My First Review

Sweet! My first review (that I know of, I'm sure someone's made their feelings about me known somewhere before). This was in BookFest for the Children's Book Festival. The review is for the book The Henny Penny Tree by Siobhán Parkinson.

Dublin Comic Con & Hellcat Colour Sketch

I've not fully recovered from the Dublin Comic Con because I'm a delicate flower, but it was a great night. Or nights for other people who were partying a lot harder than I was. I really need to build up my stamina or maybe I should just not sit on concrete steps in cold weather while waiting round for people.

Anyway, here's an old colour sketch of Hellcat. She all twisty like a cat. Yep, cats are like that, all twisty and stuff. That's cats for ya.

Sketches in me Moleskine

Here are some sketches I did last night while watching Shaun of the Dead. As you can see they are totally inspired by the movie. I don't know why there's a turquoise tinge over the whole thing, if anything it should be yellowish.

Kokeshi Dolls

Here's some more Japanese inspired stuff I've done. My little kokeshi dolls.  Traditionally they're painted wood, but these I made out of paper clay. The smallest is little over an inch high, she was the first one I made. I've made three others for my family. The one on the left needs a little more sanding before she's fit for painting.

Noh Mask

I really enjoyed painting this. I always thought these masks were for kabuki theatre but they're for noh theatre which is a few hundred years older.

I wanna paint more of them, especially the hairy noh masks.

Pan's Labyrinth

Here is a work in progress, which I started ages ago in my Moleskine. One day it may get finished, I don't know. But I'm pretty happy with the interim stages so far.

ASBO Fairy Tales

At the moment I'm illustrating a book of regular fairy tales, which is a bit weird after illustrating these anarchic versions.

ASBO Fairy Tales on MOM's website.

One new book and two slightly older ones published by Michael O'Mara

I've just finished illustrating a new book for Michael O'Mara. The deadline was pretty tight, but I got it finished in time, phew.

Below are the previous books I illustrated for Michael O'Mara. The bottom two illustrations for the books were done in the style of Anne Anderson as requested.

The Nursery Rhymes Book on MOM website.

The Games Book on MOM website.

Images copyright Michael O'Mara.

Regarding Mooney's Bust

Stephen's making a bronze bust of Mooney for his wedding. I volunteered to make the armature.

There are some very good instructions in the book From Clay to Bronze, but I had to make a few substitutions as there isn't an extensive line of plumbing materials in the local hardware. 

There are no threads on the pipe or the thing (possibly a floor flange) holding it to the board so I used epoxy glue. I also had to cut the pipe with a hack saw.

I'm so proud of my work, I may be a little disappointed when it's covered up in clay.

Father's Day Card

Here's the card I made for Father's Day (several weeks ago now).  Why an orang-utan? Because my Dad likes orang-utans.

On another note, I once caught a banana this big.

The Henny Penny Tree

After working on Ice Dreams, I illustrated The Henny Penny Tree by Siobhán Parkinson for O'Brien Press.

This was a wonderfully fun story to illustrate. It's a warm quirky tale about three sisters who are given coins by their Uncle Fergus. At first Littlest doesn't know what to do with her copper coin.

Here it is on their website.

These images are copyright O'Brien Press.

Ice Dreams illustrations

These are some of the illustrations I did for the book Ice Dreams, written by Grace Wells and Published by O'Brien Press.

Grace's story is warm and witty and just fantastically written. The village of Moutsouna is in trouble after their only source of income, the ice factory, shuts down. The twins have a plan to save the community, but it will take everyone working together to pull it off.

Here it is on O'Brien's website.

These images are copyright O'Brien Press.

My Colouring on Angel Covers

Okay, I'm finally putting up some of the work I did over the last few months.

Here are the covers I coloured for Angel: After the Fall. The pencils and inks are by a Mr. Stephen Mooney.

I think my favourite is Cover 5, Illyria and 

Gwen getting all charged up in red and blue.