• Without a doubt, Where The Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak, was the book that first inspired me to become a children’s book illustrator. I didn’t know I would be a children’s book writer then, but the book’s poetic cadences stuck inside my head and have influenced me ever since.

    Eventually the time came when I wrote my homage to this amazing book. I submitted it in various guises to many publishers who all like my story but somehow we could never quite get it right.

    Every year I would rewrite the story and redesign the character to no avail. Then one year I got the character right but still couldn’t get the story to work. That was when I admitted to myself that the problem was that I was trying to rewrite Where The Wild Things Are, which doesn’t need rewriting at all – it’s just perfect.

    But I loved the new character that I’d drawn. So I decided to write new stories for him Monster Boy was born. When the series came out and I went visiting schools, children pointed out that the werewolf in Werewolf Wail looks just like Max from Where The Wild Things Are, as if he had grown up but never thrown his  wolf suit away.

    I really didn’t know I was doing this while writing and illustrating the books. It’s amazing how much you can do subliminally, or in a state of denial. I thought I’d mention this because the illustrator Sarah McIntyre linked to a page of Maurice Sendak drawings by other artists which I found great fun and a huge relief to know that I’m not the only one!

  • There’s a special act of Parliament that says I’m not allowed to tell you what it is I’m drawing! I’m not allowed to tell you what year I’m drawing it in and I’m not allowed to tell you the name of the capital city of the country I live in!

    At the moment people are carrying one of these things around the country with a flame burning on the top and smoke pouring out behind them – Does that give you a clue?

    I’m not allowed to draw the actual one they are carrying around the country at the moment because the shape and design of that is Copyright and protected by special law of Parliament too, so I’m showing you a stylised version of an old, flaming torch that they may have carried around the town of Olympia in ancient Greece two and a half thousand years ago.

  • The Diamond Jubilee is nearly upon us and so I’m going to do some royal drawing tutorials in case you want to draw stuff for street parties or anything else to do with the Diamond Jubilee.

    This is a Lion Guardant Passant, which basically means he’s keeping watch while lying down. The Royal Coat of Arms usually has three of them, one above the other.