Waterstone's Picture This final round

Here's a selection of images from the ginormous amount of work I did for the final round of the Waterstone's Picture This competition. For this second round all the 7 finalists had to do black and white roughs for the whole book, which is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast written by Michael Morpurgo, plus at least 2 more colour spreads. 

Tayori: Postcards for Japan

You may or may not know Cambridge is stuffed full of illustrators and they've decided to use their powers for the forces of good (not that there's very many of us illustrating for evil) by putting on an exhibition to raise money in aid of Teachers For Japan in light of the recent disaster.  Postcards have been submitted by the great and the good, and also me, and all will be sold anonymously at a set price so you could end up owning some famous person's work for a bargain. Sneak previews of the postcards can be seen here and I strongly encorage you all to come along on the 5th September and buy stuff. 

Cambridge News

It seems I'm taking the papers by storm this week as a big and dubious picture of my face has been printed on page 2 of the Cambridge News today. Featured below is a very poor scan of the aforementioned article.

Waterstone's Picture This shortlist announced officially!

The Picture This shortlist has been announced today although I did kind of ruin the surprise by posting on here that I'd been selected a couple of weeks ago. Oops. Anyway, my fellow finalists can be seen here on the Waterstone's website where my images are looking oddly pink and it was also printed in today's Telegraph on page 26. For those of you who don't read the Telegraph there's a scan of the article below.

Monkeys n' marching bands

A couple of commissions destined for the bedroom walls of children. I was going to do a process post for one of these images because I've seen them on other blogs and thought they were snazzy but suddenly I'm pretty busy so haven't got my act together. If I remember I do it in the future.

Waterstone's Picture This

A little while ago I entered the Waterstone's Picture This competition to illustrate a version of Beauty and the Beast written by Michael Morpurgo. I'd just about given up hope of ever getting anywhere with this and was feeling pretty dismal about the work when this evening I got a phone call which sent me scrabbling about to find my phone and alas I failed to locate it in time despite it's disembodied ringing. When I eventually stumbled upon it I found I had a voice mail telling me I'd been shortlisted as one of the final six. Woo! I'm now in an illustrative duel to the death (okay possibly not quite to the death) with 5 other hopefuls for a 6k contract with HarperCollins. I'd better go and sharpen my pencils. 

In celebration here's a couple of images from my entry for your viewing pleasure.

Twitter

Loads of people have been telling me I should be on Twitter recently and I'm no match for peer pressure so as a result I'm now on Twitter. I'm in two minds as to whether I'm going to say anything or not but if you want to find out if I ever do click here.