• I had a great time this morning with year five at Whitchurch Primary School near Ross on Wye. I’ll be working with them over the next few weeks.

    I’ve decided to make Dark Claw available under the creative commons. We are going to do some extended work writing, illustrating and possibly animating stories based on the characters and scenarios from the Dark Claw stories, which are now out of print.

    You can read the stories online here. I’ve made the books available as flick the page ebooks for free. It’s also an experiment to see what can be done with a different publishing model. Times are changing and authors are going to have to find new ways of exploiting their work. Like musicians we may have to rely more on tshirt sales that the books themselves!

    At eleven o’clock the school made a huge circle and held hands in the playground. I had a year six girl on one hand and a year one girl on the other. I realised how much I work on my own. When I do meet people it is only for the day, and then I move on. It was good to feel part of a larger community on this day.

    I’m looking forward to getting to know year five a lot better too. There are some interesting characters! Not being a teacher, I probably approach the job in hand differently. We made some interesting observations which I’ll think about a blog about later.

    I’ve got some lovely pictures of drawings we did today. We are just checking that everyone is okay about me posting the,. As soon as I know I’ll put them up here.

  • I went to visit the lower school at Tettenhall College near Wolverhampton, yesterday. I gave myself a lot of time to get there but, as there was the first fog of the year, the roads were terrible. I came to a standstill on the M5 following and earlier crash. It was slow on the way home too for the same reason.

    I had a great time telling stories and many children seemed to like my drawings. I’ve stopped using flipchart pens – they are so unsubtle. Now I use a graphite stick. I think they respond to the pencil drawings much better. Shading with the side of the stick fills in areas very quickly.

    I was very taken by the dining hall, the roof of which looked as though it were part of the Eifel Tower or had been built under a bridge. One would normally expect wooden beams in the roof. presumably the closeness to Ironbridge explains why the beams are made of cast iron.

    Thanks for a great day and those are lovely trees you are surrounded by too!

  • Yes I know I’m late for Halloween, but I was asked how to draw a witch. Presumably it will be on YouTube for ever, so think of me being early for next year!