I’m busy working on a new project that will be revealed soon…ish. Well, not soon. Sometime. In the meantime, I’ve made a few new things, had some things made, and drawn lots of silly things.
You can keep up with all my nonsense on Twitter or Instagram…this sort of thing:
I’ve had lovely teatowels screen printed:
And made a couple of illustrations for Inkology.co.uk…
….click on the link to read fun kids poems by Dom Conlon.
I have illustrated a fabulous nonsense poem by Dom Conlon. Here’s my drawing before I added colour. The animals are pretty fantastical. What colours do you think they should be?
Click on the image to download and print out the free colouring sheet, then visit inkology.co.uk to read the poem and see how I coloured it in.
I’m very happy to have an illustration in the current copy of ‘Stew’ (which is an excellent magazine for kids). 🙂
You can subscribe to Stew here: stewmagazine.co.uk and follow them on Twitter here.
Here are a few of the development sketches I did for the final illustration above:
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I learned to love poetry because my Grandmother loved poetry and was always reciting it and reading it to me. This is a poem she used to say to me a lot when I was a little girl. The photo is of my Granny, aged about 7.
A nonsense poem. I love nonsense poems. There are many goods ones. Edward Lear is a favourite of mine, you can read some of his nonsense verse here.
This one is by Dom Conlon. I like it a lot. It’s also the first thing I ever drew an illustration for. I think I’ve improved. You can see other, better illustrations for this poem here.
A poem about by Gavin Ewart about his elderly cat. I read this poem many years ago and remembered it when my cat, Hobbes, was elderly. Unfortunately I didn’t have a copy of the poem and looked for it for years. When Dom suggested sharing children’s poems leading up to National Poetry Day, I took at look at the Children’s Poetry Archive site for inspiration. There was the poem. 🙂
The photo is of Hobbes. Enjoying the sun in his last summer. 🙂
Dom Conlon suggested posting, on Twitter, five poems for children leading up to National Poetry Day. So here’s my first one.
Not strictly a children’s poem, but I remember my daughter and a class room of 6 year olds being enchanted by this.
This lovely thing landed on my doorstep last week. 🙂 ‘Astro Poetica’, a volume of charming poems about space written by Dom Conlon, with some pictures by me. It’s full of love and fun and aliens and planets and solar systems..and I managed to sneak my cat in there somewhere too.
As well as being a rather beautiful, nice to hold thing ‘Astro’ is the first time I’ve seen myself in print. And, by gum, I think I look rather good. (My work, obviously. Not actual me.) I’m immodestly pleased with myself. And with Dom. I think we did good. And to think, when Dom asked me to illustrate it I said “Don’t you think you should ask someone who knows what they’re doing?” I’m pleased he ignored me.
I think children will love this book. I hope they read the ‘Things to Think’ and ‘Things to Do’ sections and write some poetry of their own. I have a child on loan at the moment, so I’ll be testing it out later. I know adults will like it, because I do and I am one.
‘Astro Poetica’ is published by Inkology. If you look here Inkology.co.uk you’ll find lots of free and lovely stories and poems for children. You can follow @InkologyStories on Twitter as well.
You can get a copy of ‘Astro Poetica’ from Amazon. It is also available on Kindle from Amazon or for your ipad from itunes and there is a rather lovely limited edition hardback version, which has extra content (also on Amazon).
