I’m an experienced illustrator, author, designer and publisher of children’s picture books based in the Northeast, illustrating and writing mainly for the children’s publishing industry. Regarding an illustration style, I’m very versatile…skilled in pencil, pen, watercolour, digital, and usually all together.
Over the years I’ve worked for most of the UK’s children’s book publishers such as Walker Books, HarperCollins, Heinemann, Victoria House, Treehouse, Egmont, Hodder Children’s Books, Usborne, Oxford University Press, Random House, Pearson, Scholastic, Ladybird, La Coccinella in Italy, and Caramel in Belgium.
Being versatile, I’ve illustrated many classic characters such Winnie the Pooh, Wallace and Gromit, Noddy, Thomas the Tank Engine, Topsy and Tim, Kipper, Postman Pat, and for the last 18 years I’ve been the Rupert Bear author and illustrator for the Annual. It’s a privilege to write and draw for this iconic character.
In 2006 I created Rockpool Children’s Books, a publisher of quality children’s picture books, for which I’m publisher, creative director, commissioning editor, author, illustrator, designer, producer and eternal optimist!
Rockpool Children’s Books have sold books worldwide and published over 70 titles, including ‘Scaredy Cat’, ‘Boomerang Bear’, ‘My Perfect Pet’, ‘Greedy Grumpy Hippo’, and more on the way. In 2017 Rockpool published its first non-fiction picture book, The Coal Mine.
‘All about picture books’ is the talk and workshop I take into schools but is also suitable for any group interested in the writing, illustration, and production of children’s picture books – from idea to publication of.