Painting Sailfish

I’ve started working on the final pictures for a book by Nicola Davies  called “My First Book of Animals”.

It’s so inspiring that I would like to do nothing else but paint and draw all these exciting animals.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work like this. There is always something else I have to do as well. Little pictures I promised to do some time ago, school visits (quite a few of them in fact) and I was also at the Imagine Children’s Festival at Southbank centre in London.

I did two talks and two workshops. Imagine Children’s Festival is a great event and I’m pleased to say that it all went very well. It was good fun. The children (and their parents) were nice and friendly and also keen to do some good art.

We made little concertina books based on my book “The Mouse Who Ate the Moon”.

I was signing books and one of the dads came and asked me a favour. He told me that one of his son’s favourite books was my Animal Opposites. He told me that it is read so much, that the book got a bit battered. Then he produced a copy of Animal Opposites that is definitely well loved. Some of the pop ups were torn a bit, but the pop up peacock was completely missing, so I was asked if I could draw a new peacock into the book. I did …my best. I always like to see my books being well read and used.

Back to ” My First Book of Animals”. I thought I would start with a picture of gorilla with baby. The reason is, that I consider this picture to be one of the most difficult pictures in the book, so I wanted to get on with it. I fact I enjoyed drawing the gorilla. The picture isn’t finished, but I think it’s going o.k. so far.

Then I painted a sailfish. In this case I choose the sailfish because I really like this fish and I couldn’t wait to have a go.

I did the picture twice. The second picture was much better than the first one, but it still needs a bit of work.

And I started flamingoes. It’s a work in progress….well the whole book is a work in progress.

A couple more things to mention. Spending three days in London this week was great. There’s so much going on, but the high light for me was exhibition of Marlene Dumas in Tate ModernIt’s so nice to see an exhibition of somebody who can still paint and draw. Great exhibition.

Another highlight for me was an exhibition of MA graduates from Anglia Ruskin University and Cambridge School of Art. I wished I could spend more time in the exhibition, but I was running out of time. What I saw was very impressive. Lots of great illustrators. One of them is my friend from the Academy of Fine Art in Prague - Zdenka Pozarova. Great to catch up and congratulations!

And one more thing. It was St. Valentine’s Day and I received this nice review of Jonathan & Martha. It’s funny how this books always get mentioned at this time of the year. Thank you myfriendlucy.