Scuba & orange squash bottles

...& now I'm off to learn to scuba dive for real finally so no more post for a couple of weeks

Unruly eyebrows & earwax placement

I live in fear of the day my eyebrows take on a bristley unruly life of their own but who tangles them in the night huh?

Group of critturs

Sullen rock teen

Following on from the ageing rockers in a previous post...

Dinner time (with octopus)

A particularly 'grappley' meal.

Mind that seagull!

Some experimental colouring in with beasties & cross seagulls*

*seagulls ALWAYS look cross

Old rockers never die (they just appear in more documentaries)

I love a good rockumentary, was watching various '70s survivors in varied stages of 'ageing pantomime dame mode' telling their stories on TV the other night...


'Spurious Gack Anecdote', really ought to be a name of a band

Happy World Book Day!

It's World Book Day!

Fat Tuesday!

Yay! Pancakes!

Happy birthday!

Werewolves, killer tomatoes & mummies...

A werewolf trying to find a job, a sad tomato & a mummy wrapped in pink toilet paper from 'Making Monsters Happy' by Susan Gates.

More people

...is so bracing

Dreaming of the seaside - my drenched Soho homage to John Hassall's famous Skegness design

Splashing into the streets

Wet night in Soho last night reminded me of the line 'The boys just dive right off the cars
And splash into the street' from Time by Tom Waits (very little relevance apart from that but it's always good to have context)

More (late) valentines beasties

Some valentines based beasties drawn on a wet Valentines Friday afternoon

Happy V*lentines!

Celebrating (monster) diversity

Reward - a diamond dog

I always like to promise a nice reward to anyone who returns a lost sketchbook*

* the 'gold helicopter' I promised in another book hasn't tempted anyone to return my lost sketchbook from the summer last year : (

Cross robot/lizard hybrid

Today...so far...

Ruminations on the interweb...

Diary of Dennis the Menace - available now!

Some time in early May last year I was contacted by my agent to say that Puffin were looking for someone to give a 'new illustrative approach' to Dennis the Menace for a series of books written by award winning children's author of 'The Wrong Pong' Steven Butler.
I paused from sipping a large gold flecked martini on my yacht, waved away a palm frond bearing serving girl & thought '...hmmm, draw one of my childhood heroes...HELL YEAH!'

*montage of furious scribbling, various life events, getting an invite to the Beano 75th birthday party, uplifting music etc.*

...& so, the first book, The Diary Of Dennis The Menace is published today, it's very funny, keeping the right level of mischief & chaos (you bumfaces you!) nicely designed by Mandy Norman, & the pictures ain't too shabby either.
Has been an extremely enjoyable job, I dearly wish my mum was still around so I could proudly present her with a copy.
Here's a few of the pictures (I got to draw a few other old favourites too! : )

(Puffin Books, TM © DC Thomson & Co. Ltd.)

Gloombrella

Today was one of those days.

Pensive monkey

I dreamed about lots of brilliant monkeys last night but was too slow to photograph them in the dream. I feel a bit sad about this today

I've just received my copies of Diary Of Dennis the Menace!

Very excited to have just received my copies of The Diary of Dennis The Menace written by the very funny Steven Butler , drawn by me & published by Puffin books. They look superb, congrats to Mandy Norman for a lovely design job - it's published on 6th February so I shouldn't really give you a peek but I'm very excited...this is how I feel... DING! DONG!* : )

*If you're a fan club member you'll KNOW what this means!