A wee mix up of Year 5-6 work from yesterday. The children had to design 6 different faces - they then split them into 4, then they put 6 left eyes onto one cube, 6 right eyes onto another, 6 left parts of the mouth on another, then the same for the right. they then made a mask to frame them with. You rotate the cubes to get whatever face you would like. The class are still doing the maths but there are between 500 and 1000 different combinations! multiply that by 34 (number of kids in the class), we made a lot of faces that day. Anyhow - here are some samples. Thank you to Serge, Reuben, Amelia, Philly, Angel and Alexis.

Today at school with year 1 (7 year olds) we made creatures from the sea. I have pieced together a selection below - they are going to be milling around the base of a lighthouse when the project is finished.

I have taken to using coloured paper as a background when putting together drafts of double spreads - it gives you a tone to start with. It makes representing tone easier. I have used muted hues to suggest colours but the palettes for the books are far from worked out yet.

When not in the classroom - or getting frustrated with my own children filing a request every 30 seconds (cut this out?, can you do some 'go aways'? where's my snack?...) I have been drawing thumbnails of spreads for three books. Here are some of them.  Don't worry about the small girl and the detonator - she is blowing up an idea; I wonder what happened to it?

Designing the back of business cards today. Here are some of the designs. At the moment the characters do not belong anywhere. I tried to keep them simple.

I often read through Shaun Tan's blog (thebirdking.blogspot). He has some beautiful work that is always well executed. He has recently created some sculptures as illustrations for a book by Philip Pullman. I like the realm that Shaun Tan explores, hybridising machines with humans and nature.

The other night my daughter broke this light bulb, the third in two weeks. As I unscrewed it I was thinking of a way to remind her to be careful with her lamp. This now sits at the side of her bed. I find the face in he bulb a little unnerving.

I have a story in my mind that addresses issues surrounding identity. The story had become stagnant recently but I have realised that the main character (for reasons I will divulge later) becomes a rabbity type creature. Here are some images from today's work, preliminary sketches from photos - 

then work on the character himself.

 Finally I scanned them in and they ended up in a situation that non of them were bound for when I started drawing. The story does involve bullying.  The final image for me addresses a question of how much of western culture is born from the playground as much as the classroom. The collars, cuffs, cases and ties are there to ask how much our schools have really been able to progress?

Mulling over ideas for an album cover based on a short science fiction story.