Very very sketchy

I thought it might be fun to post some more early sketches, in the really rough stages. They may be grubby and scribbly, and covered in coffee  stains and fingerprints, or full of hideous anatomical mistakes, but there's a kind of energy about first sketches that so often gets killed in the finals. I'm working hard on trying to keep that energy going through all the stages of a picture, but I'm not quite there yet...

Anyway - here's 2 kids in silly hats feeding stolen cake to a bunch of gulls...

Glorious

Looking for inspiration for painting seascapes, and found this flickr set of truly incredible wave photos. Each one is a perfectly frozen instant of collision, and  random forms that seem to have presence and purpose. Wow.

Work in progress...

I've just finished doing the first very rough roughs for the book I'm working on at the moment, The Fierce Little Woman and the Wicked Pirate by Joy Cowley. At this stage, all I've really done is work out what goes on which page and how the action will develop - the drawings are still pretty horrible. But I find it really useful to do the roughs of each spread at the actual size that the finished book will be, and to blu-tack all the spreads to the wall so I can see the entire story at a glance. So here is my wall... it's hell on the paintwork!