Astonished Platypus.

I survived the South Ken Children's Book Festival!
Four days of visiting schools, drawing on stage with famous illustrators, giving talks and workshops and signing books and drawing things on demand.
I did a bit of "tell me an animal and a mood" improvised drawings on whiteboards and flipcharts as well, it's a nice way to show ways of expressing emotions in drawing.
Anyway, somehow the first request is always HAPPY CAT, and then after several other ones (more often than not including SLEEPY GIRAFFE) the one that always happens is:

ASTONISHED PLATYPUS

This is because, as you know if you've ever improvised anything on stage, the audience will always assume the idea is to trip you up. They think that's funny, when actually it's much more enjoyable to see perfectly obvious things work out well.

Due to this, however, I have become reasonably adept at drawing astonished platipodes. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

I also did some improvised drawing-on-demand together with Marc Boutavant, and with Stephanie Blake. As one would expect one of the resulting works depicted a princess on neptune who was brought 8 toilets by assorted superheroes and cute animals because she needed a wee. Another was titled (after the mayhem of drawing it had passed) "Harry Potter and The Dolphin In Striped Pyjamas". You can't blame us, the children made us do it. I did enjoy drawing Voldemort with a machine gun though.