Sending festive joy and warmth to all my friends and followers!

Amidst the challenges facing the world, may this Christmas bring you peace, hope and inspiration.

Here's my illustration contribution to "Alt-Write: creative reactions to uncertain times", a collection of new stories, poems and illustrations from leading names in the children’s book world. It's to illustrate Andrew Fusek Peters' poem "Salmon". 

At-Write is being funded by a crowdfunding campaign. The original artwork is available for sale on the campaign page.

... Or rather 10 days, to finish off the month-long daily-ink-drawing exercise that ran through October.

I've really enjoyed Inktober this year, though at times it has been a rather big distraction! Here are my last installment of drawings.

I've learned a lot from this exercise this year, it's really given me a chance to grapple with the capabilities of my materials - though it's a shame I didn't try line & wash, or do more with brush pens (reminder- need to buy more Kuretake!).
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This Week 3 of Inktober has been odd, I've actually had a fair bit of work to get on with, but amidst the clamour of deadlines Inktober had the loudest voice, gradually things began to become more and more elaborate! All the drawings over the third week were created in a Pilot Hi-Tec fineoint, either 0.4 or 0.5, I tried as far as possible to follow the optional prompts.....

So we're at the end of the second week of Inktober, in what has been a rather surprisingly eventful week for me (but that's another subject!). Here's a summary of the last seven days of my pen drawings.

They're mostly drawn in finepoint Pilot pens, but a few are drawn using the Kuretake brush pens I brought back from Japan at the beginning of this year (some of which are about to run out!). Some of these are inspired by the prompt words, others just the flow of what happens on the page.

October brings us to the social media drawing challenge "Inktober". I don't usually go for Twitter/Instagram keyword challenges, but as pen & ink is at the core of what I do I joined in Inktober last year and found it a really interesting exercise. The rules are simple - draw and post an  inked drawing to social media every day throughout October (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or whatever else you use), including the hashtags #Inktober and #Inktober2017.

Last week daughter and I took some time off to hop over the Channel and wander the canals and museums of old Amsterdam. It was a short break, but a full schedule, we went everywhere on foot from morn till dusk, apart from a paddle boat hour on the canals.

One of the highlights of the trip was the Rijksmuseum. It was my second visit there, I blogged about my initial trip when I first started this blog years ago, but this time there was much more time to explore the museum.
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If you've been following me on Instagram (which I'm slowly comprehending) and Twitter, you might have seen some of the (mostly) daily drawings I've been posting recently. I've avoided multi-posting to the blog or on Facebook on a daily basis, I think the continuous nature of Twitter and Instagram is better suited to daily sketch exercises, but in case you missed them, here's a catch-up of a few recent scribblings.
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Summer greetings to all my dear friends and readers.

It's been a rather cool and wet summer in the UK so far, not so glorious for beach-lovers perhaps, but good for gardens...

Magic For Sale is finally out!

Written by Carrie Clickard

Illustrated by John Shelley

published by Holiday House Books

ISBN: 9780823435593

32 pages of rollicking fun!

The book follows the trail of young Georgie McQuist, who's been dared to sneak into Miss Pustula Night's Magic Shop overnight to find the spirit that's rumoured to inhabit the basement.
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