This month I will be hanging around Oxford with my lovely friend Faridah Newman. Hopefully were going to do lots of lovely things including a spot of embroidery, making jewellery and generally having a jolly good time.

Faridah makes the most beautiful jewellery. You can check it out here:

Whilst im in london I will be dropping off my entry to the Macmillan Prize which Im so excited for!

Some of my favourite illustrators such as Sara Finelli have won this in the past – its real prestigious and would be a great thing to win.

Plus – I could win some money – HELLO PASHLEY AND TATTOOS!

I’m going to finish my London trip with a day at an AOI event meeting Judith Kerr the illustrator behind this famous kids book:

This one-day event provides a full overview on all you need to know about working in the field of children’s book illustration. Speakers will include portfolio expert Fig Taylor, commissioners from the educational publishing sector, the picture book arena and a specialist agent. This event is open to anyone with a curiosity about the industry, illustration students and working illustrators at different stages of their professional career. This year we are lucky enough to be ending the day with Judith Kerr in conversation with John O’Reilly celebrating the 40th anniversary of the much beloved Mog.

SO EXCITED!

23RD-26TH APRIL!

For heavens sake, I cant even thread a needle!

I’m pretty useless at this embroidery malarkey.

Well, when incorporated into illustrations it does look quite lovely.

Stay tuned!

I know I’m drawing sheep quite a lot these days but i really wanna spruce up my wolf in sheeps clothing drawings so that i can get a good dummy book together for the macmillan prize.

I’ve spent a bit of time today being one of those losers who sits in cafe’s on their own scribbling and annoying staff by only buying one drink but staying there for hours taking up a whole table to myself and leaving my pencil shavings as a tip. Or as my friend Matt says ‘a cafe whore’. Great. I’m feeling pretty groggy today both physically and emotionally. However I’m listening to Gil Scott-Heron and I’m going to make some fricking amazing Fagitas later and watch a gruesome horror flick, this will cheer me up I reckon!

Anyway heres a little scan of a pencil drawing of the endpapers of my book. You can probably tell I’ve had my fave book on Chagall out again.

I took some photos last week at Pop Bubble Rock. The epilepsy inducing strobe light was on when I took them and they came out so weird!

How Strange!

… with embroidery.

I bought a wonderful book last weekend written by artist Jenny Hart who runs Sublime Stitching and last night had a quick go trying out the split stitch, brick stitch and the french knot. The conclusion being that its actually NOT hard at all! Especially as an illustrator, its just like drawing but using a fiddlier tool. This morning I had a look at my illustrations as of late and they seem to be MADE for embroidery.

Lots of exciting ideas are running through my head right now – this could be the direction I take for my Macmillan children’s book prize entry. Right well im off to my lecture, then out for lunch, then to Abakhans in the northern quarter for a helluva lot of thread, needles and other exciting tit bits.

Watch this space!

I recieved my Association of Illustrators card and membership pack through the post today. Oh and the brief for the Macmillan Childrens book prize 2010, im going to go for it!

Excited!

This is an advert I’ve been working on to be slapped inside The Unsigned Guide. I got the whole page to myself thanks to my lovely friend Paul McManus.

I hope it translates into print well! I’ve also reconciled feelings of mistrust towards my wacom tablet. Everythings OK now. We cool.

Today I went to Chester Zoo with my lovely man Ben. I love animals as you might have guessed, and I took my camera!

Heres some photos!

It was so much fun!

Here are the two main images that I have been working on today.

I think I may have to pull an all nighter to get my Wolf in Sheeps Clothing project handed in on time tomorrow morning. Oh and then I’m working all goddamn day at the cafe. Tomorrow night will be sleepytime for me!

I made a PDF of all the sketches from my dummy book for the fables project tonight as well as adopting two super fat guinea pigs and eating a KFC bucket of chicken!

You can see them all below:

dummy book

Oh and here is one of the piggies:

What an awesome day!