I just finished illustrating Mini Racer, a kid's book about a race where I decided a long, long time ago that the snail wins. The author Kristy Dempsey kindly left all the character choices open to me the illustrator. I normally meet deadlines. But this was over a year overdue, more.
Bloomsbury UK/US have been very understanding. My mother died and my son was very ill and I was channel hopping between my daughter continuing school, back home in France and my mother's house near London and my partner's part-time London flat.
There was a lot to sort out.
Including an old studio full of my artist-illustrator father's work. He worked almost every day of the week, almost every month of the year, until he was over 80 - a lot of pictures to take stock of.
But at last, picture by picture, the web site about him which I had promised my mother before she died, is now up.
http://www.johnstrevens.com
My son is, fingers crossed, well on the mend.
And picture by picture, the two very different picture books commissioned way back by Little Hare and by Bloomsbury US/UK are now done. I'll talk about them more one day. I better update my own website too one day.
For now, enough that my snail finally crawled, slithered and skated to completion, leaving behind him a lot of work on eleven fellow mini racers, among them gas-guzzling crocs, a high, haughty giraffe that gets stuck in her SUV, an owl family on a trunk, cats on a cycle, a seal on a wheelchair...
Barely had my snail passed the post, than I get a commission for a bath book in limited colours, from a nice French publisher Tourbillon, for another snail.
Pourquoi pas?
My first bath book.
And a more graphic snail is now on the menu.
I crawl slowly into any work and into this blog. Patience! Here are first sketches...
and a second roughed in photoshop
Below is an alternative snail. More clumpy but stronger, more bath-like, perhaps.
Choices, choices. Which do you prefer? Maybe I'll find some more in my garden.
