The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The Bologna Book Fair is terrifyingly near and I've not had much time this year to do any self-initiated projects amidst all the published stuff. The situation only got worse after The Day The Hard Drive Died and I had to spend many miserable nights doing work I'd already done. I have however done a few black and white bits from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in the last few days. I remember vividly having all the Narnia books read to me as a child (I was a slow reader, this helped) so it's been interesting to revisit this familiar story.

The Stone Table

Aslan

Mr. Tomnus

Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter

Mr and Mrs Beaver

NEWS FLASH!

Many, many things have happened over the last couple of months. I'll start with the good things...

Weasels is up for more awards than I could possibly have imagined. It's on the longlist for the Kate Greenaway Medal with the likes of Oliver Jeffers and Anthony Browne. Weasels is also in the final 6 for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize which is great because I get to go to an awards ceremony at the beginning of April where I will eat my own weight in canapés. And then there's the Read It Again children's picturebook award which is run by Cambridgeshire Libraries and voted for by local schools.

So many awards. It's as if there's been some kind of admin error.

Also there are now advance copies of Nuts in Space in the world! Here’s mine:

In other news I bought a house. It's currently a building site which features gems such as this 70s wallpaper. 

Eventually I'll have a shiny new studio though and when I do I'll post pictures.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I've also just started my PhD (which is in funny picturebooks believe it or not). It's good to keep busy isn't it?

As for bad news my hard drive died and took half a picturebook with it. This means that my every waking moment is spent desperately recreating the 6 spreads I lost in time for Bologna. It's just awful. On the bight side these spreads do contain things such as these toymakers:

Accident prone toymaker

Furious toymaker

Twerking toymaker