First of all, a BIG SORRY for taking a little break from posting on this site, but I’ve got a really good excuse! Honest! Yesterday, my second EVER book came out …. (*little drum roll please*)
But writing it wasn’t the hard part. Oh no. Doing the front cover and the pictures inside was the thing that nearly polished me off! Now, I know the final front cover looks all pretty professional. But it wasn’t as easy as it looks. In fact, it took LOADS of attempts to get it right. Thing is, I’m not a proper illustrator, so I don’t really know what I’m doing. What I DO know is that I’m not very good at drawing cats. Seriously, my first attempt looked liked a dog. Don’t believe me? OK. Time for some public humiliation. Here’s my very first (extremely awful) rough draft:
ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! I know!!! Very home-made and dog-like. And then there were the reject cats ….. the ones that nobody wanted. You know: too fat, too thin, too cartoon like, too silly. That sort of thing …. Well, I did a lot of those. This was my favourite ‘reject’ – the cartoony one:
And even when I managed to get the cover right, I still had to do all the pictures inside!!!! Once again, it took lots of scrumpled up watercolour paper and too many bars of chocolate before I got them all done. But all that effort makes the book even more special to me. I hope you like it too – and it will be great to hear what you think. Meanwhile, here’s one of my favourite scribbles to leave you with: it’s a picture of some of my main characters whizzing about in a hot air balloon. Can you guess which one’s scared of heights?
