Most of my story ideas start with a character. Inspiration can come from all sorts of places, especially from the animal world. Did the picture above make you laugh? Can you imagine the sort of personality this macaque monkey might have? She is clever, for one thing, since she figured out what a wildlife photographer was doing and grabbed his camera to take this self-portrait! If you were writing a story about her, what would you call her?

Once you have a name and some idea of what your character is like, you can start thinking up a story. What other sort of mischief might Millie the macaque monkey get up to? I think she would definitely be a naughty character, so she is bound to get into trouble! But because she is good at heart, everything would work out okay in the end.

What about this guy? He looks a bit mean, I think. I would call him Orville and make him bad-tempered and rude. And that is because he is hard and scaly and has a mean expression. Perhaps in reality he is a very sweet tortoise!

Here is another interesting individual. He is a type of toucan with intense blue eyes that stare unblinkingly at you. It’s hard to work out what he might be thinking. Is he friendly, or will he bite your finger? The shape of his beak makes him appear to be frowning, and it looks hard and sharp. His blue claws are also a bit scary looking. What sort of story might you write about him? Perhaps he feels misunderstood and really wants to be a tap dancer!

A while ago my family and I were stuck in the middle of nowhere when our car broke down. We found a place to wait for the AA man to come and rescue us, and took some pictures of this surprising sign. Adult swans can be quite aggressive, so someone must have put up this Swan Alert because of the baby swans (cygnets). A mum will always protect her babies, so it was a warning for people not to get too close! Perhaps that might inspire a story about a mother swan and her little ones.

I get ideas for characters in lots of strange places. I saw these lovely quilted owls in a gift shop in St Andrews. Don’t they look as though they’re terribly curious about the outside world? I’m sure if you gave them names and distinct personalities a story would not be far behind…

Here’s something you don’t see every day. These angel sculptures are suspended from the ceiling in the cathedral in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. Thanks to Doctor Who, they remind me of the weeping angels that get closer and closer with their big fangs each time you blink! They look like they’re swooping down ready to pounce. But if you look at their faces, these angels seem sad, as if they are caught on those wires, suspended in mid-air and unable to escape. Perhaps they are gentle, unhappy angels after all. What do you think?

This last picture shows my children making silly faces behind some flat Victorian costumes on a little model train carriage. They had fun pretending to be posh Victorian train passengers on a day out. That’s another way to create characters for a story – imagine going back in time, or forward into the future! Once you’ve got your characters, just let your imagination fly…

Gabby is now working on my new puffin story, which is all about Lewis’s brother Harris. Unlike Lewis, Harris is quite happy being a puffin, but he is a bit lonely now that Lewis has flown off to join the circus. He decides to embark on his own adventure in search of new friends, and he finds lots of them! In this book Gabby will have to create not only puffins but seals, dolphins, fish, guillemots, otters and more!

The new story is called Harris the Hero, and it will be published by Floris in the spring of 2013. I thought it would be fun to give you a little sneak peek of some of the beautiful illustrations Gabby has done so far!

In this first illustration, Gabby shows Harris looking sad and alone with all the other puffins paired off around him. In the distance you can see a famous Scottish bridge, the Forth Rail Bridge, which goes across the Firth of Forth. The bridge is marked on the map below with a little red line near Queensferry, so you can imagine exactly where Harris is standing in Gabby’s picture.

Harris lives near Anstruther on the East Neuk of Fife. Below is another map showing the same area, with Anstruther marked just below the words East Neuk. The Kingdom of Fife (the only “Kingdom” left in Scotland) is lovely and green with pretty villages along the coast.

In Gabby’s second illustration she has created her own map from the point of view of a flying puffin! Isn’t it amazing? When I look at it I feel a little dizzy, as if I’m in an airplane looking down, down, down…

In this beautiful watercolour you can see the little village of Anstruther with sailboats in the harbour. And look – someone on the golf course at Balcomie Links has nearly hit Harris with a ball! Later in the story Harris comes to the rescue of a baby seal who has got lost. The poor thing is clinging to a buoy in the harbour and Harris helps him find his way back to his mum.

But I mustn’t give the whole story away! You’ll have to wait until the spring to see Harris the Hero in print…

The other day I got a fantastic message from a lady who signed her letter, “Jacob O’Reilly’s Nana.” You can imagine how pleased I was to learn that there is a REAL Jacob O’Reilly out there who loves my book!

Thanks, Jacob O’Reilly’s Nana!

Jacob O’Reilly Wants a Pet is all about a little boy who is desperate for a pet of his own – just any pet at all. He asks his parents for one thing after another but they are not very keen on the idea. They think Jacob should try looking after animals before he gets his own pet. When he discovers what hard work it is, he might have second thoughts…

Here is Jacob with his giant list of possible pets. Some of his suggestions are pretty wacky! Would you like a dragon for a pet? Or an ant nest? Hmmm…

Jacob agrees to his parents’ idea of looking after other people’s pets, and puts a big sign outside his house: “Pet Sitter Jake at your service.” Soon his house is swamped with dogs, cats, hamsters, rabbits, sheep, a horse, a zebra and a rather big snake called Morris! He has a tough time feeding, cleaning and exercising them all, and after two weeks he is very glad when the owners all come back to collect them.

I love the illustrations by Lee Wildish which are so colourful and fun! He’s come up with all sorts of great pets for the endpapers, too. Here you can see a turtle, a little yellow dog, some dancing frogs, a rabbit, and my personal favourite, a mouse in a cheesy racing car!

I thought the real Jacob O’Reilly (and my other readers) might like to try some of the fun activities I have put together to go with this book. If you click on the images below you should be able to print them out at home.

© Lynne Rickards 2010

© Lynne Rickards 2010

© Lynne Rickards 2010

I think the real Jacob O’Reilly may need a bit of help from his Nana to do some of these activities, since he is not quite three. Maybe his big brother Sammy can help too. Have fun!

Not long ago my daughter Anna decided she would enter a competition to design and create her own picture book. The competition was being held by the Reading Zone, and entries were to be judged by the amazing author and illustrator, Nick Sharratt.

Anna has always loved drawing cartoons, and a while back she had come up with a clever and heroic character called Bea who was, naturally, a bee. In a little yellow notebook she had drawn thirteen comic book adventures in which Bea had to tackle all sorts of evil foes. The titles included Bea and the Terrible Bee-Eating Toilets, Bea and the Rabid Rollercoaster, and Bea and the Dentist of Death!

Here is the cover of her comic book. You can see the amount of detail Anna always puts into her drawings. I particularly like the bee ferris wheel!

Inside, the comics are all drawn on lined paper, and Anna’s little insect characters are full of expression and doing wild things. Here you can see Bea triumphing over the terrible bee-eating toilets:

One of the original stories in this comic book was called Bea and the Giant Evil Marshmallow. Anna decided that would be the story she would turn into a picture book for the Reading Zone competition, and she set about drawing furiously!

It took a few days for her to draw and colour the 24 pages required for the competition. She changed the title to Bea and the Marshmallow Menace, and you can see the cover at the top of this post. Below is the moment when Bea saves the day, with worrying consequences…

We packaged Anna’s book up carefully and she sent it in through her school. Then there was a very long wait. You can imagine how thrilled she was when the Reading Zone people announced the winners, and she had won first prize in the senior school category!

The prizes are the most exciting thing of all. Anna has received 50 printed copies of her book, her school will receive a collection of picture books for their library, and an author or illustrator will come to the school as a special event!

Anna has been invited to read her story to the nursery and Primary one classes, and in preparation she has made a little Bea toy to take with her. Isn’t she the cutest thing? She is made with a yellow sock, bits of a black sock and braided black wool for her arms and legs. Her antennae are made from a black paperclip, and her eyes and shoes are made with Fimo baking clay. I just hope the children won’t pull her legs off!

Update: Anna had a lovely time with the nursery children at her school, who seemed to really enjoy hearing her read the Bea story. She visited two nursery classes and four P1 classes, and had a great time being a visiting author!

Anna never stops drawing cartoons. Here are two more:

©Anna Rickards 2011

©Anna Rickards 2012

I think she should start a cartoon blog of her own. There are lots of brilliant illustrators’ blogs out there to inspire her. Maybe one day she’ll take the plunge!

The other day I went to visit a friend of mine who is a brilliant illustrator. Like me, she is a North American living in Scotland, and like me she has two kids who sort of inspired her to get into writing and illustrating children’s books. Her name is Sara Pinto and she is full of amazing and incredible ideas!

For example, one of her books is called Apples and Oranges: Going Bananas with Pairs. The idea for this book came from a question a teacher once asked Sara when she was five years old. The question was, “What do apples and oranges have in common?” The teacher was probably expecting her to say that they are both fruit. What she actually answered was, “They both don’t wear glasses.” I’m sure the teacher was surprised, but she couldn’t argue because it was true!

Sara’s books are always quirky and full of surprises. Her first book, The Alphabet Room, has a door on each page that you open up to find new things (Apples, Bowls, a Cat, a Dog) filling up the room. Each time a new page is turned the things have changed places so you have to search each time to find them all.

As a follow-up to her clever ABC book, Sara then wrote and illustrated a counting book called The Number Garden. This one uses little gates you have to open to find one sun, two rabbits, three lawn chairs, and so on.

Sara’s most recent creation, The Color Closet, is an iBook for the iPad. It’s all about colours, but these are colours you’ve never heard of before! As you click to open up the closet, all sorts of unusual things appear, and a touch will turn them lime, turquoise, mustard, cerulean or custard. What a fun way to discover how many colours there are!

Here are some examples of the things you can find in this colourful closet:

It’s always a pleasure to spend time with Sara as she is so full of fun and crazy ideas. I always come away feeling inspired and encouraged! Thanks, Sara!

There are many good reasons for living in Scotland. One of the best is the Edinburgh International Book Festival which happens every summer in the last three weeks of August. At this time the city of Edinburgh comes alive with street performers, outdoor concerts and thousands of comedy, theatre, music and dance shows to choose from.

The Book Festival hosts over 800 author events, including almost every children’s author you’ve ever heard of! It’s always a thrill for me to be invited to perform at the festival alongside some of my absolute idols! This year was my third appearance, and I took my daughter and her friend along so we could enjoy some other authors’ events as well.

For many years now my daughter Anna has been a big Jacqueline Wilson fan. We ALWAYS go to see Jacqueline at the Edinburgh Book Festival, and this summer was no exception. This time Jacqueline was talking about her latest book, Four Children and It, which is based on the classic story written in 1902 by Edith Nesbit, Five Children and It. The ‘It’ in both books is a funny little alien, and Jacqueline has written an updated story with modern-day children who have new adventures with the alien.

Some years ago we were lucky enough to get to know Jacqueline Wilson, and I can tell you for certain that she is a lovely person! Despite being incredibly busy signing books and doing interviews, she took a bit of time out for a quick visit with us, and my daughter and her friend Mashal got this brilliant picture!

But that wasn’t all. Next we went to hear the wonderful Meg Rosoff talk about her new book, There is No Dog. Anna had read and enjoyed it, as well as How I Live Now, and I was curious to learn more about this writer whose work I had dipped into and been very impressed by. Listening to her talk, I was struck by how much we had in common (as North American writers of about the same age living in the UK). She was funny and clever and instantly likeable, so it was a great pleasure to meet her in the book-signing tent after her event. I am definitely going to read as much Meg Rosoff as I can get hold of now!

But then it was time for my own event. This summer I was reading my latest book, Lewis Clowns Around. I had a good crowd of children on pillows on the floor, and their parents all sat on chairs behind them. It was great fun reading the story with them, and one little boy (who is wearing a stripy shirt and dungarees in the photo below) kept climbing up on the stage to be part of the show! Later the children all got paper and coloured pencils to do their own puffin drawings. I set up the big book on the floor so they could look at the pictures for inspiration.

Some of the children gave their drawings to me at the end of our session, and I have two particularly good ones to show you. In the first one you can see Lewis the puffin in a special train to go to the circus. Can you see his carriage is covered with little fish? Perhaps that’s his lunch.

The second drawing is a very handsome puffin by a boy called Ruari. For some reason he decided to colour Lewis’s tummy green instead of white. Maybe he’d been sliding down a grassy hill…

After my event I got to chat with lots of kids and their parents in the book-signing tent. While I was there, Anna decided to take some photographs around the book festival. She is a great help to me when I need photos for my blog!

You can see in this one how many people come to the book festival every summer. I was very lucky to have warm sunshine on the weekend I was there. The tents are set up all around Charlotte Square Gardens, and when it’s rainy the grass in the middle is a sea of mud!

Most of the tents are venues for author events, but one or two are cafes like the Spiegeltent above. There is also a special tent called the Authors’ Yurt, where we authors can relax before or after an event. The picture below was taken by Book Festival staff.

The Yurt is a bit like Dr Who’s Tardis because it looks quite small on the outside but inside it has several rooms with exotic rugs on the floor and colourful cushions all around. The lines you see on the ceiling are wooden slats holding up the tent roof!

All around the walkways that link the tents are big poster-size portraits of the many writers who come to the festival. This photo Anna took shows Ryan Van Winkle, my friend Vivian French and Jenny Colgan. In most cases the authors are making funny faces for the camera, and it’s great fun to go round and see how many you can recognise.

Anna took this last photo in the bookshop, where hundreds of books are on display. She liked the colours and the funny titles of these Scots books. The Edinburgh Book Festival continues until 27 August so there’s still plenty of time to check out your favourite authors. I have a new puffin book coming out next spring, so I’m hoping I’ll be invited back to the festival in 2013. See you there!

Today some final proofs came in the post for my next picture book, Clementine’s Smile. It is a Collins Big Cat book designed for readers in Year 2 (aged 6 and 7) and it’s another rhyming story (since I love to rhyme!) As you can see, Simona Meisser’s illustrations are colourful and fun.

It all began last year when a new person moved in next door to us. Her name was Clementine, and my first thought upon meeting her was, “What a great name for a character!”

Naturally I set about writing a new story immediately. I decided that my Clementine would be a crocodile, and that she would have a pain in her tooth. (Our lovely neighbour Clementine doesn’t look ONE BIT like a crocodile, but she does have a very sparkling smile!)

Clementine the crocodile is lots of fun and is usually smiling. When one of her teeth starts hurting, her parents say she must go to the dentist, and despite her objections they make an appointment for half-past two. Many children are nervous about going to see the dentist, and Clementine is no exception. Later her parents have to search the whole house because she is hiding and does NOT want to go!

At last they find her and take her to the dentist, where she is a very naughty crocodile. I won’t give away the whole story, but let’s just say that the poor dentist has a tough time fixing Clementine’s sore tooth!

At the end of the book there are some handy tips for looking after your own teeth. We all should try to brush our teeth at least twice a day (or after every meal if you can manage it.) If a tooth starts hurting we must get to a dentist as soon as possible. The dentist can fix it more easily if you go straight away. It only gets worse if you leave it…

My book is just one of  many picture books about visiting the dentist. That just goes to show how important the subject is! Here are a few more examples you might like to try:

The Usborne First Experiences series has one about going to the dentist that you can see HERE.

The Tooth Book is a non-fiction book (full of interesting facts) all about teeth and how to look after them. You can see more details about it HERE.

My friend Vivian French has a series of books about the Buttons Family (published by Walker Books) which looks at all sorts of scary first experiences. Her book Going to the Dentist came out in July 2012, and if you want to know more about it, click HERE.

And one final book about dentists is from Child’s Play, a First Time book simply called Dentist. If you want to learn more about it, click HERE.

Having a healthy smile is very important! Imagine if you couldn’t smile at all – what fun would you be then? Taking care of your teeth will make sure your smile is as sparkling as it can be. Happy brushing!

Friday April 20th is a special day for me. It is the first birthday of my Blog for Kids! I have had a lot of fun writing about things I care about over the past year, and it’s been great to get responses from you, too! The little cat above is a drawing Anna did for her 10th birthday party, so I thought it was a good way to start this post.

To celebrate my blog’s birthday I have decided to write some GOOD NEWS stories. For example, I always get a special thrill each spring when the giant cherry tree outside my house comes out in beautiful pink blossom. This is the view from my window at the moment, and it never fails to cheer me up, even on a rainy day!

Speaking of pink things, I have amazing news that on April 11th, over 8 MILLION people around the world dressed in pink to show that they were standing up against bullying. Isn’t that fantastic? If you want to see some of those people in action, check out the City News Day of Pink video HERE. It’s great to see so many young people working together for a good cause and having fun at the same time. In one highschool in Toronto they even made special pink food in the cafeteria!

Here is another wonderful reason to celebrate. His name is Alfie and he is a rescue dog recently adopted by a friend of mine. Isn’t he gorgeous? He has only just arrived in his new home, so I hope he settles in well and becomes a special member of the family. I love dogs so I hope one day I’ll get to meet him!

The month of April marks another first birthday – that of the Guardian Children’s Books Website. This is a brilliant site full of book reviews, video interviews with authors, quizzes, the latest children’s book news and even drawing tips! You can sign up and join in the action, writing book reviews yourself and getting involved in discussions. To find out more about the site and how to join, click HERE.

In some parts of the world, people live in such isolated and hard-to-reach places that they can’t enjoy the simple things we take for granted – like books. I recently discovered (from @shedworking on Twitter) that in Venezuela there is a clever new way to bring books to children in remote mountain villages. Book mules!

These animals are very tough and can be used to carry heavy loads along treacherous mountain paths where a four-wheeled vehicle couldn’t go. When the book mule arrives in a village, the children all cry “Bibliomulas!” and race to find something to read. In a place where there are no libraries or bookshops, you can imagine how exciting it would be to see the mule coming!

In some of these places there is starting to be some mobile phone reception, so the mules can carry laptops to give the villagers access to the internet. Cyber mules! This story was reported on a BBC Radio 4 programme called From Our Own Correspondent, and you can read a big article about it HERE. I think it’s brilliant!

Albrecht Durer was a German artist who lived from 1471 to 1528. His first self-portrait was a silverpoint drawing he did when he was only thirteen years old! (Silverpoint, a sharp metal instrument scraped across a painted white surface, was used before pencils were invented.)

As Durer got older he started using oil paints. In the painting above he is twenty-two years old and  has painted himself holding a thistle. This painting may have been intended for his fiancée Agnes Frey (though a thistle is a rather prickly flower to give your girlfriend!)

This third self-portrait shows how Durer is getting older and more skilful in his technique (here he is twenty-six). He has grown a beard and his long, golden hair is very curly. You can see that he favours this pose and always paints his face with a serious expression. In the days before photographs, to paint a self-portrait the artist had to use a mirror as he or she worked. I do hope Durer didn’t get any paint on that fancy black-and-white outfit!

As you can see, Albrecht Durer was very talented from an early age. He became a successful painter of commissioned portraits, altarpieces and religious paintings, but he also loved to do nature studies such as this famous watercolour of a hare:

That painting he would have been able to do from life, just like Beatrix Potter did with her pet rabbits many years later. But he didn’t always draw animals he could see. One of his most famous woodcuts is one of an Indian rhinoceros that was given as a gift to the King of Portugal in 1515. In those days a rhinoceros was a very exotic and strange animal that no one in Europe had ever seen!

Durer never saw the animal himself, but did this picture from a written description and a little sketch someone else gave him. For this reason, it looks as if it is wearing a suit of armour! If you want to know more about Durer’s rhinoceros, click HERE.

Another artist whose many self-portraits help us to see how his painting style changed over the years is Pablo Picasso. When he was very young he painted in a realistic way.

This self-portrait he did at the age of fifteen shows how talented he was. Picasso was born in Spain in 1881, and he studied art in Paris and became the most famous artist in the world! Part of the reason he was so celebrated was because he invented entirely new ways of painting that were shocking and surprising.

This next self-portrait was done when Picasso was twenty-six, and you can see how his style has changed. Instead of painting a realistic picture, he has made it very stylised with bold, angular lines and simple outlines of the eyes, nose and ear. His later work was even more abstract, with parts of a face put together in a striking and sometimes disturbing arrangement.

This portrait of a woman was done in 1960 when Picasso was seventy-nine years old. You can see two views of the woman at the same time: one from the side and one face-on. The blue and green colours and the woman’s expression give the painting a feeling of great sadness.

Anyone can do a self-portrait. When my daughter was five, her whole class did paintings of themselves to put up on the classroom wall. This is what hers looked like:

When you see what she looked like at five, you can see the resemblance!

It’s fun to paint a picture of yourself, and you can try all different styles and materials. Make it bold and colourful with oil pastels, or subtly shaded in pencil or coloured pencil. Make it crazy and abstract like a Picasso portrait, or as realistic as a photograph. How do YOU see yourself?

My friend Marg asked if I had any self-portraits I could show you. I love drawing and painting people, but I haven’t done a picture of myself for years! What I can show you are a few portraits I have done of other people over the years.

This picture of Anne Frank was done from a well known photograph when I was in Art College. I used gouache paint which is very tricky to work with. I got a B for this effort!

This portrait of a sad looking little boy I did a few years later when I was working as a children’s book illustrator. It is done in watercolours, my favourite medium for many years.

The last one I have to show you is done in pencil and coloured pencil. My husband was in India and he took this picture of a girl carrying a bowl on her head. I thought she was very sweet looking! We now have this drawing framed in our kitchen. I hope all this art will help to inspire your own creative ideas. Time to get drawing!

Many artists through the ages have tried to capture the delight and beauty of spring. During the Renaissance in Italy, the painter Sandro Botticelli created a giant work of art called Primavera (“spring” in Italian). In it he shows the goddess of spring in an orange grove surrounded by nymphs. Above her you can see a little winged boy with a bow and arrow. He is not just any naughty child – he is Cupid, and anyone who is hit by his little arrow will fall in love.

About 100 years later, another Italian artist, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, created strange portraits of people whose heads seemed to be made of vegetables or flowers! His version of Primavera is a woman with roses for ears, a leafy green dress and all sorts of wild flowers for hair.

In the 1890s a Czech artist called Alfons Mucha became very successful in Paris painting beautiful women in flowing gowns for theatrical posters, book illustrations and advertisements in magazines and newspapers. His style was very distinctive and it soon became known as Art Nouveau (“new art”). Mucha’s version of spring (Le Printemps) is typical of his most famous work.

This curvy, elongated style was adopted by other artists across Europe, including the famous Glasgow couple Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald. They designed beautiful interiors using similar elongated female forms in their decorative panels. A good example of this is Margaret Macdonald’s piece, The May Queen, which also has a spring theme!

But it was not only artists whose work was inspired by the coming of spring. Antonio Vivaldi, an Italian composer who lived over 300 years ago, wrote a beautiful piece of music (now very famous) called The Four Seasons. In the section called Spring he recreated the sound of wild thunderstorms and gently melting snow. If you want to listen to Vivaldi’s amazing musical Spring, click HERE.

Perhaps as you listen you will be inspired to create your own spring work of art!

It may be a bit hard for you to see the detail in this picture. I can see that the letter X is painted by Anthony Browne (it’s Willy in a funny pose). The letter S is done by Sue Eves and you can read more about her letter on her blog here. The letter Z is by Axel Scheffler (who illustrates many of Julia Donaldson’s stories).

My friend took another photo to let me see my G more clearly, so here is a closer look at just a few of the letters:

I have discovered that the owl flying through the letter O is the work of Emily Gravett. Can you guess some of the others? The letter F seems to be covered in bats, and the H has a cat playing guitar and a knife and fork chasing a sausage! I love the pirate P with its moonlit galleon and scull-and-crossbones flag. Do you know who those artists might be? I think there is a guide to all the artists at the Just Imagine Story Centre, so I really must get there some day and see for myself!

Letters of the alphabet have long been a source of artistic inspiration. In medieval times, about 700 years ago, monks would spend hours carefully writing out books (there were no printers back then!) Some of them were very talented because they produced beautiful illustrations like the ones you can see here:

This is a letter P decorated with flowers and real gold!

This page from a choir book shows St Stephen inside a letter H. Those funny squares are musical notes!

In Victorian times, about 150 years ago, children’s ABC books were full of detailed drawings. (You can tell they are Victorian children by the way they are dressed). Not only were these books meant to teach children about the alphabet, but they also had strong messages about how children should behave. Here is an example (I chose the letter L because my name is Lynne). It describes Lads and Lasses who Learn their Letters and Lessons! (I think the Lazy ones and Laughing ones probably got in trouble…)

I have written before about the beautiful letters drawn by Jakub Konvica. His pencil drawings are so realistic you almost expect the little bird perched on a branch to move! This letter A is part of a whole alphabet Jakub has drawn. You can see more of his letters here. His letters spell out a whole poem about the month of May.

If you would like to illustrate your own letter, I have found a website called Colouring Printables where you can choose any letter you like and print it out. You could print all the letters of your name, then fill them with drawings or magazine clippings of things you like. When they’re all finished you can cut the letters out and put them on your bedroom door, or on the fridge.

Time to get creative!

After high school I went to an art college to study illustration. In the first year we all had to do a “Foundation” course, where we learned the basics about drawing, 2-D design, 3-D design and colour. One of my assignments was to create a poster illustrating my timetable, so I can show you exactly what I studied in my first year:

As you can see, I was very interested in Art History. I loved (and still love) looking at art, and I think you can learn so much from artists through the ages. One of the subjects you can see at the top of my timetable is Art of the Native Peoples. The raven rattle I chose to illustrate that subject was made by the Haida tribe of western Canada. I loved the bold outlines and strong colours used by that particular tribe. You can learn more about Haida art at the Canadian Museum of Civilization website here.

In 3-D design we used a special material called “foam-core” board to make three-dimensional structures and sculptures. If you look closely you can see I cut out a 3 and a D from foam-core and stuck them on my poster.

Another important subject at art college was Colour. I thought I knew about the primary colours but I was completely wrong! It took me quite a while to accept that primary red was actually magenta (a deep pink colour) and primary blue was more like turquoise. It was only when I started mixing colours that I realised how much yellow there is in fire-engine red.

These are what I thought were primary colours.

The colours in the circles are true primary colours.

In Colour class we had to fill an enormous scrap book with strips of painted paper to show the many hues between each primary colour. It took ages painting from pure yellow through to red, then red to blue, then blue to yellow again, but it was a great way to understand exactly how every colour is made. We also had to paint a grey scale, going from white to black with every shade in between.

After art college I spent about six months working as a children’s book illustrator. I have one book published with my illustrations which was all about Christmas around the world. Here is one of my black-and-white illustrations from the book:

It was a very valuable experience, but I soon realised I was much happier writing the words than drawing the pictures. When I grew up I became a writer, and I love imagining how my stories will look without having to do it myself! I still draw and paint for my own pleasure, and sometimes I do drawings for friends.

I have recently discovered drawing with coloured pencils on coloured paper (which is not so hard as using paint!) I used to love watercolours but now I’m a bit nervous that I’ll ruin a nice drawing, so pencils are my way of cheating a bit.

Here is a peacock I gave some friends as a wedding present:

And this is a portrait I did for a friend of her grandmother (from a photograph taken in the 1920s):

My friend's Granny looked very pretty in the 1920s.

This is the photo I used for her portrait.

The last picture I want to show you is one that hangs on a wall in my office. This is a funny picture of my great-grandmother Hepzibah Moran (far right) and her three sisters in Canada, and like the portrait above I used a photo taken in the 1920s. I think this one must have been taken at Easter time because the ladies are still all bundled up against the cold, but they are wearing corsages on their coats! They are also standing on a beach, which is quite mysterious…

One of the paintings that really caught our attention was “La Mitrailleuse” (The Machine Gun) by Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson. It was painted in 1915 and shows soldiers in the trenches during World War I. The painter himself worked as an ambulance driver, and he found dealing with all the wounded soldiers very distressing. This painting is done in a Futurist style, with everything reduced to flat surfaces and straight lines.

The reason this painting made us stop and stare was because we have two books at home by D.B. Johnson and the style reminded us very much of his illustrations. You can see what I mean here:

Look how D.B. Johnson uses the same straight lines to divide up the picture and create flat planes that seem to be seen from different angles. We love D.B. Johnson’s books (you can see Henry Hikes to Fitchburg in an earlier post) so I thought I would do some more research into this style of painting.

I found this lovely landscape by Auguste Herbin, which was painted in 1913, the year before World War I began. It can be found in the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. This painting chops up the scene into sections to create an impression of flat surfaces like shafts of sunlight. It’s a good example to compare with Henry Builds a Cabin because the artist uses very similar colours.

Here is another example by Johannes Itten, a Swiss artist who was painting around the same time. His “Group of Houses in Spring” was painted in 1916, and you can learn all about the artist and his work on the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza website.

All of these wartime artists were painting at a time when the world was changing very rapidly. Europe was caught up in a terrible war, and big machines that could work faster and longer than people could were taking over many jobs. Photography, which came into common use around 1900, meant that artists were no longer needed to create realistic pictures of things. They had to think imaginatively to make their paintings different from what a camera could do.

Artists at this time wanted to express their feelings about the changing world in a way that would grab people’s attention. Instead of painting in a realistic way, they tried to show movement, speed, and the way everything had become mechanical and robotic. Different artists influenced each other, so Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque started the Cubist style, and a group of Italian artists developed something similar which they called Futurism.

When I was younger I wanted to be an artist myself, so I have spent many happy hours looking at other people’s paintings. Visiting an art gallery is the best way to start, and like D.B. Johnson, maybe you will be inspired by something amazing!

Inside there are seven levels with a lovely café, a big bookshop, a library, storytelling areas and lots of wonderful displays. This special centre for children’s books has a collection of work from many famous writers and illustrators, and they have lots of great author events all through the year.

This was a very exciting day for us because Anna’s artwork was on display in the exhibition! Naturally I had to take pictures of everything!

There was a lovely tea all set out for us, with elegant cake stands, delicious sandwiches and even sweets in glasses you could just nibble to your heart’s content! Among the drinks on offer was pink milk for the children. I used to love that when I was little, and I must say I was tempted…

The exhibition tells the whole story of Jacqueline Wilson’s life, from her childhood when she wrote her first stories in little notebooks to her huge success as a children’s author today.

This is what you see when you first enter the exhibition. It looks like every book Jacqueline has ever written is covering the floor. We love the illustrations Nick Sharratt does for Jacqueline’s books, so it was great fun to examine every one (and Anna has read them all!) She took this picture, so you can see she wore her special shoes for the occasion.

The wall devoted to Jacqueline’s fans is covered from top to bottom with letters she has received over the years. These come from children all over the world who love her books. They send her drawings, story ideas and sometimes even gifts! Two of these (soft toys her fans have made for her) are in special cases mounted on the wall.

Anna feels really lucky to have several of her hand-drawn cards to Jacqueline on the wall. One is in its own case, and below it in another case is the card Jacqueline wrote back. (If you look closely you can also see the little lemur we made for Jacqueline for her birthday.) We are delighted that Anna’s work will be on display for a whole year, and then it might go on tour!

The exhibition is excellent and really worth a visit. You can see Jacqueline’s toys and favourite books when she was little, look at paintings that she once had on her bedroom wall, learn all about her first job writing for a magazine, and look at all sorts of amazing illustrations by Nick Sharratt.

You can also imagine what it would be like to be Tracy Beaker! Here is one of the rooms in the exhibition, a recreation of Tracy Beaker’s dumping ground where you can watch Tracy on the TV.

Anna might like to be a writer and illustrator one day, and Jacqueline Wilson and Nick Sharratt are both huge inspirations for her. We’d like to say many thanks to the Seven Stories team for inviting Anna (and her mum) to such an amazing event!

After I received their book, I felt I really ought to send a thank-you. I decided they might enjoy a green book bag which has fruit-shaped sponges for painting, lots of classroom activities (like a word search and drawing ideas), a matching game and a letter from the Countess inviting them to tea!

Here is what came back to me in the post today:

Dear Lynne,

Thank you so much for the bag of activities you sent the class. It caused much excitement when it arrived in the class one lunch time. The children are delighted with seeing their book online and are convinced they are now famous. They have been reading their book to all the other classes around the school and have read it to the parents at an open morning. They are following the comments online closely too.

Thanks again,

Miss Chalmers

With Miss Chalmers’ letter came 26 thank-you cards with beautiful drawings on them, one from each child in the class! There were pictures of Cammy who only eats green things, Marlene who never eats green things, Miss Chalmers, and even a stripy snake! And two girls from the class (Alesha and Alisha) decided to put a pink penguin on their cards. They are all so amazing that I am going to show you every one:

I continue to be so impressed by the work this class produces! I hope you’ll add a comment to let them know what you think.

Bathtime Boots by Satoshi Kitamura is a board book we used to love for its colourful and wonky illustrations. All the tables and floors are crooked, and Boots the cat has big scared eyes as he searches for a place to hide. He does not want to take a bath! We have several books by Satoshi Kitamura and his quirky style is fantastic!

Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert is another beautifully illustrated book. I’m sort of cheating here because I never read this one with my kids. I discovered the amazing work of American artist Lois Ehlert quite recently, so I put this alphabet book in my list just because I love it! She makes those fabulous fruits and vegetables by painting paper with coloured inks and then cutting and pasting them on a white background. Delicious!

Willy and Hugh by Anthony Browne is one of my all-time favourite books. We had a copy of it when my kids were small and read it a lot. Then it got lost, and even though the kids are big now, I just had to get another copy! Willy is such a great character, and we love the way he and Hugh help each other out of sticky situations. I used to think Anthony Browne was an American writer because my friend Elizabeth (who makes beautiful bracelets) sent me a signed copy of Willy Dreams from America. Actually he is British and was the Children’s Laureate a few years ago.

Henry Hikes to Fitchburg by D.B. Johnson is an American book, all about a man called Henry David Thoreau who loved the outdoors and believed in living very simply. This story is about two friends who travel to Fitchburg. Henry decides to walk and enjoy nature on the way, while his friend spends ages doing odd jobs to earn enough money to take a train. D.B. Johnson‘s illustrations are very special, and we like the way he has made Henry into a bear.

When I was little my favourite writer was Dr. Seuss. The silly rhyming stories were great for learning to read, and because of the rhyme you could soon learn them off by heart. We have almost every Dr. Seuss book there is, and the one I enjoyed reading to my kids the most was How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I just loved reading lines like, “Little Cindy-Lou Who, who was not more than two” and “Then he slithered and slunk, with a smile most unpleasant, Around the whole room, and he took every present!” It is thanks to Dr. Seuss that I love to write rhyming stories myself.

My kids have grown up in Scotland, and we discovered a great series of books by Aileen Paterson called the Maisie Books. Maisie is a clever little kitten who gets in trouble for speaking her mind. There are lots and lots of Maisie books, and the one I have chosen to show you is Maisie Goes to School. It was a great way for my daughter to learn what it would be like at school before she got there! We have also travelled to the Amazon, Japan, Paris and New York with Maisie, and she always has fantastic adventures.

The last picture book I want to show you is Blue Rabbit and Friends by Chris Wormell. As you can see, the illustrations are very striking, with bold colour and strong black outlines. The story is very funny, with all the friends living in houses that are completely wrong for them. Bear lives in a pool of water, rabbit lives in a dark cave, goose lives in a kennel and dog has a burrow. They are all unhappy in their homes, and it takes them a while to figure out that they need to swap! But instead of moving into the burrow, blue rabbit sets off on his bicycle for an adventure. Chris Wormell is a very talented artist who does lots of different types of work (not just children’s books). His style is very distinctive and I just love it!

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my favourite picture books. Let me know which books are special to you!

When the class got back to school, they decided to write a new story. They planned it out carefully, and did all the illustrations themselves. When it was ready, they made it into a specially bound book and sent it to me! Their book is called I Only Eat the Colour Green, and it is so brilliant I want to share it with you here:

Isn’t that an amazing story? Cammy learns a good lesson about eating well, just like Marlene does in my story. As well as this brilliant book, the children sent me some lovely letters. I would like to say thank you to Lara, Douglas, Katie W, Katie T, Orlaith, Komal, Lewis, Maya and Katherine. A big thank you too to Miss Chalmers who helped the children with this fantastic project. I am so impressed!

The cover is all tattered now, and inside the pictures are only in black and white. It’s very different from the bright and colourful picture books you get today. But the story is so charming and the characters so beautifully drawn that it became a treasure I saved for my own children.

Gabrielle and Selena are best friends and do everything together. One day Gabrielle decides she is bored with her ordinary life and she wants to be Selena instead. Selena insists that her life is pretty boring too, so she doesn’t mind being Gabrielle for a while. They do a magic dance, and presto! Gabrielle and Selena swap places.

The girls’ families are a bit puzzled at first, but soon they decide that it will be fun to play a trick on the girls. Gabrielle’s mum tells Selena that omelettes are her favourite food and that she hates chocolate cake, never watches television and always goes to bed at 7:30.

Selena’s dad tells Gabrielle that she always washes the dishes, she hates chocolate ice cream and she loves to sleep outside on the back porch! By the end of the evening, both Gabrielle and Selena are completely fed up. (You can see in the drawing of Gabrielle washing the dishes what she thinks of Selena’s life!)

At the same moment both girls decide it’s time to go home. They meet half-way and get in a big argument about the horrible things they like to do. “I wouldn’t be you for all the money in the world,” says Gabrielle. Selena feels the same way, until they realise that all the terrible things they are meant to like were just made up. When they figure out the trick their parents have played on them, they start to laugh!

You can see why I have kept this book for so long. Do you have a favourite book you want to keep forever? Why not click on the little speech bubble next to the date of this post and tell me about it?

My daughter Anna and I have published our first book together! I wrote the words and she has drawn all the pictures (very well, as you can see!) The book is a collection of poems for children, but it’s a special kind of book – one that doesn’t have any pages…

“A book with no pages?” I hear you ask. Well, as so many children know everything there is to know about computers, iPads, iPhones and so on, you will of course know all about ebooks. They are electronic books that can be downloaded and read on a screen.

Anna has a Kindle so she reads lots of books on that. Her brother has an iPad and I was pleased to see how good our book looks on his screen.

The poems in this collection include Groovy Goggles, about a girl who has trouble seeing things in class, Buster the Fly who really wishes he could be a more interesting bug, Gloria Boring who is a very difficult girl to entertain, and Invisible Pets, about a boy who can see all sorts of animals in his house that no one else can see.

There are lots more poems in the collection, so if you want to take a closer look, I’ll add some links here. If you live in the US you need to click HERE. If you live in the UK, click HERE. And if you live in Denmark, there’s a special link just for you HERE.

Floris Books are based in Edinburgh and they are going to publish my next book, Lewis Clowns Around. It’s a rhyming story all about a puffin who doesn’t really fit in. One day he decides to leave the crashing waves and tall cliffs to try his luck in the circus!

Lewis is welcomed by the other circus animals and soon he’s working hard on flips and tumbles so he can be a brilliant circus clown. In this picture you can see him being hugged by Carla Koala and his brother Harris, and cheered by the Flying Blue Monkeys, the Balancing Pandas and Zorro the Highwire Cat. Circus life suits him perfectly!

Lewis Clowns Around is coming out on 22 September. If you want to know more about it, just visit the Floris website HERE.

When I write stories I often start with a character. I choose a name and think about what that character is like (shy and quiet, funny and full of mischief, clever and brave). Here is a picture of a group of characters I came up with. Don’t they look delicious?

They are all friends and they live on Treat Street. What sort of personalities do you think they would have? What kind of adventures might they get up to? Maybe one is planning a party, or another is trying to get fit and healthy. Maybe you can write a story about the Treat Street friends. Then click on the little grey speech bubble on the top left and tell me all about it!

When I wrote Pink! my publishers chose Margaret Chamberlain to illustrate it. I wondered what her pictures might be like, and hoped she would make Patrick the penguin look the way I imagined him.

You can guess how pleased I was when I saw the first of Margaret’s drawings! Look how cute Patrick is with his friends Lulu and Arthur. Margaret did such a brilliant job with Pink! that it has been a very popular book.

Soon after it was published, Margaret and I were invited to do a Pink! event together at the Bath Festival of Children’s Literature. Although she had spent months working on the illustrations for my book, we lived at opposite ends of the country and had never spoken to each other. I was delighted to have a chance to meet this amazing illlustrator, and she turned out to be a lovely person. Now we are great friends!

Margaret has illustrated my latest book, I Do Not Eat the Colour Green. I love all the bright colours she uses, and the central character Marlene is just as I imagined her with wild red hair!

Margaret Chamberlain has illustrated many, many books using a wide range of styles. Have a look at her website HERE if you want to see more. I’m sure you’ll love them all as much as I do!

My daughter Anna is very good at drawing. She amazes me sometimes because she never starts with a pencil. She does these fantastic cartoons just using a fine black pen, and she never worries about making a mistake!

Whenever I put a new poem on my website, I ask Anna to do some pictures for me. One poem is about a girl called Gloria who is impossible to please. Her parents try EVERYTHING but she is just bored, bored, bored.

In the pictures you see here, Gloria is being offered all sorts of fun activities to choose from. Her parents take her scuba diving, but there she is sitting in the boat looking annoyed. At least her Mum and Dad seem to be enjoying themselves!

Do you ever write poems or stories and illustrate them? When I was younger I used to love drawing pictures to go with my stories. Now I just write the words and let illustrators do all the hard work!

If you would like to read my Gloria Boring poem, click HERE.

I have always loved trolls!  I had a collection of them when I was little, and now my daughter has six of them, each with different coloured hair.  Their faces are so cute, and they look as though they could be quite naughty!

This is a letter G that I painted for a special exhibit at the Just Imagine Story Centre in Chelmsford.  They asked 26 authors and illustrators to decorate every letter of the alphabet!  I chose G because of my book, I Do Not Eat the Colour Green, and because I live in Glasgow which is known as the Dear Green Place.

I used acrylic paints, little paper daisies and real dyed wool for the hair!  I like the way the hair makes my troll look like he is popping his head out of the letter.

You may have seen Patrick the pink penguin in one of my books, but soon there will be a new bird on the block!  His name is Lewis and he is a puffin (so just as cute as a penguin, but a little bit smaller.)  Do you like this picture of Lewis?  It was painted by Gabby Grant who is a fantastic illustrator!

Puffins can be found on coasts and out at sea in the North Atlantic.  You can see them nesting on the cliffs of Scottish islands, along the east coast of Canada and around Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

My new book is all about a puffin who wishes he could be something else. He thinks up lots of jobs he could do, but then comes up with an idea his colourful beak and big floppy feet make him perfect for!  Can you guess what it is?