Illustration for 'Good Morning Mr Croco-doco-dile'

Thrilled to have illustrated this wonderful poem - Good Morning Mr Croco-Doco-Dile - by Charles Causley. It's published in a handbook this month by Oxford University Press as part of their excellent 'Read Write Inc' series.

illustration Anna Violet

Chorlton Library Centenary Cake

A cake cut yesterday as part of Chorlton Book Festival to celebrate 100 years of Chorlton Library. With my mug design on top!

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Here is my (alas, unsuccessful) submission for House of Illustration's recent competition, with The Folio Society. The competition was to illustrate The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter, a collection of ten short stories, closely based on fairytales.

The Bloody Chamber is a dark, gothic tale, based on Bluebeard, with blood, corpses, keys, pornography, lots of lilies and a mother who rescues her daughter in the nick of time.

"You never saw such a wild thing as my mother...her hair was her white mane, her black lisle legs exposed to the thigh, her skirts tucked around her waist, one hand on the reins of the rearing horse while the other clasped my father's service revolver..."

The Company of Wolves is an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood.

"The forest closed upon her like a pair of jaws"

Puss in Boots is a romp with the cat as a con-man.

"I went about my ablutions, tonging my arsehole...one leg stuck in the air like a ham bone...Love? I withdrew my head from my privates and fixed him with my most satiric smile..."

The Outsider by Camus

 "For a while nobody moved; it was all sunlight and silence, except for the tinkle of the stream and those three little lonely sounds."

"...he was staring hard at me, as if he had been waiting for me to wake..."

"What these people were looking for in me wasn't anything to laugh at, but signs of criminality..."

SCBWI Illustration Competition

Here are a couple of images I have produced for SCBWI (Society Children's Book Writers and Illustrators)
Illustration Competition: Undiscovered Voices Tribute Challenge.
The first illustration is a cover for Adele (by Anne M Leone). This is about a young teenager who spends a summer holiday in Michigan with her aunt. When a ghostly face appears in the window, the girl discovers the house hides a dark history of slavery.

The other illustration is a cover for The Truth About Celia Frost (by Paula Rawsthorne). The main character has a disorder that leaves her in constant fear of bleeding to death. Then she is the victim of a knife attack...

AOI Images 34 show

AOI Images 34 show last week in London last week.

My fox is now in the AOI Images 34 annual, so I'm 

really chuffed.

Didn't See It Coming

This book has been on sale in Magma bookshop, Manchester, since last year. It is a collaboration between Stockport  & Kingston college illustration students, with images based on the consequences idea of interchangeable heads, bodies and legs.  My colander-head features in it.

I also did a project a couple of years ago, set by the 'Leonard Cheshire Disability', which used the idea of consequences for a set of beermats (showing 6 interchangeable characters).

Nobrow competition

People I have never met and conversations I have never had.

Penguin Book competition

Swings & Roundabouts images

I am trying to mix illustration styles & images from early medieval times to now, using Fleur Adcock's poem 'Swings and Roundabouts', where the past invades the present.