• I’ve never given much thought to the Thanksgiving holiday. It doesn’t really show up on the radar here in Britain. But this year has been a bit different.

    A few weeks ago I began to get messages asking me what I was planning to do for Thanksgiving drawing lessons. (You may have tried my Turkey, Pilgrim Father and Pilgrim Ladies lessons.)

    And today is Thanksgiving, so it’s time to move on and post new videos and think about Christmas, except…

    This year I’ve become more aware of what Thanksgiving means to Americans. Thanks to the Pilgrim Fathers’ voyage of the Mayflower – battling dangerous seas, escaping prejudice, starting over in hostile territory – giving thanks has become part of the American Psyche.

    We Brits rarely thank anyone. We grumble about the weather a lot and complain about the government and are frequently quite cynical when someone publicly gives true thanks for their good fortune. I think this is one of the major differences in the character of our two nations.

    So today, I’ll go against my national stereotype and thank all of those who’ve found and enjoyed my drawing videos this year. Your comments and encouragement have kept me going and still enthuse me to continue to make new lessons and explore this amazing new medium.

    I’d like to say thanks to my Publishers for still believing in me, and my editor, Sarah, and all the editors I’ve worked with before, who have encouraged me and drawn my best work out of me. Thanks for letting me do what I enjoy and what I do best. I know how lucky I am and how many others would like to be in my shoes.

    Thanks to my family, obviously, for putting up with me and being there when I’ve needed them.

    Thanks to everyone who’s bought or read one of my books, to all the schools that read my books and especially those that have invited me to come and tell stories and spread my knowledge and experience, letting me visit parts of the country and the world I would never have believed I would ever get to.

    Thanks to all the hard-working and misunderstood librarians, who have supported me along the way and invited me to their libraries.

    Thanks to everyone and everything along the way, who have made me who I am. Thanks for the bad times that have let me recognise the good times when I’m having them. Thanks for everything that has been a lesson to me.

    Thanks for the beauty of nature that daily gives me moments of pure pleasure – the colour of autumn leaves, brilliant sunsets, a walk in the woods, the first fluffy flakes of snow, cats chasing leaves around the garden.

    Thanks for this beautiful world and this extraordinary universe. May it keep supporting me and mine, letting me follow my heart and my dreams.

    Amen

  • Here’s the first of this year’s Christmas themed drawing school lessons. Follow the instructions and you will find that it is really easy to draw snowflakes!

    Let me know if you like it!

  • “What can I draw?” That was my catchphrase when I was about five years old, and my mother always would answer, “Draw a nice boat, dear.” So I drew lots of ocean liners, with millions of portholes and lots of smoke coming out of the funnels on top.

    I’ve been fairly random about what I should put on my drawing school. The statistics are bizzarre. Things that I thought might be popular, and indeed were asked for, are not while random ideas have proved more successful.

    I’ve achieved a lot with drawing school this year, more that I ever dreamed of in fact. But now I need new targets to keep me going. Its a lot of work with no apparent return. I keep telling myself it will pay dividends in future, but I don’t think it will if I don’t steer it in the right direction.

    So my next target is half a million videos watched, which I should reach by April. This doesn’t seem like such a huge target like it did a year ago when I thought 100k would be amazing. Perceptions change and things need to move on.

    So my next target is to become a Google Revenue Sharer. That way I will start earning some real cash for my efforts from advertising on YouTube. Being accepted by Google is something else. I’ve just applied again and am waiting to hear from them. In the meantime, I’ve decided to do lots more videos on subjects that are popular.

    That includes military vehicles which I’m going to have to buff up on. I knew them all and could draw them too as a child, but a lot has changed since then. I’ll also be doing some Christmas based lessons for Christmas cards and crafts. Snowflakes, Robins and reindeer are top of the list.

    Let me know what else you would like to draw for Christmas.