I spent three days in The North East last week, visiting schools and libraries in Middlesbrough, Newton Aycliffe and Sunderland.

I had a wonderful time telling stories and showing children how to draw my characters. The picture shows my favourite over the week, drawn by Oliver from Sunderland. I read them the story of the The Swamp Man (Little Horrors)
and showed them how to draw the character.

I’m always amazed how all the children basically draw the same thing, but each is entirely different. There’s a sort of Chaos theory at work – the drawing will alter based on small choices – the roundness of a circle – the squashiness of an ellipse – the rectangularity of a square. All these little changes alter the character of the drawing and of the character itself.

I do these sessions from nursery up and have come to expect wonderful drawings from everyone, so I’m always a bit surprised when teachers tell me how they’ve never seen some of their children draw as well before. This may have something to do with the lowly position of drawing in education. Where once we painstakingly traced drawings from textbooks, children now photocopy and colour in (unless they can just print out colour clip art).

Drawing is all about hand/eye/brain coordination. Writing is drawing. Its a shame that the basis of writing isn’t taught more – writing skills might improve if it were. Drawing and illustration are writing.

Thanks to everyone for the usual brilliant organisation. There was talk about wether the NCBF might be able to continue. I hope it can, but these are interesting times!