My embarrassing moments happen almost every time I do an event where there’s live drawing. Drawing on a big flip chart in front of people is SO different than drawing in the privacy of my own sketchbook or creating illustrations with all my favourite materials in the cosiness of my studio. In events, I’m drawing with fat markers (which usually work) and trying to draw fairly quickly so it stays entertaining and not like watching paint dry. So my flipchart pictures are anything but polished, and still, there’s usually someone who wants to keep the drawing to hang up at their school or library. I’ve had to learn to overcome the urge to say, ‘But wait, I could draw you something so much better!’ and be happy letting them have it. It still makes me blush sometimes, though.

But I LOVE looking at other people’s artwork that they didn’t mean to show anyone! I am SO NOSY. One of the great things about working with David Fickling Books has been getting to know all the other DFC contributors while we were all making comics for the magazine, and we’ve stayed in touch! Whenever we meet up, I’m always wrestling people’s sketchbooks away from them to get a peek, like I did with John Aggs (whose strips included Robot Girl, John Blake and The Boss) a couple nights ago while he was sitting next to me at a talk by Shaun Tan in London. John rolled his eyes at me when I asked if I could post it on the blog but – ha ha – I just had to show you! Here are a few pages. Aren’t they fabulous?

We both agreed that construction on The Shard should never finish, it just looks so cool in pieces like this.

Hands are awfully hard to draw properly, I am rather envious. *blows raspberry at John* Hello, everyone! I have a picture book coming out today (but I am whispering that because it is not a DFB book) and I’m sending a cheery wave to comics people Dave Shelton (Good Dog, Bad Dog) and Neill Cameron (Mo-Bot High) who contributed earlier on this blog! (Read Dave’s post here and Neill’s here.) You can hear John and me give a talk about opportunities in comics publishing in London on Tues, 13 Sept, along with these other fab comics folk as a joint Society of Authors/ Comica Festival event! Details here.

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Sarah McIntyre disgusted the world with her first DFB picture book, Morris the Mankiest Monster, but then charmed them with her comic, Vern and Lettuce about sheep and rabbit best friends who live in a neighbourhood very much like her own in south London. She puts lots of free activity sheet downloads on her website and posts drawings and event reviews on her blog almost every day.