Man eating tiger

The 'oldest joke in the book'™ brought to you from those nice folk who brought you Wet Sketchbook!

Wet sketchbook (slight return)

Chicken hatted shenanigans incorporating damp book & Tesco bag

Wet sketchbooks, cats, balloons & other stories

My sketchbook was left in a damp tent & seems to have remained irrevocably soggy

Summer Reading Challenge certificates & medal!

I finally got my certificate & medal for the Summer Reading Challenge! There's some great photos of various kids from around the countries with their certificates here!

With a risk of repeating myself, I had great fun working on this project & with everybody involved so big thanks to Damian Kelleher, designer Helen Boyle & Tamlyn Francis at Arena my agents!

Vikings!

Have been drawing Vikings today, well aware that horned helmets were almost certainly a historical fabrication (see also 'Raquel Welch & pterodactyls' & 'Margaret Thatcher & compassionate nature' etc.) but they're such fun to draw! To blazes with historical accuracy I say!

Hairball of Horror!

Just received this through the post I was commissioned to re-cover the Space Mutts series of books by Michael Broad published by Macmillan a while back so I designed the main text & drew the mean cats, bewildered poodle & the eponymous hairball(!)

Note to publishers - it really keeps a humble illustrator happy if you actually send copies of the books / magazines we've illustrated to us - unfortunately there's plenty of you out there who don't bother (you KNOW who you are!) - it's really nice to have the actual book in your hot little hands!

Sore rabbit

Part of a series of sick animals ( see also 'The collar of shame™' )

The collar of shame™

poor kitty : (

Cats & dogs

A (fighting) cat & dog rescued from a sketchbook left in a tent in a rainstorm - there is a moral here somewhere re. camping & illustration...probably. A memento of a particularly British summer.

sleeping dogs doing what they do best...

Drawing a new book full of dogs, here's one of 'em for your canine delectation.

Hot Dogs

Mmmmm... some tasty new seaside-based work served with a healthy dollop of sauce 'n' pomade

(click to view closer as usual)

(not many animals were harmed in the process)

(honest...)

Monkey Theremin (niche publications we have loved)

I love a specialist publication me! (apparently if you give an infinite amount of monkeys theremins eventually they'll compose all of Beethoven's...oh wait, that's typewriters & Shakespeare isn't it?)

See also Zombie Arcade, Victorian Authoritarian

Skellington Ice Cream

this seemed appropriate today (again!) but you can't have too much Tom Waits can ya?

'When it gets too hot for comfort
And you can't get an ice cream cone
T'ain't no sin to take off your skin
And dance around your bones'

Tom Waits

Cartoon Kid book 4 - Emergency!

Jungle whales

Tiger / kangaroo cake fight

Cow wars!

Disgruntled fairies

Hungry chameleons!

School catering...

The new Cartoon Kid book by Jeremy Strong which I illustrated has just been published by Puffin. You get pictures of vampires, cows, fairies, unlikely whales, arguing tigers & kangaroos & more! How can you resist?
I'd humbly suggest you employ shanks' pony & purchase it from your local independent bookshop or else be a lazy a*** & get it off the interweb

bird hat

These are going to be EVERYWHERE in 'London'strendyDalston'™ by about next week - you saw them here first kids!

Gold medals for Story Lab!

We got there first with the old gold medal malarkey with the kids (& cat) in Story Lab for the Summer Reading Challenge! Yay!

Olympic facts #3

Seeing as we just got our first gold in rowing I thought it'd be pertinent to mention how swimming & rowing were intertwined in the 1900 Paris Olympics where the swimming events took place in the river Seine including an obstacle race which swimmers had to clamber over & under rowing boats(!)

(& don't get me started on ducks!)

Olympic Facts #2

Ok, we just got a silver medal in equestrian thingies - as I remember showjumping was on the telly ALL OF THE TIME* in the early / mid seventies - FACT!

*Apart from when the creepy test card girl was on

Olympic facts #1

At the 1900 Paris Olympics they used live pigeons for the shooting event. 300 birds were released and Leon de Lunden won gold when he shot 21 of them. 


(surely London 2012 definitely missed a trick here - certainly give old Nelson a break?)


(from Fitter, Faster, Funnier Olympics: Everything You Wanted to Know About The Olympics But Were Too Afraid to Ask - by Micheal Cox, A & C Black Publishers Ltd)

KAPOW! FREE Superheroes in Newham!

Get your capes on! If you're a Newham resident you get FREE entrance to the Discover Children's Story Centre until Sunday 12 August - including the Superheroes exhibition I illustrated & designed for! How good is that?

Olympics for TFL

Breaking all the health & safety rules known to man for TFL's in-house (station?) magazine (now will you PLEASE stop those annoying Boris announcements on the buses?!?)

The Summer Reading Challenge - Story Lab

Here's some more of the Story Lab artwork I produced for the Reading Agency's Summer Reading Challenge which launched across UK children's libraries on July 14th 2012 - (click to enlarge as usual - there's lots of little details on this one!)

The Summer Reading Challenge

I spent a couple of months at the beginning of the year creating all the characters & scenarios for print and online illustrations and animations for this year’s Summer Reading Challenge – STORY LAB – for The Reading Agency, whose aim is to to get kids reading books.
The Campaign, launched on 14th July has wide press and TV coverage and is featured in UK libraries this summer encouraging kids to read 6 books over the summer holidays.
Here's a few pieces from the campaign

The Economist - Eclipse of the PLC

Ruminations on the difficulties of the public limited company for The Economist magazine (I know, I just draw the pictures. my old man was an Economics lecturer though, does that count?)

Cartoon Kid is July's poster boy!

I'm July's poster boy for my agent Arena Illustration's calendar - illustration was commissioned by The Times for their Campaign For Fun which searches for the most fun school in Britain*.  It features characters from Cartoon Kid, the series by Jeremy Strong, published by Puffin Books which I'm about to begin illustrating the 5th in the series - yay!

* It definitely wasn't the one I went to.

Cerberus the hound of hell (or a hell of a hound)

 

I had the delight last week of seeing some very talented kids at the Discover Childrens Story Centre drawing their versions of Cerberus after some superhero / Greek mythology related drawing workshop shenanigans. Have been pondering the disadvantages of owning a three headed dog since then... imagine the food bills : (

Cat with balloon

Yeah, yeah claws & balloons don't mix etc. etc. They certainly do in MY world!

Celebratory dinosaurs

Pictorial evidence to prove dinosaurs went to birthday parties

'insert war here'

Not so smug™ now huh? (interesting fridge)

Was deliberating about how to make a a drawing of a fridge interesting & seemed appropriate on a day like this

Glass half-full

Butcher's Dogs

'When it gets too hot for comfort
And you can't get an ice cream cone
T'ain't no sin to take off your skin
And dance around your bones'

Tom Waits

Troll pic-nic

Had completely forgotten drawing this & stumbled across it this morning - it was part of a story that I never finished writing a few years back...maybe I should finish it, watch this space...

Aminals...

Crittur of indeterminate species

Murder & Chips

I just received copies of the new Micheal Lawrence Jiggy McCue book Murder & Chips which I drew the front & back cover artwork for - (very pleased that they let me get away with my appalling 'Deadie's' Sauce' pun on the ketchup bottle too)
(thanks to Thy Bui at Orchard books for book design - you can order it here although I'd always urge you to get off your a*** & walk down to your local bookshop rather than buy it online )

Elephant jazz

Infinity

My dad taught me how to write the sign for infinity.
One night when I couldn't sleep I attempted to count up to it thinking it was like other numbers.
It wasn't.

Skellington Keys

Nefarious robber-type goings on...work in progress (click to enlarge as usual)
(for an earlier version see here )