Recently, a news story concerning the unearthing of a witch’s cottage caught my eye.

According to reports, it was clearly a witch’s cottage because it had a mummified cat bricked up in the walls, and was found in Pendle, the scene of a notorious outbreak of maleficence in the early 17th century. Ten people were hanged as witches due to a tragic tangle of religious intolerance, familial rivalry and superstition.
Whether or not this particular dwelling played host to all manner of frightful witchery will be doubtless be pondered upon by historians and people (like me) with over-active imaginations. I’ve always loved old buildings – they act as a focal point for history and legends; they are like batteries generating stories, some down-to-earth and some fanciful. Read the rest of this entry »

Because of the subject of the last round of blogs (an Archie moment), I ended up producing a comic strip about Inspector Clouseau. It was fun, but not the way I generally work, so for the next set of blogs I said to myself that i’d try and do an illustration closer to the way I usually work.

The subject for this set of blogs was to discuss literary classics.

As chance would have it I had already started something along these lines…  A couple of years ago I spoke to someone who suggsted that I try some illustrations for a classic book because it suited my quite (at the time) traditional way of working.The three books that came to mind were Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels and Treasure Island.  I decided to go with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

My first idea was to try and illustrate it in a Darwin-esque way, drawing different tools, flowers, objects and places that Robinson found on his journey. But I wanted to see what Robinson looked like so I did some concepts of him as well as a narrative image of a raft in a rough sea. In the end I wasn’t really sure whether to to illustrate it in a more narrative way or a more scientific way. I think my preference would have been narrative, but the trouble with that is that it had already been done and done very well in that style by N.C Wyeth.

I had other ideas i was working on at the time, so in the end decided to shelve it until I become more established, maybe then I’ll be able to take on a literary classic…

Some of the concepts I did for it are below.

Richard Collingridge is an illustrator and concept artist. He has previously worked on the covers for Trash by Andy Mulligan, The Deserter by Peadar O’ Guilin, and WE by John Dickinson. Richard’s first picture book, When It Snows, is currently in production. You can find out more about Richard on his webpage.

I was delighted when I was asked to illustrate  ‘I Don’t Believe it, Archie!’ by Andrew Norriss. I always love to illustrate funny and bizarre scenarios and the wackier the illustration request, the better.

I’ve had a few strange things happen to me but this one is one I remember from when I was little…

I grew up in the countryside without a TV and sometimes my imagination would run away with me. I like to think of it as a good thing as it has probably helped me become who I am today.

My dad loved to play April Fools jokes and he somewhat exploited the fact that both my sister and I were completely gullible and believed almost everything he said. His usual trick was to shout that he’d seen something amazing in the garden (e.g. an escaped tiger from the zoo, a yeti, that sort of thing). He would yell “WHAT is THAT outside?! Come and look girls!” and we’d rush excitedly to the window.

Read the rest of this entry »

At DFB, we love stories – and who better to tell them than our award-winning writers and illustrators?  That’s right, our new storyblog is going to be jam-packed full of writing, photos and exclusive artwork posted by over 30 DFB storytellers.  We’re really excited about this new project, where you can follow posts by your very favourite writers and artists, as well as meeting new DFB debutants!

Our group of DFB bloggers will take it in turns to post on a different question or topic, brought to mind by our new DFB titles.  For this first wave of storyblogs, they’re thinking about I DON’T BELIEVE IT ARCHIE!, and the unlikely situations and rib-tickling predicaments that Archie ends up in. You see, due to his incredible luck – and a fair few misunderstandings and bizarre coincidences! – Archie never quite ends up where he plans to..  Our bloggers will be sharing their silliest, funniest and most embarrassing stories with us – so you can expect a new post every couple of days, direct from the DFB authors themselves. So, enough from me - look below for the first post from author Candy Gourlay!

‘I Don’t Believe it Archie!’ is written by Andrew Norriss and illustrated by Hannah Shaw.