Why you have to go to Bologna

So I went on a little quest to make my l luck last week…
All the way to Italy, to the Children’s Book Fair in Bologna, right into the dragons den.
Before I say anything else, guys, you REALLY have to go!

Make time, save up and take a leap and jump in(to the real world)
This is a long way from dreaming, these are actual publishers who look at actual work and could actually give you a job (in time)! :o)

God, so much to see and to learn!

First of all this is a place for business, publishers are trading rights to already published books, so don’t be disappointed if not everyone has time to look at your work! But still, many of them DO look at illustrators portfolios and having someone look at your work is the first step to getting where you want to be!
Don’t be afraid to get rejected, don’t be disappointed, it’s a place to learn and be inspired and amazed of what it possible! Don’t hide and wait till you are ready, I certainly was not ready this time but I will be (a little more) ready next year!

And the books, oh the books!
So many! So many you will get dizzy, its brilliant! It’s amazing to see how different children’s books can be from country to country. Call me naive but I maintain there is room for us all!

I’ve spent the whole duration of the fair wandering publishers stalls, picking up catalogues, leafing through brilliant books, taking a deep breath and opening my portfolio, browsing, chatting.
I have learned a ton! What’s out there, who wants what and also about the little space in-between mainstream books, the space reserved for unusual talents and books with a difference.

The Seven Ravens

Seven is a magic number.

Seven dwarfs living beyond seven mountains. Seven ravens....
Numbers are important. There is some strange kind of magic in them.

Mostly things some in three. Three daughters (the youngest being the most beautiful), three brothers (the youngest either being the fool or the most modest and overlooked), three riddles the hero has to solve. Three quests…
Sometimes, like in Russian fairy tales we come across the ninth son of an ninth son (and so on…) and here we have seven brothers enchanted into seven ravens.

Being an only child the idea of having seven brothers you never knew about and only find out by chance, like the heroine in this tale, fascinated me utterly.

Seven enchanted brothers you have to save in a quest you have to “set out into the world” for.
The whole “setting out into the world” part sounded so magical and intriguing!

So many fairy tale heroes and heroines set out into the world to make their luck. The wold being vast an mystical, unchartered lands beyond your village…
This is the latest project that is struggling to get out onto paper and nudging me to get on with it…and I can’t wait to get to it. But first, alas, other things need to be finished. I-s dotted, T’s crossed, envelopes sent off. A lot still to be done before I can sit down between crows on a field and start sketching...

I kind of went on a quest into the world to make my luck last week.
I went to the Childrens book fair in Bologna but thats another story and more of that will follow in the next few days....

CRC Charity Exhibition

How much happiness can a tiny red dot of a sticker give you?

Limitless amounts of happiness!

I had two sales at the Central Remidial Clinic exhibition! Yey!!

While it does hurt a little to part with original work its still a great feeling to know they'll be hanging in someones house!

Selkie Tales

I took a walk on the beach yesterday. It was a dull day, grey overcast sky but still: the sea, white sand, crushed seashells. And it reminded me of summer days gone by.


I love the colour of the sea in sunlight. The sun is so bright on this Island (well, when it’s actually there), white light, making the water glisten, sea green. Seals peeking their heads out of the water, watching you from the other side, just as you are watching them. Clouds are blown across the blue sky, racing past. The weather is changing with a blink of the eye. So often rain and sun at the same time, rainbows so close when you see them in front of your and yet hardly impressive in the picture you take with your terrible camera.

Projects and ideas are piling up in my head.

Between ravens and bears, Selkies seem to be rearing their heads.

Selkies of course are not from my native home, in Grimm country (otherwise known as Germany :o) we know mermaids and sea-monsters as well as water nymphs (Nixen) but we don’t know Selkies.

Selkies are creatures of the cold waters around Scotland and Ireland. And when I visit places like the Blasket Islands they don’t seem to be so far removed from our wold indeed.

In love with Mucha

Mucha is one of my all-time favourites. I’ve been swooning over his work since I first discovered it as a child. Personifications of seasons, moods...his “Job cigarette” advertisement makes me want to start smoking again!

A zillion years ago I visited Prague and saw his art in an exhibition. Open mouthed. Elegant and effortless. Gorgeous.

In love, always.

Sleeping off winter

Yes, it really seems as if I had just recently woken up out of my winter coma or hibernation or escaped from procrastination island. I’ve been drawing away quietly and slowly of course :o) but have not thought it impressive enough to update my blog I guess.


I rather like the idea of sleeping off winter, like the little hedgehog above, a drawing from a long time ago that was meant to be a tattoo for my lower back. The tattoo never happened but many more hedgehog drawings followed...

Breakfast in bed

This is what breakfast in bed should look like!

Food is really the only thing I draw quickly – I just grow more hungry looking at it for too long – so its a quick sketch and then nothing but crumbles on an empty plate!

The Foxes mother

The Foxes mother is an example of a pattern in my art. Throughout my work I’ve come back again and again to women nursing animals, to birds feeding humans. Hans my hedgehog, mice nesting in artfully piled up hair. This is a strong thread in fairy tales. Transformation, blurred lines between the human world, nature and the Other world. Women with a foxes foot in place of a human one. Toads, that are really fairy queens out to test you. You never know if what you see is what you get.

It must have started with Hans (the hedgehog) and his mother. Tori Amos has probably not helped either nor has Jim Henson’s adaptation of ‘Hans, my hedgehog’. My obsession has never left me.