Art Wortd Coop

Since my last post, way back in April, there have been several exciting distractions. In the April 9 edition of the Telegraph, there was an article describing a competition being held by the Telegraph and Waterstones to find an unpublished illustrator for Julia Donaldson's next book, "Freddie and the Fairy".

The competition, called "Picture This", was open to any unpublished illustrators (as far as children's books, that is) to come up with full-colour character sketches for the main characters (Freddie, the Fairy and the Fairy Queen), some animal sketches and a full-colour illustration for one of the spreads. The complete story is available online to read (click on Picture This).

The deadline was 18 May, so I dropped all (except pencils, pens and the like!) and started getting busy! I only just made it...infact, my wife and brother-in-law were kind enough to drive down to the Waterstones offices and hand-deliver my pictures, as I was too late to post them!

Anyway, here's my interpretation of Bessie-Belle:



You can see my full set of "Freddie and the Fairy" images in my Flickr Photostream or at www.cladge.com.

A group was started on Flickr as the competition came to a close and the entrants started waiting to see who had been picked for the "final 6" (I wasn't, BTW!). I added my pictures to the Flickr Picture This group, and got involved with a couple of other spin-off groups, set up by like-minded artistic individuals:

1. Illustrapedia - a group involved in producing artwork on a monthly basis for topics chosen by the group. June's topic was "dinosaurs"...you can see the entries here ---> slideshow. See if you can spot mine!! This month's challenge is "witches".
2. Illustration collaboration - a group dedicated to producing some artist-driven children's books. Currently, I am involved in contributing to an "A to Z" book...I've got the letter "Y"...hmmm...tricky.

So, somewhere between this lost, I still hope to get more "Our Digital Life" pictures finished. Hmph...wishful thinking!