Parsons New York, post the SCBWI Midwinter conference

If you happen to be in New York, next Monday lunchtime, Pat Cummings has invited me to give a talk at Parsons, New York.  See - she's put up my whole name, in big letters!

Hope to touch on the core, the 'coeur' , the heart  of what it's all about for artists. 
Knowing our strengths, overcoming self-doubt,  appreciating others and our context, and plain old plugging on are all part of it.  It seems so obvious, even banal when put like this.
The brilliantly smart comic artist Jamie Smart  puts it in much more colourful language.  By the way he's also got a kids and adult version of his site and a bunch of wonderful characters, and kids books and comics and TV pilots and all. 
And here are a few more serious words of his wisdom.... I couldn't have put it better myself!  And yes it IS fun!

"Even though I look back and think much of my older work is pretty terrible, it is still essentially me, and it’s fascinating to watch how that’s evolved and become more distinct.  That process never ends. You’ll die and never reach the pinnacle of what you’re trying to do, but that’s irrelevant.There’s no such thing as an end point with art, you’re going to keep going and growing and that’s the fun of it

Off with Tiz & Ott & more, to New York on Thursday

 For once, I have no time for words, just Tiz and Ott who are slowly growing...

Let's play with Tiz and Ott - in the Idea Store

A story I've been struggling with for months is ready to show, at last.
Could it be the pressure of my upcoming week in New York then Bologna mid-March?

And last week, I had a new idea.  I was enjoying a baked potato and the view from the top floor of the Whitechapel Idea Store  Anyway, I put down my fork, and started sketching two new characters.

Meet Tiz and Ott.   Maybe that's what an Idea Store is for?

Ronald Searle, Kaye Webb, Puffins and all

‎"Did I do all that?" Ronald Searle says in this interview on his 90th birthday.  Kilometres of line!

Right from his early traumas as a prisoner of war on the Siam-Burma railway, drawing helped him survive. 

Ronald Searle had been on my mind for some months.  This week he died at the age of 91.

Returning to London after so many years in France,  I found myself thinking about my childhood reading. When I grew old enough to buy paperback books for myself, I felt oddly close to Kaye Webb and Searle.  Kaye  'signed' every Puffin book I collected, and I treasure the card she wrote to me as a young Puffin club member.  Searle felt like my best friend in the shape of Molesworth himself. Among others, I loved his pictures in Down with Skool.

So  last autumn, I read the biography of Searle's first wife, Kaye Webb, Valerie Grove's, So Much to Tell  which I had picked up at the wonderful Puffin Club exhibition at Seven Stories Newcastle. 

Kaye Webb's biography suggests that she never really got over Searle's sudden departure for France and his new love, Monica.

Her work at  Puffin really filled a hole in her life.  Out of that, she touched and linked the lives of many young readers together in an amazing community of young readers, and budding young writers and illustrators - a kind of SCBWI for the under 16s.

Before the shock of her break up with Searle, their life together in London in the 1950s  sounded exciting and creative - their Fleet Street meetings, their working trips, their full life and New Year's parties at their eccentrically decorated house with its novel exterior, by Denys Lasdun, future architect of National Theatre.  (They were far-sighted and bought it cheaply - its modernity had frightened other buyers.)

Thanks to Kaye Webb I rediscovered Searle.  I hadn't seen the POW drawings for a start.  I went to the Cartoon Museum and bought the excellent catalogue of his exhibition there. And I I'm still taking in the incredible breadth of vision he had, working in different fields from reportage, book illustration to cartooning...and defying the labels we all too easily give him.

The UK press continue to shackle Searle with the label of his least favourite series, St Trinian's.  As he says in this interview, 'The moment it's successful - kill it!" 

An ability to move on, hard work, joy and champagne bubbles; Searle's key to a long working life...

Happy New Year to all, and cheers!