Re-do and to do!

My website badly needs updating in time for the Bologna international  book fair and our scbwi symposium & showcase there.   Last week while in London, I was all set to get that done.

Then I got Mini Racer back from my publishers with their edits .  I like their cover rough, and font choice and the basic design but still...

I spent a week editing the edits -  in London - on the Channel ferry  - and back home in Senlis.  Finished at 3am on Monday morning.

The problem with digitally submitted images  (although this book was  part gouache...) is that it's so easy to cut and paste.  Easy as text editing. And everyone has their colour preferences.
And you can re-do and re-do...
Enough said.  I'm happier with it now.    Here's a small peek (text is roughed in).

This page was the only one I didn't re-touch:

Fingers crossed Mini Racer (written by Kristy Dempsey) will be out this year or next...I should check the date!

All I've got ready for  Bologna, is my sample for the  Illustrators Display Portfolio on show at the SCBWI stand Hall 26, A 66.
Another glimpse of  Mini Racer  plus some "cat kids" for  Bayard France -  a snippet of my line-free work...

Naughty cats kids  - they managed to slip out of the SCBWI Bologna online gallery!
http://www.scbwibologna.org/displayportfolio/illustrators-gallery.php

Back in London, back on the plot

Back to my own work at last, though not at home. Weeks of driving  (Senlis to Paris and then across the Channel)  and running in the other sense,  for the SCBWI Bologna Book Fair symposium and showcase illustrator events in March.  http://www.scbwibologna.org.

All this in-betweening takes time. Am I  dissappearing into the in-between?  Any volunteer will know what I mean.  But there's always the pull -  the excitement over kids book obsessives like me, converging from across the world to meet in Bologna especially in the old town, at night.

Now, surprisingly at a table looking over a London street, I'm back on a story line, moving only across paper -  a welcome change... 
And another brief diversion -  this phone snap I took later last year, when wandering around the wonderful Oxford Blackwell's.   Heartening to see my book in my favourite bookshop. Odd it was under Hobbies and labelled 'Art Appreciation'.
Art Appreciation -  I ask you!  Sounds so precious.
The Big Book of Shapes, like the Big Book for Little Hands, is not about art or appreciation.  It's about action - a book to draw in, with story pictures to complete for fun and as freely as any small hand can and wants to...And that's that! Glad it was on offer.  Hope someone small might enjoy it.  If anyone can reach up that high to that shelf.
Now better get back to that plot!