The Wall

The Beginning.
I was asked to paint a mural for a primary school so here's the progress so far!

Mice to meet you!

A little while ago I mentioned that I was illustrating a children's book for someone. Well I'm delighted to report that it seems one or two publishers are interested in it! All very tentative and nothing may yet happen but fingers crossed and raise your mugs to taking a chance!

This is another of the illustrations so far - more still to be completed! In the story the two main characters (the mice in the middle) bump into two pretty ladies... but unfortunately they turn out to be dolls belonging to the little girl of the house! They sit down and have a cup of tea anyway - which is what I'm going to do now!

Shiny Happy People

A present that two of my favourite people made for me a while back after stressful coursework times. I was reminded of it this week during more stressful coursework times!

Hickory Dickory Dock...

For the longest time, I've wanted to write books. All kinds of books - children's books, adults' books, magical books, serious books, life-changing books, life-lamenting books, heart-warming books, heartbreaking books... Many ponderings of my inner monologue begin "when I write my bestselling, Booker-winning novel I'll..." 

But that's the bigger picture, the happy-ending if you will, when I have already toiled long and hard, and my fingers are worn away from bashing the keyboard, and I'm bleary-eyed from absorption in a world of my own creation... At the moment though, my writing is a long long way from a Booker Prize, and I must content myself with little ramblings and doodles.

However, as I mentioned, I want to write all kinds of books, and besides my much acclaimed, life-changing novel, I also want to write and illustrate children's books. In fact I do, what I mean is I want to get some published. One or two lie in various states of completion hidden in notebooks and word documents and sketchpads, strewn (I say strewn, but it's more for effect, I'm actually more of an organiser by colour, alphabet, size...) higgeldy piggeldy around my studio (ehem... by that I mean two shelves in my bedroom).

Anyhoo, here's the point.

I was asked to illustrate a fully written children's book by another author! I said yes, as any opportunity to add to and widen my portfolio is a good one. The stories are very sweet, featuring two little mice, and are for the bedtime-stories reader/listener. Obviously I can't put up the stories as they are not mine (and it would spoil the surprise!), but here is a little sneak peak at one of my illustrations so far. 

I'm quite excited about it today as the first section of the book has been printed to conduct a bit of market research (5 year olds are harsh critics, wish me luck!) and to send to potential publishers. So far I think it's looking pretty good though and hopefully I will be posting more about this project soon!

Here's One I Made Earlier

While other projects are in the works/planning stages (I've got one in particular that I'm quite excited about, and it's not major, so expect to see it soon...) I decided I'd put up a few pictures of some paintings I've already done. Some are just for fun, some are for other people; I don't consider them masterpieces but I do like them and my favourite part about painting is that once you finally start you can't stop and get sucked into a dream world of paint and mess and imaginary happenings...

This one is in my room and is probably my favourite. I get little obsessions, so this one was inspired by my obsession with Asian art. At the minute I'm obsessed with elephants, turtles and tattoos - I have been watching too many David Attenborough and Somewhere Ink programs!

Again, Asian art and Tokyo night life inspired, but this time in charcoal and inks rather than acrylics, this one was a gift for someone far away at the time...

A bored-one-day piece. I later added in bits of copper wire to the hair (ah the magic of glue guns) which are probably a little dangerous - visions of my grandmother shouting "you'll lose an eye with that stuff!"

Last one for now! This is one I painted for someone special. The words read:

"I dreamed that, nocturnal, she crept like a cat from nowhere to my door.

Carbon eyes, black browed, vampiric, the thief visits me while stars ink in the new day.

"Stay," I whisper, "You can have anything."

...But she never tried to close the curtain or carry me with her."

I forget where I found them (I actually think it may have been something in the Sunday Times Style Magazine rather than some epic work of English literature) but they seemed like magic to me at the time.