Is anybody there?  If so, how lovely  - and welcome!  It's been too long.  After a pandemic, the sale of my old family home, and more shuttling across the channel,  here are two more picture books to announce. First...

... my dream come true - YOU, ME & OUR WHOLE WIDE WORLD

published by the wonderful Walker Books in 2022, 

out in paperback in 2023.  Look inside!

MO'S BEST FRIEND, A STONE AGE STORY will be in bookshops in February 2024

thanks to lovely Otter Barry books.  She first popped into my head over a decade ago

and inspired several stories about her life in the Stone Age, before she found her best friend.

And what next?   

Here's an early New Year's resolution for 2024....to share a little more depth than I can manage on social media in hopes it may interest you.

Now I am more settled in a semi-nomadic life between France and Cambridge and London I want to share some more nuggets of inspiration and background.   

Just one question for now.  Here  - or on Substack? I will keep you posted!

Thanks for visiting!

Hello and thanks for visiting!

Maybe you'll want to explore past posts as I've not been here for a while?

You'll find my work more often on
Instagram @bridgimage_art
Twitter  @bridgimage
and on my Facebook author page  Bridget Marzo


I do still post the occasional online article online -
If you're interested in illustration process,
here are few of my illustrator tips
Engaging Characters
Mixing tools

Here's a write-up of a Writing for Illustrators workshop I gave at the House of Illustration.

There's more... and I hope to catch up with you somewhere online or better still for real!

Ongoing inspiration - author-illustrator Roger Duvoisin

Look what I received in the post today!

Front and back cover of Roger Duvoisin's Lonely Veronica pub 1963 -this is the 4th reprint 1974

The text of Lonely Veronica is much longer picture books are supposed to be these days and the story  unusual too.  

How ever did Veronica get lost at the top of a half-finished skyscraper?  

And winched out of a ship - as  the cover shows?  I love how the ship's funnel is just a hint in the bottom corner and how the lines of rigging and net play across the front and back  - and the lettering too!

The first page - 'Veronica's river was do slow and lazy..." 
(Can you see  a happy Veronica  hidden benhind the trees?)

Next spread - "Then one day men came..."It's the end of the world!" cried the hippopotamuses.

But plucky Veronica wants to explore the 'good new days'.  Joe the foreman makes her the machine crew pet and she joins them on a ship to American to work on building and demolishing in New York. 

One day she decides to explore and finds herself in a lift up a half finished skyscraper.

"When dawn awoke Veronica, the city was sunk into deep fog.."

The last spread

Getting down is harder.  She falls and is fed, oddly, by a pigeon called Alexander and finally rescued by Joe again who takes her to live by the old oak tree in his family farm.

All the pictures, in black and white and colour are works of art go add to my long list of Roger Duvoisin's illustrations in my Pintarest list of personal inspiration I put together for the lovely people at Orange Beak Studio 

Lonely Veronica was published by Bodley Head in the UK in 1964, three years after Roger Duvoisin's first book about the strong-minded hippopotamus Veronica,  an old  copy of which has been face out on my shelf for a while.  

Veronica has been republished.   Hum I wonder if Lonely Veronica will be?

Booktrust Lifetime Achievement Award - ongoing!

'Ongoing' is my new watchword.

I've been moved to resume my blog - to record just a few of many inspiring pearls from the Booktrust Lifetime Achievement Award I was lucky enough to attend today.

When John Burningham stood up to give his acceptance speech  he mentioned that a lifetime achievement award  sounded so FINAL when after 55 years he felt he was just starting!   Having said that, he never dreamed he'd also have the pleasure of receiving flowers from Anthony Browne.

He's working on a new Mr Gumpy - a 40 year old idea pulled out from a drawer but a difficult one...
He and Helen Oxenbury his wife, the joint Award winners, are not giving up.
Not resting on what in their case are a tremendous pile of laurels!
(And neither is Judith Kerr who confided after the event that she was starting a new idea...the difficult stage, she said)
It should be called the 'Ongoing Lifetime Achievement Award'.

Yet, though Helen Oxenbury confessed she almost felt guilty about how much fun she's had over the 50 years of writing and illustrating, it's not easy work.  
Never easy.   

As John Burningham suggested it is the problems  (like how to suggest in a picture, the smell made by a teenage elephant!)  that keep us going. 

In her tribute to Helen Oxenbury,  Nicolette Jones spoke of how was one of the first to really bring diversity into her lively, innovative warm work. Touching to hear John Burningham added later that he reckoned his wife Helen's Farmer Duck was some of the best work ever done!

Anthony Browne talked about how John Burningham was one of a rare breed of a writer-illustrator who is both experimental and reassuring. He cited Come away from the water, Shirley as one example -  a breakthrough book playing on the gap between words and pictures that really fires the child's imagination.

Lauren Child spoke of how Burningham's work changed her life.  She quoted Helen Oxenbury saying about her husband and his book Seasons,  how John 'throws anything at his work'.    The creative freedom - true artistry -  and how the work "makes you react with every part of you (including the part that is still a child) 'just as if you are looking at a Matisse or Bonnard'. 

Also how a book like Would you rather? creates  bonds, generating conversations with old and young. 

And most important of all,  especially in the current climate, is how Burningham tells the truth.  The joy of the relationship his book Grandpa - ending with the 'bigness of the emptiness' of the empy chair...

Last spread from John Burningham's Granpa

Not to end there!  
It was great to see and hear poet (and our fellow picture book crit grouper!) Joseph Coelho talk about the importance of Helen's work for small children. 

And I enjoyed writer and presenter Floella Benjamin's lively introduction which gave us a real sense of just how many children Helen Oxenbury reached with her books and how her work will live on.   

So much more I wish I had noted!
Huge thanks to the host and Booktrust CEO Diana Gerald,  and to Natascha Biebow and the SCBWI for inviting me to an inspiring moment!

Floella Benjamin & Joseph Coelho giving the award to Helen Oxenbury

A peek at a new project

Been hunkering down on some new ideas recently.  

Here's a peek at part of a lift-the-flap book project I've written.

Have just sent off one 'finished' spread, a full roughs and a text across the ocean. 

It dawned on my during a brief whip around the London Book Fair last week that I am much better at promoting other illustrators than I am at pushing myself.  So fingers crossed that my plucky agent Erzsi, of Henandink Literary Studio will find the right publisher for it!  

I sketched out the whole book in colour but I decided that I better get all the detail I want in there as clearly as possible.  So I got my Pilot fineliner pen out. I got so used to drawing with this line I thought I might well keep it for the finals.

A couple of spreads on my work wall...

The idea started with a photo - framed below - of my lovely daughter.  When she was little she loved hiding and surprising us from unlikely hide-y-holes. I treasure this photo of her in the kitchen cupboard which ended up being a repository for recycled plastic boxes, yoghurt pots and ice cube trays - some of her favourite toys.  

Here I am - let's play!

Back to work now on a very different project - a picture book illustration commission for Bayard's Belles Histoires all about a shy young prince and a child-guzzling monster.

Can't draw, no stories? Here's a tip - a short post that goes a long way!

If you can write you can draw.  With just a few letters of the alphabet you can create characters.  (I can show you how in more detail if you invite me to your school or event)

Just like the full stop at the end of a sentence, dots are really useful.  

With two dots in four Os - two pupils in 4 eye sockets you can get your characters looking at or away from each other - hey presto, a relationship!  

And a relationship between characters, is a great prompt for a story.

There's more follow up but this is a start you can share with  anyone, kids  - grown ups - who say they can't draw.

Here are some pics to showing how kids and a few teachers got drawing. This is just one pic from one of  8 classes I visited thanks to the lovely people at this year's South Ken Kids Festival.  

One class of Year 2s in Norland Park School, London

This was a shorter (just 30 minute!) plenary session with about 90 children from 5 schools at the CWISL Shoutwest 2016 festival at Brunel University. 

#PowerofPictures and connecting characters

This week I've been drawing and 'connecting characters' with students up north here...

with illustration students at Huddersfield University,

and down in South London for a book week at Smallwood Primary, Streatham - drawing characters with every single year group from Nursery to Year 6 (age 11).

 Here are some of Year 3's quick draw characters done in the hall at Smallwood Primary.
I ran one- hour workshops for whole Years 2- 6 plus  individual classes from Nursery to Year 1.
(Big thanks Smallwood's Literacy officer John Griffiths)

For every session we looked at the simplest tool that I use as a narrative illustrator in my own books to get characters really connecting to each other - or avoiding them: eye direction.

Som of my quick sketches to show (top) head - example of 3 simplified animals
(below) profiles showing a few simple ways to vary characters as springboards for stories

You could say it is about getting your characters to focus.  
Who is looking at whom (or not) and why and how? Such fun to see how a character comes to life when you place the dot of the pupils in a specific part of the eye socket!
The fun and stories really starts when you get that direction to a look. Then you can draw another character alongside, responding to that gaze - looking back or away. How do they feel about each other? Where will they look next?   It's a great springboard for story writing too as I've shown in more detail here. (And in a shorter quick tip here)

No matter how simple or elaborately drawn, how schematic or sophisticated it's amazing to see how a focused gaze brings a drawing to life.  "Like magic" as a Year 1 pupil told me, as she turned a round shape into a face and added a dot to the corner of each eye socket. 

Part of a Year 1 class  of 5 and 6 year olds in Smallwood - 45 minutes to
connect characters  (adding expressions).

Even some of the talented Huddersfield illustration students preparing final year books were struggling.  They tend to obsess on technique, the pressure to 'brand' your work or at the very least evoke an atmosphere.  It's so easy to forget how identifying with characters can help them and their readers to enter into and point the way (literally, you could say) through a story.

Coincidentally after this busy week I learnt about the #PowerofPictures initiative on Twitter.  Turns out that the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education, the CLPE  in collaboration with Dr Sue Horner and Janet White have been doing some great research into the power of picture books over the past 3 years - with the help of some much-loved author-illustrator colleagues. 

Their report proves that 'getting under the skin' of characters in picture books can be useful for children in so many ways, well beyond 7 or 8 when kids are wrongly thought to be 'beyond' picture books. Many of us in publishing and in education know this but we have to convince others, especially parents anxious about their kids' reading level.   Here's to #PowerofPictures  - and the power of pupils (excuse the pun)!
But it's not just helping literacy levels. You could say it's  about encouraging the development of that bit of the brain that's crucial for the survival of the human race - empathy.

Here are a few glimpse of 'looks'  empathetic - and threatening - from some illustrations I did a while back
to Claire Clement's story that's just been published by Bayard France,  Le Doudou du Loup

On stage with Serge Bloch, pens and all at the South Ken Kids Festival 2016

What a delight and honour to be drawing alongside Serge Bloch at the South Ken Kids Festival 2016!  He is such an amazing artist across many genres, and not only for children.  I first came across Serge's work in France when my kids were small. My son loved the Max et Lilli series well before my daughter read Sam Sam in Bayard's children's magazines. Later I discovered his mind-freshening work as an artist of the line (pity there's no English equivalent to 'dessinateur' which means so much more than a draw-er or daughtsperson!) in editorial work and exhibitions for the US as well as in France.   Now The Big Adventure of a Little Line, one of my favourite books of all time, is out in English - thanks to Thames and Hudson. The ending always leaves me with a little lump in my throat.

The lovely Stella Bataille of Club Petit Pierrot who introduced us, just send me this short clip of our Drawing Duo together in the cinema at the French Institute, London.

Stella started by introducing a little of our work - here's one of my recent books from my recent French 'draw-along' series, Les Contes à Colorier...
 ..

and then we broke into a A2  page projected onto the large screen -  curious to see what would emerge.  Here is my Tiz meeting Serge's cat...

...in a restaurant as it turned out.  The audience then suggested the menu - mouse, and dog to eat!

 Here's my left hand drawing a chef's hat on an alligator waiter.  No idea where he came from!  I always end up holding a sheaf of pens and brushes in my right hand. Serge stuck to his one pen.

 Ott's turn with his brush - meeting Serge Bloch's famous Sam Sam and his Sam Nounours

But there is Tiz is sticking her nose into the story again!

The audience suggested we 'draw London!'. Had no time to finish the London Eye...

A kid ask for a yeti (I drew a baby one) and then a witch - such a big bossy witch!  Serge's little witch is being much sweeter.

Here's the only (inadequate)  glimpse  I have of a stunningly original stage enactment of Serge's  The Big Adventure of a Little Line. Serge draws as a young actor mimed to music and in front of the backgrounds of his book.

Later I joined Axel Scheffler, Sophie Henn, David Litchfield, Dorothée de Monfreid, Marianne Dubuc and other amazing South Ken Kids Festival guests impro drawing on stage to jazz trumpet. Can you see one of our joint drawings I found on Twitter?

Vive the @SouthKenKids ! Impro w/ @ItamarBorochov @dc_litchfield @bridgimage Axel Scheffler Barroux & other amazing artists 

pic.twitter.com/nuUU9mWzhV

— Institut français UK (@ifru_london) November 20, 2016

The final drawing I did with Serge didn't make it on the big screen.  Instead I took it home with a  pillow that I bought on the way back, ready for a good nights sleep.

Kidcandoodle - kids can indeed and did at Bank Street Books

Just home from a Tiz and Ott tour in the US,  some inspiring publisher visits in New York and San Francisco -  and some time out with my partner out West too.   I had a bit of time to sketch too- here's a view Brooklyn, looking at downtown Manhatten...

Before I left London, the delectably doodly site kidscandoodle asked me to debut a new 'Drawn' interview. Here's a sneak peek of just one answer.  See the rest here!

then off with Tiz and Ott and my first ever US event -  in Manhatten at the venerable children's book store, Bank Street Books

Tiz  scooting off from Brooklyn - Ott still hanging around

Tiz and Ott make their marks on the door of Bank Street Book Store!

Never worked with so many pre-schoolers as at Bank Street.  We all went dot dot dot with Tiz and Ott!

A carpetful of crayons.  "Ott could paint a cloud with his eyes closed"

After my own booksigning - what a delight to catch up with the hugely talented author-illustrator Tim Miller in the crowd - and have him sign his books for me!

When I last saw him in the illustrator gathering at the 2014  SCBWI New York conference, he was 'aspiring'.  But I knew when I saw his work he had what it takes and now he has no less than 4 books in the bag - first of which are his great illustrations to the comical Snappsy the Alligator who did not ask to be in this book  (written by Julie Falatzo).    I treasure this book! Exciting too to get an advance copy of Tim's debut book as both author and illustrator - Moo Moo in a Tutu out in early 2017 and glimpse another beautiful book to be published by the innovative Brooklyn press Enchanted Lion.

My colour mixing and painting family workshop in Bethlem Museum of the Mind

I can recommend taking some time out to mix and create your own colours.

That is part of what we did at my recent workshop at the wonderful Bethlem Museum of the Mind  (an ArtFund Museum of the Year finalist)  And we all had a wonderfully focused, creative time.

I started by serving over 20 plates like below, to adults and children of all ages from 5 to over 70...

one palette of blue, yellow, magenta red and white poster paint

Armed with this substitute palette, a couple of brushes (one doing the job of a spatula and one for painting) and a long strip of paper to paint on,  the first aim was to mix as many colours - as possible out of the 3 primaries - including black or near black.  

Here are 4 vertical strips each by a different workshopper.  They are almost like colour signatures. Everyone comes up with their own  amazingly distinctive colour range (and brush marks) from the three primaries.

4 vertical strips of colour made with 3 primaries.
Adding some white extended the range of beautiful chromatic greys.

One adult told me how soothing they found it.  And in the concentrated atmosphere, as ever the children worked faster.  Adults were still creating colours while a 4 and 7 year old had already started creating characters.

We then looked again for inspiration at a wordless picture book by an unknown artist, following a child's imaginary journey.  Part of the Bethlem Museum of the Mind's collection, it is currently on show with some other amazing works in their current Youtopia exhibition.

The adults caught up with the kids, and created their own amazing characters...

exploring strange scenes...

and  familiar worlds,  here work by a 7 year old left and his dad (right) 

 All in all, what a perfect workshop for Ott, from my book Tiz and Ott's Big Draw!

Katsumi Komagata at Foyles and ELCAF in London - and his transformative, transforming books

Lots to catch up with but first, a significant moment yesterday evening at Foyles - Katsumi Komagata's first talk ever in England and this coming weekend his first workshop open to all at the ELCAF festival.  Big thanks to their European funded initiative that he has been able to make it to London at last!

Coincidentally earlier this year I had written about my own discovery of Komagata in the UK's Association of Illustrators Varoom Magazine.  You can read my article  'Unfolding Stories' here (I love their layout!) : 

It was wonderful to see Komagata talk about the series of books he created from observing  and dialoguing with his daughter from 3 months till around 12 years of age  (she has now just married at 27!) Here he shows one  workshop piece that came out of an exchange in one of his many workshops:

I felt like it was also a part of my own personal history catching up with itself.  When I lived in France I would  take friends and Parsons students to see the Trois Ourses book collection.  We'd explore and play with their valise of books containing  Komagata's Little Eye series, and other innovative book makers from Bruno Munari onwards. 

Komagata referred to how it was a librarian from France (Elizabeth Lortic who co-founded Les Trois Ourses) who spotted his Little Eye books in MoMA New York and invited him first to France.  From there he has been published and done workshops in many other countries (except the UK!).  His work has had an undoubted influence on the French children's publishing industry in particular.

If you are interested in  a lateral view of picture books and artist's work for children, I recommend a making an appointment to visit Les Trois Ourses in Paris.

And if you can't make the ELCAF festival this weekend, I learnt from John L. Walters of eye magazine last night that you can find Komagata also in the Bookart Bookshop in London too! 

What we did at the Tate

Just a quick taster of what we did at Tate Britain last Saturday.  Amazing artists from 3 to 10 years old and from all over the world made a special Tiz and Ott Gallery.  I love watching kids draw - and envy their directness - never befuddled with second thoughts!
Thanks to Ella Finch for this video of us all in action.  And some pics to follow.

Here's me in my mother, Julia Marzo's dress dating from the Seventies.  
My 21 year old daughter suggested I could
wear it at the Tate.  It was also my mother's birthday.  She would have been 92  - thank you mum!