going to the circus

Ola strangers!
At least... I’m the stranger. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything regular and for that I apologise. Bad form that is.
To fill you in quickly: I went on holiday and when I returned I hit the proverbial ground at a full sprint! Publishing kept me very busy and by the time things got ‘normal’ again I’d lost the habit of regularly posting stuff.
So enough with the hiding! And on with the show!

 
One of the things that kept me away was the 4th activity book featuring our friend: Toko, the apparently multi-talented gecko! This time around the theme was ‘the circus’ which invites all sorts of fun.

And these are some of the interior pages…

I really enjoy working on these and I’m delighted that I get to work on these activity books again and again, as a kid I’d always wondered about the people putting these things together :)

Action Gecko - take 3

That's right, I recently completed the third activity book starring our little ambitious gecko :)

Action Gecko - the sequel

I was asked to illustrate the follow up to the 'Summer Fun' activity book I did last year, let's call it: Winter Fun! (actually it was called: My Holiday, but I like mine better)

A night-time variant of the cover and below are some of the pages from the book...

Winter here falls over June - August, which meant over the World Cup, so we couldn't stay away from using some soccer themes....
As with the first, I had tons of fun drawing and making up some of the games; the pages were wonderfully designed by the good people at 8 Ink Media, I think it all oozes fun!

Action gecko

That end-of-year-crunch is back, being that time of year, and whoo-boy it's been a doozy and it's not even that close to the actual 'end' of year.... oh dear...

Anyway, while I'm up for breath and snacks I thought an update would be nice...
One of the projects I've been working on is an activity book for kids; but don't be decieved, this cute gecko character's been one tough little critter (23 pages in 2 weeks tough) This is the cover in it's various stages...

pencils and inks, for this particular job I didn't have time to use graphite pencils over the blue ones, it was direct to ink which is sometimes quite therapeutic.

the finished inks