Meet New People - Learn New Stuff

Spent an inspiring day on Saturday with other emerging and published children's book writers and illustrators - a critique and networking workshop.
It was organised by other SCBWI members
Emma Graham came up from Ipswich and chatting to her was inspiring. Here's one of her drawings I liked from the portfolio she brought with her

Probably my favourite image of Emma's was Gardeners' World - take a look... Also what I learned from Emma was that you can get out there and trawl round publishers and they will have a look at your portfolio

My colleague Julia Groves was there in the morning.  She is having a very exciting time at the moment with one of her illustrations winning a recent SCBWI competition and published in an illustrated book of new writing. See what she says about it here.

I love this birdies in a tree image - lovely simple use of the textures in the print combined with the flat (digital?) grey. She knows how to leave space - something I learned from looking at Julia's work.

My work can only benefit from meeting new people, seeing their work and listening to their wise words.

In the afternoon I worked with writer Lisa Mann and author of the Adventure Island series Helen Moss to develop an idea for a picture book - so watch this space...!

Helen writes a chapter a day - for a whole month - to produce one of the books in her series... She suggested I do one illustration a day - I'd SO love to have the time! With two or three hours maximum in any one day to spend on my art work - maybe one illustration a fortnight is more realistic!! - Oh, to have an eight hour stretch in one go...