• yes, another four more ways to write Mom for Mother’s Day which happens to be on Sunday in the USA, so get making cards already!

  • My Illustrator friend, Kate Sheppard, came round this week to show me the dummy of a picture book she’s been working on. It’s wonderful! But I would say that… is a synthesis of two ideas I played about with a while back. I couldn’t get the ideas to work because they obviously needed to come together to make sense.

    I didn’t or couldn’t make that connection, but Kate did – But How come we both had the same-ish ideas? And why am I not bothered that Kate got it right and I didn’t?

    I was thrilled to see the book and add my thoughts to it because I’ve finally seen the idea come to fruition and can close that chapter in my head.

    If I thought that was the last idea I’d ever have, then that would be a sorry day. I played with the ideas – learned a whole load of stuff and have moved on to other things. Luckily, those ideas found Kate, who has done a fabulous job and has created what I think will become a classic. Any picture book editor who doesn’t make an offer on the spot should… drink four pints of blue, fizzy soda, eat a pound of jelly babies and think again!

  • This is part of my Mother’s Day set of tutorials as on monday I’ll be showing how to draw a posy of Pansies to make a mother’s Day card or birthday card. I know we had Mother’s Day in the UK already, but it’s Mother’s Day in the USA Next week!