Children's Books

My favourite occupation is to conjure up animal characters, sometimes just for the fun of it!














They plop out of my imagination and rush across the pages of my sketchbook or layout pad, sometimes clucking as they go.

Sometimes they emerge as a response to a story from an author via a publisher. I've been privileged to illustrate a number of lovely stories from some very talented authors, I'll give you some examples -

It all started with Dewin the Dog (Dewin is a sort of magician in Welsh). He appeared in a series of early learning books, an alphabet book, a counting book and a book about the seasons and the weather.












I have to admit he's very heavily influenced by my own dog whose name is Jumbul and who very kindly agreed to pose for me. I have now drawn this character so often that I don't need Jumbul to model so he has a more restful life, hanging about in the garden and barking at the postman.

Another dog story was Billy Jones Dog Star in the Readalone Series published by Pont at Gomer Press.

     

This was followed by Billy Jones and the Performing Cat in which a kitten moves in.  The stories by Sian Lewis created wonderful characters  who did exciting things and I really enjoyed creating images to suit Sian's words.

In Guarding the Treasure by Mary Mestecky I was given the job of creating very important characters (especially so because I live and work in Wales)  these characters were a family of dragons.



This is Geraint and he has a bad case of the bloosles,  - which means he needs to go to Scotland with his Uncle Sandy.





But it's who the young dragons meet in Scotland that is the real adventure and to find out more you'll have to read the book. It's in the same Readalone series as the Billy Jones books. I hope Mary decides to write another dragon book, I loved creating the characters.

Gomer also commissioned me to illustrate a rewritten version of The Ugly Duckling.