trouble with crafts

Here is a short wordless story I made as a side personal project to keep myself sane while working on a big project. This is also when I realised that for some reasons I have to smuggle a dragon, a monster or a dinosaur into almost every illustration I make. I have no idea why is that but I guess I will have to illustrate a picture book with a dragon as a main character soon.

watching children play

Apart from illustrating I also lead creative workshops for children. One of the places I work in is the North Edinburgh Arts centre where together with a lovely team we organise creative sessions for under 5's and their families. No matter what the session is about (making the sea creature from recycled plastic bottles, building a huge cardboard tram...) it is always lots of fun. And a lot of mess!
It is also very inspirating for my illustration practice. I love watching the children play and engage with the activities I'd prepared for them.
The sketch above is inspired by one of these sessions. The theme was the age of discovery and we were making boats from recyced materials. And these two decided to develop the activity further and attach a string to each of their boats and then they were wandering through the room, dragging the boats and engaging in the most exciting conversation (at least this is what it looked like from the outside as they didn't really pay attention to anything around them; just walking with their boats and talking). There was so much in there - the beauty, friendship,  love, magic, imagination, adventure...
Moments like that are one of the many reasons I so much love my job!

Oh...and check out my newly updeted website!