NOAH'S ARK

I am SO PROUD! Now you can download Matthew Robins' latest live album on Amazon (and itunes, actually) and some of the lovely songs have lyrics by me! And the others are all fine examples of Matthew's own beautiful musical storytelling. They all made me laugh and/or cry.

Download the album!

Or, of course, order a CD from Matthew himself.

And also please look at the comic that goes with it. It's Awesome.
Here's page one, the rest is to be found on his blog

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Lockpicks!

Best present ever!

One Day Before Christmas...

I am enjoying my wallet sketchbook. Here is a sad lady I saw on the tube. She was wearing a big black hat that seemed to weigh her down. Even her bag seemed a bit dejected.
I hope she's having a nicer time now.

And I cooked for German Christmas - some friends and boyfriend are coming around tomorrow. This is the red cabbage (before cooking). Loads of muscovado sugar, apple, and, for the first time, experimentally, cranberries.
I cooked a game stew as well. I don't normally cook meat, pretty much only for Christmas, and it turned out really very tasty. It'll sit and wait until tomorrow.

Drawing Videos

Here's a Christmas treat for you: a glimpse into the workings of whatever part of my brain does the drawing.

What-is-it? from John Peacock on Vimeo.

Drawing Hamsters from John Peacock on Vimeo.

And here, The Cats.

Drawing Cats from John Peacock on Vimeo.

Cookie Planes and Burglaries

Hello there!
There's a festive sort of feeling in the air here. Even though just about everyone has either a cold or vomititis or both. I managed to pay for Christmas food with artwork sales, and lugged home a tasty haul of port and nuts and cabbage and suchlike winter delicacies. My friend Inga passed through and gave me some baked planes. She said it was the closest thing to stars she could get, cookie cutter wise.

I spent a brilliant weekend helping to run an adventure game pretend burglary with Fire Hazard, most notably spending quite some time tied to a chair in a police cell singing "Les Miserables" to myself waiting for players to spring me so I could hand them a bunch of keys and run off for coffee. I think I'll blog more about all that later.

Now I shall do some more comic drawing.

ICE HELL LONDON

The plight of the orange water balloon.

Monkey Worries

Why is it Snowing Upstairs?

Why is it snowing upstairs, mama
Every night when you put me to sleep
I can hear the snow-flakes falling
Like small feet crawling upstairs, mama


Isn’t there anyone living up there
Aren’t they home?
I can hear the snow fall, hear the snow fall
Won’t they be sad when there’s snow in the hall
And there’s icicles hanging over their heads
And there’s sheets of ice on their beds?

Aren’t they home?


Why is it snowing upstairs, mama
I had a dream about legs
Long leggy legs, crawling, crawling
Like snow-flakes falling upstairs, mama
Why is it snowing upstairs, mama
Every night when you go away


Sometimes it snows in the day




Why is it snowing so


Why does it


snow

That's a small song I wrote for a show years ago. I think the show never happened but I just found the words and thought: ah! Seasonal. So there you go.




(That's a song I wrote for a show some years ago, just found it and thought it's appropriate for the season.)

Turtle

Almost finished another chapter...

...well, in theory, if I keep drawing all day today, which I'm planning to do. Am just taking a short break and gathering visual reference material. And, to be fair, I think I'll leave a couple of pages out for later because they feature complicated architecture. And the other pages need re-scripting somewhat. But anyway, I'm getting there, by tomorrow hopefully.

I drew my favourite page yet, here it is:

And I promptly left it on the train on my way back from boyfriend's house. Thankfully an honest soul picked it up and phoned me so I could retrieve it. ALWAYS PUT YOUR MOBILE NUMBER ON YOUR PORTFOLIO, FOLKS.

Monkey in Diving Bottle.

My monkeys are for sale at The Colour Makes People Happy Store, all original brush drawings on watercolour paper. I'm rather pleased with them.

Monkey Sale!

Don Quixote by Rob Davis

 I did an artwork swap for a monkey painting with Rob Davis, now I own this! HA!

Christmas Treepee

And, finally, the Treepee is kind of getting there now. Still looks very odd, but I just wired it up with lights, which helps a lot.

Treepee

I made my Christmas tree. Now I can't find my box of decorations...

Red monkeys

I painted red monkeys... They all came out quite nice, I think most of them will go in the monkey sale.
If you want to buy any monkeys, come to Colour Makes People Happy in Dulwich, or send me a mail. I will post all the monkeys once I finished painting.

SCBWI Masterclass

On Saturday Ben Norland and I gave a Masterclass in picture book illustration for SCBWI. 

We talked, and presented, and then looked through people's dummy books. We read out "A Place to Call Home" which will be published next year - I think that was the first more or less public display of the book, actually. I'd brought an early dummy for it so we could demonstrate the sort of changes that are made.

It was an enjoyable day, but I am glad that this was the last event of the year... I will try and keep events to a minimum next year and concentrate on work. Events are my least favourite part of the job, on the whole, no matter how fun they may be they make me feel desperately tired, sometimes for days. I strongly feel that my place should be with my imaginary creatures, and a drawing implement in my hand, as far as my work time is concerned. I get confused by questions like "where do you get your ideas" and "how many changes are made from your initial idea" and all that stuff about ideas in general, and sometimes I don't feel all that helpful. People seem to have a different idea of what ideas are.

Anyway, they were nice, that lot. And Ben is always very useful to listen to.

I would rather like to spend some time just dreaming about the characters I need to work with next, they have faded in my mind...

Well, tonight I shall make a start on the underwater sequence in "Sleepwalkers", I wonder if that means wibbly panel borders... and how to draw fur under water... hm...

Book shopping in Hampstead

I decided to hide in Hampstead today, eating lovely food and visiting book shops. This is what I bought. I am very fond of The Iron Man and it's always exciting to see a new beautiful edition, and this retelling of Puss in Boots is very neat, clever and satisfying.

Win Cat Books with Stitch London!

Stitch London is running a competition for some of my books!

Which is very cool indeed.
Stitch London, in any case, is cool anyway, and if you like to knit, or crochet, or any such crafty thing, you should really join them, because it's free and fun and generally rather a good idea.

Reindeer

This is a Christmas tree pot I am painting, just a quick commission... So, yes, I will do that kind of thing occasionally.

Drawing drawing...

Peace and quiet...

It's snowy, London is asleep. It doesn't take much snow for that.
I crossed London twice, using whatever transport was at hand, to have a planning meeting in a North London pub. I scribbled and smudged around in my wallet-sketchbook, thinking about the characters in my graphic novel. Here's an angry monkey, her name is Amali Tumbili. She's probably cross because I smudged her out and redrew her so many times, not because I was trying anything in particular, just for fun, to see her disappear and re-emerge.

Amali Tumbili, in a mood

I'm glad my dad sent me some snow chains for my shoes, they really help with walking on ice.

I fell asleep on the couch when I got back home, it's so peaceful out there and so warm in here...
Also I put a stew on an hour or so ago, on the principle that if I buy whatever bags of vegetables they have reduced in the shop across the road and boil them in stock with some sort of alcohol that isn't eggnog for long enough, stew will happen. I shall test that now, and then have an evening of drawing.
I'm happy.

Drawing...

I'm making progress with the comic today, in chunks of twenty- five minutes, using the pomodoro method. It's working! I am actually both enjoying the drawing and catching up...