New Year. New Projects. New Adventures!

It's already February, 2018 is well underway, and so it's time to do an update as it was a very busy end to 2017.

July

Rewinding back to last Summer, in July I took part in the Newark Book Festival with Lucy Rowland, the author of 'Pirate Pete and his Smelly Feet' and 'Jake Bakes a Monster Cake' published by Macmillan Children's Books. Lots of little pirates turned up to draw Pete and make pirate hats!

August

Then in August I was asked to take part in a Pirate Pete book signing at a local indie shop, Bo Peep Boutique in Lincoln. I was also given part of their window to design a display to promote the book complete with palm trees, foliage, birds and of course the main guy himself!

September

It was publication time for 'Jake Bakes a Monster Cake', the second book that I illustrated written by Lucy and published by Macmillan. This was a great book to work on and we managed to come up with a weird and wonderful bunch of characters for it.

Monster Gang Art Revised.jpg

Jake Cover Art 2 LoRes.jpg

I was also asked to do another book signing and window display which was a lot of fun to do.

Then it was onto a Bright Group International 'Storytime Sunday' event at my agency in London.

To end September off I also had my Lincoln Knights Trail sculpture auctioned off for charity and it made a fantastic £4200.

'Knight Time' in front of the billboard that I was asked to design for Lincoln College

'Knight Time' in front of the billboard that I was asked to design for Lincoln College

October

© Vanessa Lovegrove / Henley Literary Festival

© Vanessa Lovegrove / Henley Literary Festival

Carrying on the busy end to the year Spider! was published and it even made BBC Breakfast.

I was kindly asked by my publisher Hachette to take part in the Cheltenham & Henley Literary Festivals alongside the fabulous Alison Steadman to promote our eight legged mini-beast. It was such a laugh being on stage with Alison and we had a great time entertaining the packed out audiences.

DSC_0131 1-2.jpg

After lots of talking and lots of books signing, we both had a well needed Gin!

Everyone has a different story as to how they became an illustrator, some have known since they were very young that they wanted to do it and some have changed careers entirely. My agency approached me to write a blog piece for them about how my career as an Illustrator developed over the 14 years since I started. I was pretty honest about it all and I think I could have been even more candid but what I wrote will hopefully resonate with others.

We Will Remember Animation.jpg

Christmas 2017 Text.jpg

Best of 2017

And so Christmas and New Year came and went and 2018 stretched its' arms and awoke. So what's in store?

For starters I've been working on a lot of new development for a couple of publishers and although I'm not able to currently show anything I'll hopefully be able to share something soon.

I've also formed a partnership with Cottages de Garrigue out in the Dordogne to sell some exclusive prints I designed for them.

One of the six prints available to purchase

One of the six prints available to purchase

I've been visiting this French region since I was very young and it's such a lovely area. So lovely in fact that there could be some big changes on the horizon...more to come in the foreseeable future.

Towards the end of the year 'Mrs Claus Takes the Reins' will be published by Amazon. It’s Christmas Eve morning, and Santa Claus is still in bed! He’s feeling stuffy and sneezy and slow as a yeti. Will Christmas have to be canceled?

Mrs Claus Vignette.jpg

Find out later in the year!

In-between that we're off to the Bologna Children's Book Fair again to keep the Swine Bars' coffers topped up. 'Yoga Frog' is published in April by Running Press which comes with it's own posable bendy character. I also have some projects in the pipeline too, so 2018 is sure to be busy!

À la bonne vôtre!

Happy New Year!

Mark Chambers January 14, 2015

So in the blink of an eye 2014 is over and we've welcomed in 2015. I had a great festive period out in France eating and drinking as much as I could to build up my 'winter coat'. I also had my latest picture book 'Superlove' written by Cherise Harper published with Knopf Random House out in the US. A fun story perfect for little girls and if you like moody cats! :)

For now it's right back to work and it's a very busy start to the new year for me. I'm carrying on with the nine book series I have with Simon & Schuster and Sainsbury's, we're now on book four with book one to three published very soon.

I've just started a new book series with Simon & Schuster US about a pair of kids that get up to all sorts of adventures in New York so I'm designing the cover jacket for that at the moment.

'My Hamster is a Genius' written by the fab Dave Lowe is up for the Worcestershire Awesomest Book Award with the winner announced in March, so fingers crossed for Stinky & Jinks!

I've also been sent a nice little project with Ladybird, there's new work to do for the upcoming Bologna Book Fair and also my first author/illustrated book that I'm currently writing.

So it's pretty much all go!!