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.
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
October
© 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.
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.
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
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?
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!
A fantastic natural phenomenon occurred the other day and I thought I'd doodle a quick illustration to mark it. Solar eclipses happen from time to time and to experience one is an incredible feeling. Twilight at 0930 as you're having your breakfast is very strange and where I live in the UK about 90% of the sun was blocked out.
Roll on 2026 when we see the next one!