Tag: illustrator

How to draw a Nine Dollar Bill! – Illustration Friday

• September 28, 2012 • 2 Comments

This week’s www.illustrationfriday.com topic is “CROOKED”. I could have done something bent and gnarly, but I thought I’d go the criminal way and do a bit of forgery!

 

Illustration Friday – Identical

• September 7, 2012 • Be first to comment!

It’s illustration Friday again and this week’s subject on the illustrationfriday.com website is Identical. I’ve chosen to do the Wilson twins from my Ginger Ninja Books.

This week, I’ve decided to make a video of the drawing and try to do one every week, so if you want to do one too, video it and post on YouTube.

If you make a video response to me I will make a video response back to your video too.

This is such a fun idea. I wonder what next week’s subject will be?

Learn to draw the cutest rabbits with Debi Gliori

• September 27, 2011 • 1 Comment

You are going to love this video!!!!

I met up with my old friend, Debi Gliori, this weekend at the Wigtown Book Festival. I managed to get her into a corner and filmed this wonderful interview with her. She shares confidences, ideas, hints and tips, she shows us her incredible sketchbook and then shows us how to draw that cute little rabbit from her latest book The Scariest Thing of All

Illustrating in Flash

• September 12, 2010 • Be first to comment!

Flash was not intended to be an illustration program, but I love it, because it is better suited to traditional drawing than a more obvious vector program like illustrator. In this video I give a brief introduction to how Flash works for an illustrator by showing how the cover of Viking Vik can be broken up into tiny pieces.

Axel Storm Book 2 finished

• June 20, 2010 • Be first to comment!

Axel Storm PictureWell, that’s the second book of Axel Storm finished. Phew! Off to the Post office with it tomorrow and away it goes to My Publishers, Orchard, in London.
One more story to write, which I really must get down to this week. But I’m off to visit a school near Caerphilly tomorrow and on Wednesday I’m going to have a fab day with “my class” (that’s Rowan Class at Whitchurch School in Herefordshire), who are going off to visit a school in Handsworth in inner city Birmingham tomorrow. The Handsworth School are coming to Whitchurch on Wednesday and we are going to spend the day in their Forest School, having campfires and such like. Should be fascinating to see what the children that live in totally different areas make of each others lives!

OMG – I think I’m a cartoonist!

• April 1, 2010 • 2 Comments

Taken from Wikipedia:

Calum MacKenzie in his preface to the exhibition catalog, The Scottish Cartoonists, published in 1979 by the Glasgow Print Studio Gallery, defined the selection criteria:

The difference between a cartoonist and an illustrator was the same as the difference between a comedian and a comedy actor – the former both deliver their own lines and take full responsibility for them, the latter could always hide behind the fact that it was not his entire creation.

I began my career as an illustrator, and even though I was writing and having my own books published from the start, some twenty-three years ago, I thought of myself as an illustrator and worked mostly on other people’s stories.

Time moved on, and even though I still spend most of my time drawing and illustrating, I’m thought of now as an author. I’m often asked in schools who illustrates my books. People seem surprised when I say I do. I’m blessed with two talents – most people would be happy with one of them.

But, I go on to explain, the thing that ties the to together is storytelling, In fact I’m probably happiest in front of an audience drawing and telling stories live. Illustrators often write, writers very rarely illustrate. It’s storytelling that makes an illustrator different to other artists.

People of ten refer to my “cartoon style”. They say it in an apologetic way as if trying not to offend. Reading the quote above this morning, made me wonder – is that what I am? Am I a cartoonist, but I don’t know it? I feel that what I do write are really graphic novels or even Manga, in the Japanese sense. In the west we think of Manga as being a particular style, which should really be termed Anime. As I understand it, Manga is the telling of stories with lots of pictures and text – which is what I do.

However, authors get treated a lot better than illustrators and I think illustrators are treated a tad above cartoonists. Cartoonists tend to be dismissed as ephemeral, whimsical, cheap comedians, whereas it is assumed illustrators can probably do proper art if they tried.

Perhaps I’d better stay convincing people that I’m an author and stay in the room with wine and canapes – The artists tend to get shoved in a room out the back with beer and sandwiches!

The glamourous life of a children's author!

• March 13, 2010 • 3 Comments

We complain about children, these days, who can only dream of being celebrities, never thinking they may need talent or might have to do something special to attain that status.

Actually, I was like that. Rather than work hard, I daydreamed through my teenage years at school, doodling affirmative statements on my exercise books, usually, “Shoo is a Star!” drawn in 3d hollywood style, surrounded by 3d shooting stars! I believed it too.

Back then Rock and Roll was what you did to become famous. I guess I did work at it quite a bit. I spent a long time practicing my poses in the mirror. I actually wrote songs, maybe three or four a week for years, usually about unrequited love. The ones that people liked were story songs. One was about a young couple moving to Peterborough and their relationship with the housing corporation, another, I was reminded about just a couple of weeks ago, was about Fred, who was a whizz at electronics and had a plan to take over the world.

When I finally got a taste of the reality of Rock and Roll, in a band called Flamazine, (See more here) I realised that I not only didn’t want the rock and roll lifestyle – travelling, living out of suitcases, interacting with the fans – I knew it would probably destroy me too.

I gave up and committed myself to my other string. I hid away in a shed and became an illustrator. And that’s how I thought it would be. My aim was to reach the point where I only had to do one picture book a year. The rest of the time would be researching and getting better at drawing. I was happy!

You must be careful what you wish for. I never got to spend my time quietly dreaming up new stories. I now spend half my time travelling, living out of suitcases, interacting with with my readers? Performing three or four times a day is quite enough of a job for most people. Then I come home and immediately have to get writing – again enough of a job for most people. Then I illustrate the books – another job on it’s own. Then I have to become a web designer, animator and systems administrator to keep my website up and running when my ISP lets my site get hacked. I market myself and my books (I’m doing it now. My publishers want us to blog – to be “out” there”). I do my online drawing school, so I’m a video director and editor too. Then I have to be secretary, booking agent and tour manager when I go off visiting schools and libraries. Never mind dealing with the general email, post and office stuff everyday.

And then I always get asked the same question by children. “Are you famous?” I have no idea how to reply. I certainly don’t feel it. If I am I don’t think I’m getting the benefit – No swimming pool, no flunkies at my command.

After a week visiting schools, I’m exhausted. I have today to catch up and then I’m off again tomorrow. I know it’s my fault for taking on all these roles, but it seems to me that unless you get really lucky and one of your books takes off, that’s what you have to do these days.

In the early eighties we were warned to prepare for the leisure society. Technology would take over so much that we would spend most of our lives on the golf course – living the celebrity lifestyle, in fact. Technology has changed my job as well as everyone else’s. What used to feel like a vocation has become a hard slog to stay in the business. Maybe I’m doing something wrong.

And yet, I’m very aware that what I do must seem quite glamourous from the outside. Glamour is a bright light that dazzles the audience so they can’t see the rickety scenery wobbling in the background.

Would I have it any other way? Would I swap and do something else? Of course not!

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