who runs the site liked my work enough to feature me on their Fan Art Friday with some of my Lovecraft work! I'll be keeping an eye on this site as I can see a lot of cool bits and pieces being featured on there. Also the main site banner is pretty much my childhood in a nutshell...

And now on to the odd discovery! As ashamed as I am to admit it, I occasionally Google my own name to see if my work pops up on blogs and sites (mainly because you just can't keep track of where you might have been featured on the web. My excuse, anyway...) and found this rather amusing article. Well, what can I say to that? Hopefully, I made my case in the comments! :P

Activity Books Out In May!

The four activity books I drew all the single-colour artwork for are listed on Amazon - yay! They're due for release in May (I want them NOW!) and available for pre-order. The Baby Animals book cover is the only indication so far that my artwork is in them (all of the books have a different colour artist) but it's pretty obvious which element in the picture is mine! XD