• lynne-chapman-at-deskLynne Chapman is an award-winning children’s illustrator, with over 30 books, and UK correspondent for the international sketching organisation, Urban Sketchers. Based in Sheffield (UK), Lynne creates pastel illustrations for her picture books, which burst with fun and colour, bringing a whole range of characters to life.

    Her acclaimed blog: An Illustrator’s Life For Me! – http://lynnechapman.blogspot.com – provides a candid insight into her creative life, including her illustration techniques and the world of children’s publishing, as well as providing a peek inside her many sketchbooks.
    Lynne is passionate about drawing and captures her world in pocket sketchbooks. She is founder of Sheffield Sketchcrawl, encouraging others to draw out on-location. She is also a lively performer at schools and festivals, running workshops, doing storytellings and giving lectures on her work.

    This video is master class with Lynne, who shows us how to draw the Warthog character from Ian Whybrow’s book, Stinky! which Lynne illustrated. I recorded two further interviews with Lynne. She talks about her works and takes us through the process of creating a children’s book.


  • Sarahseawig Sarah McIntyre is a British-American illustrator and writer of children’s books and comics. She graduated in 1999 from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in Russian and a minor degree in History of Art and earned her Master’s Degree in Illustration at Camberwell College of Arts in 2007. She works with other artists in The Fleece Station studio in Deptford, South London.

    She has illustrated many children’s books and is known for her amazing spectacles and oddball dress sense! The picture above is of Sarah at the launch of Oliver and the Sea Wigs, by Sarah and Philip Reeve. The hair is actually made of cling film curled up into rolls. As you can see, Sarah likes to get into character!

    What is the secret of Sarah’s success? As she says in the video, talent isn’t enough you need to work hard an practice, practice practice – now where have I heard that before?! Honestly, if you try and work hard, you will soon pass the person with raw talent that won’t practice.

    You can follow Sarah’s exploits and see more of her work on her blog, Jabberworks

    Here is another video from Sarah

  • Frank-Sinatra-SmallIt would have been Frank Sinatra’s Birthday today, were he still alive. This is a fact that has been pointed out to me several times by @cardsharkington, a very long-time subscriber and possibly the most frequent commenter on my videos. He’s been asking me to do Frank Sinatra for a long time, so here he is!

    This is way out of my comfort zone, so it’s just a bit of fun. I normally paint it at an angle to the table so I could see what I was doing. To be able to film, I need to have the paper flat, which means the water doesn’t run as I’m used to and I can’t get a proper view of what Im doing!

    The Jazzy music is thanks to Epidemic Sound Bebop Cats 02 by John Åhlin and New York Minute 02 and 03 by Håkan Eriksson