Festivals, fun and fagioli!

Travels to Cambridge and Italy

I’ve been getting out and about a bit recently which makes a nice change from being stuck behind a desk! Firstly, my illustration collective Gumbo  and I were invited to appear at the Lodestar festival, an up and coming music and arts fest in beautiful countryside just outside Cambridge. We had lots of fun doing some live drawing, and were helped along by  many local kids who joined in with gusto. We also set up a stall of wares selling prints, books, cards and lovely kerchiefs by Sandra Howgate. It was a good, if somewhat messy day!

I was also asked by my Italian publisher Corraini to do some kid’s workshops at Festivalettarura in Mantua, Italy. I was doubtful at first – how was I going to manage 30 8-11 year olds with very little Italian?! Luckily it was all very well organised, I had an interpreter, and lots of help! The theme of the workshop was ‘Magical beans’ or ‘Fagioli Magici’ as inspired by the story Jack and Beanstalk. After some explanations from me, kids could  design and make their own magical bean packets which they could decorate however they liked – plus make some magical beans to go inside! 

The Exquisite Book

I am very happy to be part of this amazing book which has just been published by Chronicle – ‘The Exquisite book: 100 artists play a collaborative game.’ Artists were divided into ten groups of ten with the first artist in each group being given a few words to inspire their image. This image was then passed on to the second artist in the group, who would use it as a starting point and inspiration for their own image, before passing it on to the third artist to continue the story, and so on. A visual link runs through images in the form of a continuing horizon line, which connects one image to the next. More info here: http://www.exquisitebook.com/