(Really going this time)

I'm just off to darkest North Wales as the days grow longer again. Then onto the Southern Uplands for music and dancing into the new year. And I'm not taking my computer...

Yesterday I had a really lovely birthday (one of the gifts I got was Tove Jansson's beautiful Swedish edition of Alice in Wonderland. A book I thought I'd never see).



Here's Matthew and Gavin!



Have a happy new year, when you're done with Christmas...

Merry Christmas!

After last year's slew of hand-made cards a sorry to those of you who won't be getting one this year. Blame television, 12/14 hour working days, and some last minute difficulties over a picture book. Bitter taste over that. I think it might at last be time for me to employ an agent...

Edit: Most of that bitterness resolved. Best not to blog in the heat of minute-to-midnight publishing shenanigans...

I'm going away now for two weeks. Hooray!

Important Diary Date!

Click my friend Matthew's banner for more info about his show.

Other performers that evening will include Jarvis Cocker, Sandy Dillon, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Jeremy Hardy, Patrick Wolf and Frank Sidebottom. I've also heard rumours that some of the musicians accompaniying Matthew are the same who recorded Tom Waits' album Swordfish Trombones...

Happy Birthday Pete!

Saving the Planet

I'm dropping toast crumbs into my computer keyboard. I bought a posh little bluetooth one to save my macbook from precisely this eventuality. It's such a skinny little thing it's probably full of crumbs after just these few weeks.

On this day when we find ourselves maybe just slightly less doomed than we might otherwise have been (yes, yes, my glib reaction to pretty great news re. the US election), we also have the Euro release of LittleBigPlanet. My old friend, with whom I was eating iffy pizza at my favourite dingy restaurant only last night, designed a good portion of the game and so far as I can see the whole thing is infused with his infectious laugh. So far as I can see, since I don't own a playstation... I lent my gamecube to someone a few years ago and they never gave it back. This had the helpful effect of freeing me from a pathological addiction to Tony Hawks Skateboarding, but I digress... (now I play the melodeon, and insist it's not much different from a videogame).

Look over at Rex's blog for more about the LittleBigPlanet release. I spotted the most pathos infused comment beneath one of the youtube level films. It read:
"I'm not creative enough to play this game."
Fortunately it looks like a lot of people in Japan and the US already are.

Howling

...I'm making a lot of effort for a very subtle contribution (awful mic setup)! But everyone else sounds good.

And look how beautiful! There should hopefully be some film up soon where I'm joining in the music, and Flyboy is projected onto the side of the National Theatre, too:

Scribbles and Halloween Noise

Big Pic

Blurry sneak peak at my Big Picture Party Big Picture.
Turn out for the whole day was astonishing. Hundreds upon hundreds of kids, and all drawing, and all day. I'll link to more about it when somebody less tired than me chooses to put something webwards.

Uh oh

I live in Hackney.

Better take heed from Iain Sinclair and keep quiet or my books might be lifted quick-snap from the picture book shelves of my local library...

In other news: Such things! Such sadly secret things. TV show stuff is moving and developing apace.

Silken Bindings

Yesterday I was handed my copy of The Birthday Book. This silk bound edition is limited to 500 copies and will only be available from Hatchard's bookshop in Piccadilly (where you may very well have the extra pleasure, should you decide to, of purchasing the book from my very own sister, who works there). Otherwise a hardbound edition will be available all over the country (for a considerably lower price) from November the 6th.

The last story in the book is written by Eoin Colfer and illustrated by me. Just a few drawings, but some of my favourites ever to see print.



This morning I was somewhat rudely awakened by a special delivery, which turned out to be a thank-you-for-your-contribution letter from the prince himself...

Hello,

Quiet here isn't it?

I'm expecting an echo...

So I should tell you about The Big Picture Party. It will be at the British library on monday the 27th of October (next monday) and will feature lots of very exciting events to do with drawing. You can download a pdf guide about it by clicking here (I hope that works. Otherwise click through the links on the campaign for drawing site that I linked to up there, there at the beginning). I will be alive and drawing in The Big Picture Frame at 3.55 for a little over half an hour. I hope to be around all day the rest of the day too.

This morning at my studio I did a very long and rambling interview for Write Away. It'll be up soon if they can find some sense somewhere in the amongst the many words that come out of me when somebody asks about drawing, even when I'm all confused about how to make drawings then do unnatural things like move and be surrounded by noise and music.

And now I shall disappear into the confusion for some more time.

...

PS.
If you send me nice fan e-mails, questions, or studenty things at the moment, things that I do honestly like to receive and reply to, they are very likely to get lost in the mad pile. Sorry if they do.