On Monday, once the final checks were done on this batch of my
Baby Goes Baaaa! illustrations, I spent the day at my computer, preparing various resources for
my exhibition in the summer.
Like the show I had in
Tameside in 2009, there will be far more than just framed artwork, but we're adding lots of new ideas to build on the previous exhibition. I've been beavering away creating more children's worksheets, and I've written lots of new information sheets to work alongside the images, much like this blog I suppose.
We think the new show will probably be called
'Llamas in Pyjamas', to link with
Lark in the Ark:
On Tuesday, I took the train to Salford to be shown round the gallery by Amy Goodwin, the curator, and to meet Dave Robinson, the man behind lots of new and exciting ideas for children's activities. He is not only going to create a massive ark, but build Mrs Duck's house from Big Big Wolf is Good, as a 'drawing den': Another fun plan of Dave's is to build an 'anaconda tunnel' along one wall under the pictures (he has ideas involving fabric, hoops, hardboard and sponge...), so that children can enter the snake at one end and emerge from a massive 3D mouth at the other. I am in awe!
For the adults, we want to create a film booth with seating, where people can watch videos of me talking about various aspects of my work, and we are going to put together some glass cabinets containing open sketchbooks, my book illustration roughs, tools of the trade etc.
5 Comments on Llamas in Pyjamas: My Illustration Exhibition, last added: 3/14/2011
I got home from Edinburgh on Friday night: what a wild week! But now it's back to some proper work. I really have to get on with Bears on the Stairs.
I got those first pieces nearly done before I left, but not quite. I generally allow 1.5 days per spread for pastelling the artwork, so my aim is to get the endpapers and cover finished off and do another 3 spreads by this time next week. This should be manageable if I don't get too sidetracked. I show you pics later, to let you know how it's going. 
In the meantime, these are a few shots from the festival. Unfortunately, my camera battery died during the first event, so this is all I got! These are all me with Peter Bently, author of A Lark in the Ark.
One funny anecdote before I leave you to get on with some work:
I had to be miked-up for the events, and during the Stinky! storytelling, I kept inadvertently getting too close to the speakers at the stage-side and causing feedback. At the end, as people were leaving, one little boy was standing by the side of the stage looking confused and troubled. His dad said he was very disappointed - he couldn't work out why he couldn't make the big noise by getting too close to the speakers!
opens on Saturday - Whoopee! It's come round so quickly. I was at the gallery yesterday afternoon, helping to make decisions (getting in the way??) about what to hang where.
As you can see, the walls have been painted bright green and blue, which really picks out the colour in the artwork.
We have hung the pictures very low on the walls, so it is child-friendly. To fill the space above, we have vinyl stencil enlargements of some of the animals. These will jump between the pictures, sit on the frame tops, or peek out from behind, like these giraffes from A Lark in the Ark:
We positioned the stencils, with masking tape, then stuck them down and cut round them - really fiddly and takes AGES! This is Marie, the curator and brains behind the project:
While we were working, the monkey mobiles arrived, which look great. The technicians have built the children's activity centre in the middle, but Marie has not filled it with all the images and props yet, so that will be a surprise for me on the day.
Do you remember how we lost the ark? Well, the publisher was so apologetic and tried so hard to persuade Marie to re-introduce it that, 
although it was too late by then to build the ark, we now have a Lark in the Ark dressing-up area instead, where children become the different animals.
Don't forget: as well as the Private View at 4pm, there is also a free children's Funday from 11am until 3pm in the gallery and library. I'll be doing storytellings at 11am and 2pm (suitable for 4 - 8yrs) and an illustration workshop at 12.45 (7yrs to adult). No tickets are needed, just come along. There is also face-painting, hula-hooping, a treasure trail and a Giddy Goat art session for kids to join in on, again as a drop-in.
If you are coming on Saturday, this map might be useful (click to enlarge). The nearest train & bus station is Ashton-u-Lyne: 5 mins walk, or Stalybridge: about a 20 min walk.
If you are driving, it's junction 23 off the M60. Follow signs for Ashton Town Centre and at the large roundabout, take the first exit, before Lidyl, onto Old Street. The Gallery is in the old Central Library building on the left, postcode OL6 7SG. Parking is behind the building.
Any problems, ring the gallery on 0161 342 2650. See you there!
Ah well, we didn't win the Red House Award, but congratulations to Allan Ahlberg and Bruce Ingman, who won in our category with The Pencil, a very funny and imaginative book. Well done guys!
The voting is done by children, who are each asked to write a little review or draw a picture about the book they like best. These are then pasted into books, like the one above, and presented at the ceremony. Mine had to be posted of course, and arrived a couple of days ago, with this cute bear.
It's a fabulous idea and the best prize you could wish for (except for perhaps obscene piles of cash... ). I jest of course. 
I thought you'd like to see a couple of highlights from my book:
A HUGE thank you to everybody that voted for us and for all the lovely drawings and letters in my book. I will treasure it.
There are a few more pictures to see in the Picture Gallery. Sorry I couldn't show them all.
Peter and I were on at 10am - nice to get it done early. I got to meet his lovely family too (hello there!). Egmont had printed us some Lark in the Ark T-shirts to wear - what do you think?
There are even llamas in pyjamas on the back (these are in my garden - I forgot to take any photos on the day - duh!):
In keeping with the rain theme, we also had umbrellas and wore wellies. The projection worked really well. Peter read the story, choosing children to open the flaps, then I drew some of the animals for them to guess (I threw in the odd one that wasn't in the book too, to trick them, like kippers in flippers and giraffes in scarfs). Then the kids drew their own animals in silly outfits. We got them to call out suggestions before they started. One boy said 'an elephant with underpants on his head', so almost every drawing included underpants somewhere!
We finished with a song: changing the words of Old MacDonald Had a Farm, to 'Old Man Noah had an ark'. The kids enjoyed trying to work out what noises llamas, pandas etc made.
After Peter and I had done a bit of book signing, I sat in on a similar storytelling session by the wonderful illustrator Korky Paul. I'm always curious to see what other people do. He had the great idea of drawing portraits of the children, but as dinosaurs. He also used a splash of watercolour on the flip chart, which worked surprisingly well.
He read them The Fish Who Could Wish and got them designing fish. I scrawmed around on the floor with them, trying to capture what I could:
Before heading home, I was given some lunch tokens and, amazingly, ended up eating with none other than Micheal Morpurgo, a previous Children's Laureate. He was really lovely and chatted to me easily, as though I was his equal (as if!), then headed off to do his talk, to 800 people, while I headed back to the station.
I spent a good part of the journey chatting and drawing with this lad and his mum (hello Adam! - your email address didn't work by the way) and time flew by.
Hay Festival is historically rather unlucky with the weather. It is generally a mass of mud, and wellies are essential packing. This year was miles better though, and my 2 days were scorchers.
Which was great, because it's basically a network of large tents and wooden walkways, surrounding a number of big, lawned squares. The grass was covered in people between events, laid out or in deckchairs, all of them feverishly reading books. Wonderful sight!
Because of my delays, I had no time to check in at the hotel. A car took me straight to the site where I dumped my suitcase and dashed to see Philip Ardagh, the larger than life and dramatically bearded author of The Grubtown Tales. Very funny. It's so interesting to watch other people's events for children, to compare approach.
My next event of the afternoon was Micheal Deeley (producer of The Italian Job, The Deer Hunter & Bladerunner, amongst others) who was really interesting and told some great anecdotes. I now know Micheal Caine's 'idea' at the end of The Italian Job - there had to be one, so there was potential for a sequel! Any suggestions?
Another fascinating talk was Anthony Horowitz, who I knew for his Alex Rider stories, but who is also the screen writer of most British TV crime, including Midsummer Murders, Poirot and Foyles War. We got to see a sneak preview of the new series of Foyles War, which looks rather dramatic, and his new 5-day drama, Collision.
I met up with Peter Bently, to chat about our Lark in the Ark event next morning, and suss out the space. Then we did a spot of people-watching in the greenroom (basically another big tent, but with free wine and comfy chairs), where we were within feet of both Kate Adie and The Archbishop of Canterbury (what a combo).
Quite a full day, all in all. I went out like a light when I finally got to my hotel that night.
I've just spent 2 days glued to the computer (at least the weather's been so awful, it's not felt too bad). It's all to do with A Lark in the Ark...
When Peter Bently and I perform it at Hay Festival (May 29th) and Edinburgh Festival (August), we are going to project the illustrations as we read. Apart from looking really good, this will be really useful: it's nice to go into the audience and choose children to open the flaps, but it's tricky for anyone else to see what's underneath. This way, each time a flap is lifted, everyone gets to see it.
But the trouble with flap books, is that none of the artwork makes any sense outside of the book, so I couldn't just load my existing illustrations into PowerPoint, ready for projection. For example, there is a page that looks like the one above. You lift a flaps on the duvet to reveal baboons in pink pantaloons hiding in the bed:
...along with llamas in pyjamas:
Except, what I actually drew was this:
...and this:
So, I had to re-visit every illustration in Photoshop, joining all the bits together, turning them into images that match what you see when you are reading the real book. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered another issue: when you open a flap in a book, and it goes across someone's face, well, that's fine, but for a projected image I thought it would look weird:
So, perfectionist (or obsessive?) that I am, I did more fiddling around, moving background characters out of the way:
While I was at it, I moved some of the eyes, and even pasted in this wee wombat to fill a pregnant space created!
It's all done now (phew) and looks really fun. Egmont are going to print us T-shirts for the event, and we are going to use my 'doctored' version of the llamas in pyjamas on the back! I think Hay is now fully booked. I'll post details of the Edinburgh event in a few weeks.
Remember that last weekend I caught a cold? I didn't seem to get the head cold, but boy did I cough, and when I breathed in, it sounded like blowing bubbles through a straw in a glass of lemonade.
I thought I'd given it to John when he got ill mid week. Then, when he took to his bed, I thought: man cold.
But guess what? He had a different cold altogether. Instead of me infecting him, he gave his to me, so I'm ill all over again!! This time I've got the whole thing: sore throat, sneezing all over the computer monitor (too graphic?).
One bit of news though to cheer me up: I just heard that A Lark in the Ark is going to be a Cbeebies bedtime story. It'll be ages yet til it's on, but it's lovely to be chosen.
The votes for the Red House Awards are all in now, so somebody somewhere knows whether we won (exciting, but sort of strange). They keep it a closely guarded secret though, until the big ceremony next month, when they do the old envelope opening trick...
I'm so upset - I have an important wedding abroad, so won't be able to attend. Peter will be there to cry on my behalf though, should we get lucky.
The drawing at the top is from An ABC of Nursery Rhymes by the way: Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses of course. It also seemed a fortuitous answer to this week's Illustration Friday: which happens to be Contagious.
Above is my original picture book illustration.
Can we come?! x