Ha and there lies the trouble with hitting deadlines with children. Everything is so unpredictable and to add to the interest we have had some ‘extreme’ weather here in the UK. ‘Extreme’ weather can mean literally an inch of snow here in London.  A little snow and the papers are covered with dramatic pictures of motorway queues. We Brits love to get excited about the weather.  This week’s extreme is actually a more interesting five inches of snow. It was enough to close the school for the last couple of days. The children were delighted and we spent  some quality time building snowmen and playing snowballs.  The only trouble is that the snow hasn’t yet melted and even though we have managed to get our elder daughters to school we can’t get to the preschool for the twins  and our childminder isn’t able to cope on the icy roads with baby O and the toddlers she is minding.  With a school holiday taking a further week at the end of the month I’m losing a great chunk of time that I could have been drawing with the children at school, preschool and being childminded. I’m going to have to be very selfish about ignoring demands to get work done in spare five minute gaps between feeding, clothing, watching shows, drinking pretend drinks, admiring lego creations, sorting out disputes and cuddling the baby.

If I can hit this deadline I can do anything! I can see the pictures at the end of the book being a great deal less detailed than those at the beginning! 

To compensate a little for the time loss I worked until three in the morning last night and then baby O spent the remainder of the night grumbling with his sore teeth. I’m feeling slightly drunk with tiredness right now but having finished another drawing I am at least a happy rather than a miserable drunk.

I spoke with the client during the week and we’re focussing well together now. There is the possibility that there may be more books ahead in the series should this one work out. I have learned a great deal doing this book and moving forward I will feel more confident in the processes I use. My best investments during this project were an A3 scanner and a Wacom tablet. At the outset I was gluing scans together like a jigsaw and it was almost impossible. The digital painting using a mouse is sooo much easier and looks so much better. I’m less heavy on the lasso tool now and actually feel a little more like I’m painting rather than toning now. It has given me more confidence and I’m happier using colour now.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures of our snow antics. We don’t often get snow here. The last snowfall was April last year, two days before our youngest was born and I was about as round as the snowman at that point! This time I was able to get my revenge and join in the snowball fight rather than being a waddling target. There are snow scenes in the book I’m illustrating so I suppose I can consider it fun for research purposes!