Books, schools and a walk

It’s been a busy two weeks. I went to a couple of schools and a book festival.

One of my favourite visits was to The Rowen Nursery and Primary School in Wimbledon; lovely children and  friendly teachers. The next day I was at another lovely school in Farnborough, Parsonage Farm Nursery and Infant School. Once again, I had a great day. This is the picture we made with the children.

I know I’ve done similar pictures with children before, but I’ll never get tired of doing them. Children always surprise me with new ideas and it’s great fun to see them having fun.

At the weekend I travelled to the Lake District to the National Trust Children’s Book Festival. This time it was more holiday than work. I did an event with Nicola Davies. I love listening to her talking about animals and all I have to do is painting as she talks. It was great fun. I also did one event on my own. I had a great audience and it was rather special.

During my talk I paint and draw. We give people raffle tickets and at the end we raffle the drawings and give them to children. This time, one little girl came to me and asked every time during the raffle, if she can have the picture, but I couldn’t give it to her, since it was a raffle. She didn’t understand. It was breaking my heart. All four big drawings were given away. There was only one picture left and then…..the winning number is……SHE WON IT! The girl won her picture!

You couldn’t have made it up. Everybody cheered.



The festival was also a great opportunity to catch up with friends, fellow artists and writers. The lovely Gill Lewis was there, talented Ed Vere, Philip Ardagh, Stephen Cole, Axel Scheffler,  Yuval Zommer, Will Mabbitt…

Will’s book “I can only draw worms” is so funny, that I’ve been reading it and showing it to everybody I’ve met since.

I also went for walks in the hills. It was marvellous. Definitely one of the nicest places I’ve ever been.

This fancy umbrella is NOT mine! I borrowed it from Gill.

Nicola and Katarina having a rest.

One of the view. It’s not a painting, it really looked like this!

Somewhere in between I found time to work on the new cover for “A First Book of Animals”. Well, the book is going to be published in America, but it will be called ” Song of the Wild. A First Book of Animals” and the American publisher would like an orangutan on the cover.

This is the unfinished orangutan.  Next time it’ll be finished.