Wild Place...

Picked this up today at the zoo so am having fun colouring...

...you will notice a slght Smurfette motif, but actually I had more of a 'Boy from Mars' (mildly disturbing series included on kids educational program 'Words and Pictures' in early 80s) theme in mind.

It also really reminded me I should tell you about the stuff I did for Wild Place Project, which is Bristol Zoo's new (only opened in July) conservation park..it's not every day you get asked to design mascots for a major tourist attraction!  You can see my handywork all over their website and leaflet (and colouring sheets), but more importantly...

...as you enter...
 ...walk around...

and leave the park...

All continues the theme of working a bit bigger...more on that soon!

Movember is nearly upon us...

..well sort of... this year has been ranting by!  Got my email invite to join in the Gallery of Mo fun this year, and will definitely be getting involved (they mentioned live events too which is intriguing...).  You should too!
Here's a link to their site explaining how it works, although here're a few examples of my stuff from last year making it fairly self explanitory!!

As you can see last year I liked to keep it old school - but you know, I'm a child of the wind (almost certain my kids would make an inappropriate joke at this juncture) so who knows what I'll do this year...

Your miserable and most unworthy scribe goes to Durham!

What a day I had yesterday!!  I was very honoured to be asked up to the Palace Green Library in Durham to do a workshop as part of their Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition (which is amazing by the way, as is its region wide programme of events - well worth checking out!).

When I arrived in Durham it was clear that this exhibition is a very big deal - there are signs and banners for it everywhere, and the town, which I'm getting to know and love more with each visit, has a really nice buzz about it.

Anyway, here's what I did - a live drawn Lindisfarne Gospels timeline, taking you through the background of why it was made, who made it and how, and the ripping yarn of how it came to settle in Durham for hundreds of years...

Now, I say 'here's what I did'...but it should read 'here's what we did'.  The whole point of it was that large parts of it would be filled in by kids, parents, grandparents (and exhibition staff!) who popped in, and they really didn't let me down!

I also brought quill pens, reed pens and silverpoint for kids to try out, but as you can imagine didn't have much time for photogramaphising, so you'll have to imagine the chaos that entailed.


Oooh and another thing - I got a brief ten minutes to look around the exhibition itself, and I'll say again, it is absolutely fantastic.  I got the history bug doing the 'Discover The Lindisfarne Gospels' book, and I learnt so much more in just a few minutes wandering round.  I saw the big book itself which was amazing, but my fave bit was seeing St Cuthbert's pocket bible, which was taken from his coffin when he was exhumed and (I think!) is the oldest book in England (Europe? The world? Calling all experts!!)  to have survived with it's original leather binding intact....kinda lovely.  Click here for some more 'must see's .  A top exhibition, staffed by people who love the subject, which has some kind of intrigue at most turns...I thoroughly recommend it.

A big thank you is in order to everyone there for an absolutely fantastic day.