Birthday.

I haven't drawn a picture since August. Last week was Rowan's birthday and I drew him a picture of Bacon and Furry-Bob having a tea party.
I am going to draw more once I have sorted out myself.



And here is Bacon sitting on Furry-Bob. She is very pretty.

A bit of a ketchup.

Hello, I am here.
In the past few months lots of things have happened. I have moved away from Manchester and back to York, I lived back in my Mama's house for a while but then moved into my own house.
I live in the city centre now, it's very nice. My new house is Georgian and very creaky and has an excellent staircase.
From my front door I can see the city walls, the railway station and the Minster and the tops of hundreds of really old buildings.

I have also made the nasty decision to take on more hours at work, thus I now work 5 days a week in a pet shop. It's brutal, but it had to happen.
It has taken me 8 weeks to finally get my new room set up, I now have a studio. An attic studio. Very special. It still isn't fully complete, there are some things I need to get for it, but hopefully by Halloween sort of time everything will be running smoothly.

Much more exciting is that I've remembered how to draw. On Monday I tried to draw but got really frustrated and so I went go-karting and everything was okay in the end.
Today I set about drawing and I have drawn a sad and confused vampire. I will be doing more with him tomorrow.



Here are some photos of my new home and my studio. There will probably also be a picture of my new cat.



This is far as decorating our kitchen has gone. Rowan's mum gave these lovely tea towels, my favourite is the orange one, I think it is very good.



Here is Rowan's room, this is where I sleep, it has a really top fireplace but does seem to attract moths which is a little troublesome.


This here is the back wall of my studio, as far as I've got with decorating it, I have some framed things to go up too but when I hammered a nail into the wall, lots of the wall fell down. I've put off sorting that for now.

Here are more pictures of my studio, somewhat dark but equally endearing. I have a good amount of stuff, but a bad amount for moving with twice in one month.










These chimneys are what can be seen from my window, they are very old and I really enjoy them, often there are pigeons on top.




Here is my new friend, Bacon. I adopted her from the RSPCA and her name was Sophie, but that name is rubbish, so I changed it, she has been run over and is also deaf, she is quite disabled and walks funny. She also shouts an awful lot and wears a bow tie. I love her very much but as of yet, we have not bonded enough to share a spoon.

Next (F9) Report (F2) Stop (F8)

On Friday I sent off my Macmillan entry, today Jamie delivered his. I would like it if we could win together. We are going to collect our work together in London. We will do extraordinary things. If we don't win, we are going to have the ultimate rumpus in the Macmillan offices.

These are my favourite pages from my entry:








I like drawing cats and I like cutting things out. I'm a little bit sad that it's over.

Now I am continuing my new project. I realise the reasons I am finding it a bit tricky to relate to the story is because it is about drunken people in a nightclub. I have never been drunk and I have never been to a nightclub. (Willow does NOT count.)
It is for these reasons that the story is proving particularly difficult to illustrate.
However, I've found a way into it and I think it might all be okay, if the postman hurries up and I obtain some black tape.
Tomorrow paint will maybe be put onto cardboard and then my work will begin. Yes.

In other news, my bicycle fixing skills suck and it just makes me very angry. Unfortunately I cannot cycle to college because I cannot mend my brakes. Tomorrow I will wheel it down to the cycle shop and get a pro to take a look. I think I might need new brake cables and maybe even new pads, if they can't be re-aligned. Ultimate pain.

When we are cats.

It's taken a total of 6 days to do this, how the hell did I manage that?


I haven't made the front cover and I'm not hugely worried about making one. They wanted four double page spreads or three and a front cover, I've done 12 double page spreads. Plus, I have a cat left over for the title page, so I'll do that too.
So it's not like I haven't done enough work. I'm also rubbish at text layouts and typography so I'd probably be shooting myself in the foot if I tried. But I might.

Although for now I want to start the new project, have a life away from my desk, go outside of my bedroom and for once I actually crave human contact. Though that's sure to end after contact with said humans. Also kind of wishing I'd brought my Xbox home but hey...

Big fun, no sleep...

It's always a sign that I'm very tired when it takes me 20 seconds to work out whether the noise I can hear is rhythmic clapping coming from my speakers or my rats eating something. Therefore I am going to go to sleep.

Not before I quickly update my whereabouts on this project. I aimed to finish it all today but didn't. Sad face. But I have come very close. Happy face.

I've pretty much finished the contents of the book, there is a little bit of finishing off to do but because this will only take a hour at most, it is essentially complete.
I forgot, once again, how long it takes to construct cherry bakewells and the last two pages I've put together have carried around 35 of them between them, so I spent hours on those today. I think it looks quite nice.

I'm hoping to finish the finishing off parts tomorrow night after work, which is easily done. Then the front cover I will try to do on Sunday. Then I'll be finished.

The main question is, am I allowed to put type on the front cover, or does it have to be on transparencies like everything else? If I can't put type on it.....it's pretty much going to be a blank page with a cat?

Anyway, I'm going to sleep. In case you were wondering, it was coming from my speakers.

Tonight if you're awake at all...

I'm getting so close to finishing this book it actually makes me want to work later, but seeing where that got me last night, I won't.

Today I took a half day break from picture making and went to Whitby with my sister and her dogs, which was much fun. Whitby is a cold place, I didn't enjoy the cold so much, the wind hurt my ears. This was outweighed by the fact that Dexter came with us, none of my dogs actively fetch balls, so I had lots of fun on the beach playing football with him. He also happens to have an incredible beard and particularly fine knee pads. This is he:


After Whitby, we went to Goathland and drove around the moors, in search of the Roman road, which we couldn't find last time we looked for it, and couldn't find again today. We were accosted by quite a few sheep, one of which ran in front of the car at quite a speed.

The moors are very green, which is a surefire sign that Summer is on it's way, this also made me happy today.

When I got home I re-attempted the factory and I succeeded. This is the revised version:

This picture doesn't make it look all that great, but I'm pleased with it, it's taken hours to do and I've also got half way through another factory scene. This means that I only have to make one and a half more pages, plus a front cover. I really don't want to jinx myself but I have a feeling I'll finish it tomorrow.

The only negative that seems to be coming from this book, aside from the crippled hand I've gained from scalpelling, is that now I can't sleep. Ever. I spend from 9am to around midnight listening to music and then when it comes to sleeping I can still hear it, last night I spent 2 hours trying to stop hearing it. Unfortunately I can't concentrate without it, so either way I lose.

Death by Double Page Spread...

I just reached Doom Point. Capitalised because I've now mapped it as the low point of my life.

Doom Point is the collective three double pages spreads of this book that involve me recreating a factory from what are essentially silhouettes of paper of a very limited palette.

I left them until last because I knew that if I did them first I'd never do any other pages. Now I regret even writing the factory into the story, it's so complicated to make.
It seems that whatever I do to it, it either looks bad or incredibly boring. It's also a mega pain that I've got to make it three times.

I've decided to call it a day today, I've done quite a lot, making the extra stuff last night really helped. Maybe overnight I'll have an epiphany and tomorrow I'll make a beautiful factory. Or possibly not.

This is my first attempt at the factory, which I'm now using as a rough guide and a "how not to do it" sheet.


As of today, it's looking less likely that I'll finish it by Friday, hopefully by Monday the whole thing including front covers and things will be finished. Then I can start the new project. Or maybe even leave my room...

EDIT: I've just looked at the image on the screen and I am now convinced the woman at Paperchase has mailed me the wrong coloured papers. Looking at them in real life, I'm certain she has...FML!

I'm also thinking I should invert the colours. (This is me making notes to myself so that I'll remember for tomorrow. Ignore, if you please.)

I am the queen of cats.

Today I have worked for 13 hours solid, only stopping for meals. Although, I'm not as much further on with this book as I predicted. One of the spreads took me 5 hours, not happy.

However, instead of finishing another page, I decided to put together the rest of my cats and other cat accessories, such as nets, boats and bikes, which should hopefully massively reduce the amount of time the next pages take me. Although, these ones involve a lot of cheery bakewells and for some reason they take forever to make, so I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

My desk currently looks like a paper bomb hit it, I keep meaning to tidy up after myself but then what's the point if I'm going to do it all again the next day?


I do sometimes find myself wondering how much more effort I would put in and how much more work I'd get finished if I did all my projects in York. In Manchester I hardly ever work for longer than 5 hours and this usually takes place in college, with lots of stops in between. Once this week is through, I estimate I will have worked on this project for a total of about 80 hours, which is ridiculous.

Macmillan, Macmillan, Macmillan....

Once again, I've neglected my blog, but for good reason. A quick update is what this post will become.

My Macmillan work is multiplying at an alarming rate. It's my first official day of the Easter break and I have been hard at work all day.

I've made 3.2 double page spreads in one day, I think I've got this new problem called Scalpel Hand, which causes the sufferer to be uncomfortable around pressure points of the scalpelling hand and unable to stretch out the hand for up to 2 minutes after cutting something out. This could cause problems tomorrow if the pain doesn't go away overnight.

Now that I've started, as predicted, I don't want to stop and there is a strong chance I could have the whole book finished in time to enter it. I'm very scared of the three factory images, how the hell do I do those?!

I also have a little problem in that I haven't got enough paper and the Paperchase in York doesn't stock paper. So there is a chance I'll have to make a mission to Manchester. Unless a phone call to the Manchester store tomorrow morning can result in a mail order. Hmm.

This is for my friend, Jamie.

Dear Jamie, I said I would leave paper cats on my blog for you, here they are, I don't think they quite beat some of your ugly cats, but I bet your ugly cats can't drive a boat?

In other news, I gave one of my cats a piece of chicken yesterday and she dunked it in some milk before eating it. I enjoyed that.

This is for you.


Much love.

Another cat.

More cat pictures, this is Rowan's cat, Timothy. He has a very good facial structure.

Kitty kitty cat...

I had a good time with my cats yesterday, I chased them all over to take photos, except for one who was very asleep so I got a good picture of her, she looks very long.
The other ones are super small kittens so the act of photographing them was more of a kitten based rumpus, which I didn't mind at all.









This one wanted to help.

Cats and rats.

Today is essay writing day. I have been up for 4 hours and have still yet to pick up the brief. I hope I can finish it before tomorrow.
Tomorrow is project day. Or so I hope. But it might not be.

Christmas has been nice, I've missed York a lot, I've been doing some exploring and I've found Max, I just have to find a way to get him. I will.

I've also been having a go on my new kittens, I like those. One of them in particular is very good. For a very long time I wanted a ginger cat whom I would name Chester. We now have a ginger kitten called Chester. He is very beautiful. All of the other cats in my house and all of the other ones in our street are going to be very jealous of Chester, when he grows up, he is going to be a very pretty cat. I hope he is going to grow big. I enjoy big cats.

This is Chester doing his best moves.


On the subject of animals, MotherRat is becoming friendly, after 7 months of biting and squealing, we may become friends. I'm working on her.

My deceased cat.

I used to have a cat named Charles and he was not the nicest of cats. People in our house were scared of him because he was quite aggressive and would avoid him at all costs.
One day I was thinking how sad it would be if Charles died and nobody cried, how it would be more sad if people were glad he was gone. I decided to make people like him.

So began a long tale of how Charles had a cherry bakewell factory under the shed in our garden and at night he went out to catch them on the fields behind our house, which explained why he was so tired and grumpy during the day.
I wrote the story down and began illustrating it, but never actually finished. This is one of the images from the story, I'm hoping that one day I'll be able to finish it.

Three years ago Charles got very ill and died and everyone in my house was very sad at his passing, some people even cried, but mostly we were just very confused as to how the shops were still able to stock cherry bakewells.

Productive Day.

I made this today.


My mother has been asking me to do it for a while as a gift for a friend of hers who is getting married on Saturday. So I did it today. I've had quite a productive day. As a result of my quite productive day, my desk is covered in mess, at it's deepest point the pile of mess comes approximately 13cm up my lower arm. I need to clean. A job for tomorrow.