If you’ve been following me on Instagram (which I’m slowly comprehending) and Twitter, you might have seen some of the (mostly) daily drawings I’ve been posting recently. I’ve avoided multi-posting to the blog or on Facebook on a daily basis, I think the continuous nature of Twitter and Instagram is better suited to daily sketch exercises, but in case you missed them, here’s a catch-up of a few recent scribblings. Sketchbooks are an intrinsic part of my work, both for practi

My dad was the last of his generation in our immediate family. One of the consequences of his passing has been the sorting out of all the nooks and crannies of his house, which revealed a lot of things I’d completely forgotten still existed. Not only parental items we grew up with from childhood, but also things left behind by us kids as we moved on in life. As the artist of the family I’ve by far been the worst offender – when I set off to art college all my school art work

So, we approach the end of summer, and for me things are beginning to calm down after months of precipitous highs and lows. Amongst the highs are the release of two picture books – Will’s Words in the US (distributed in the UK) I’ve previously mentioned, but also Yozora o Miage-yo (Look Up at the Night Sky) for Fukuinkan Shoten in Japan….. more on these titles shortly. I’ve talked about these releases on Twitter and Facebook, but the reason I’ve not blogged about new books, o

Today was the one year anniversary of my wife Makiko’s death. Naturally a lot of emotions have been running through my mind, and daughter Seren’s. It doesn’t seem like a year, that day of her death will remained engraved on my memory for all time as if it were just a few days ago. I can’t believe I’ve been away from Japan so long, our present existence still feels so temporary, as we’re still in a little apartment in a provincial corner of the UK. The anniversary made us thi

My deepest thanks to everyone who has supported me and daughter Seren during these past months of grief and change. It’s been tough adjusting to the UK after so many years, but we’re beginning to find our feet now, thanks to the wonderful assistance of family and friends around us. Whatever happens, life goes on. As this is an art blog I’ll speak no more on the subject of my grief, our circumstances etc. They really deserve a blog of their own… if I only had the time! Once ag

2007 was a hell of a year. I can confidently say the most unforgetable year of my life. I wasn’t going to spell everything out in the blog, but hell with it, here we go. You’ll understand why there have not been any blog entries lately shortly. Read on. The first six months were full of hope and promise. Work was looking good, in February I was in New York for the SCBWI Conference and had a very promising reception from American publishers. This was followed by successful wor

We were offered a few short minutes to deliver some words during the funeral so I put together and presented this. Our dearest Gwen As we say our farewells we remember the love and the selfless devotion you showed to your family and to your friends. As a mother you’ve were an inspiration, a shining light of guidance, who encouraged your children to pursue their dreams and aspirations. As a companion and friend you were a comfort, with an openhearted enthusiasm for life, and

It seems those thundery late July skies were not celebrations, but omens of an awful tragedy. My mother is gone. An active, fit woman for her age, she went down with a stomach bug which felled her in three days. It was very sudden, very unexpected. No-one, least of all her doctor, thought it was a fatal illness, just a minor stomach upset. The official cause was septicemia brought on by gastroenteritis. My father called me with the news and I caught the earliest flight back t