The Halloween Forest

By John Shelley

Although this won't be released until next year, here's a sneak preview of my upcoming Halloween themed book for Holiday House in the US. The Halloween Forest, written by Marion Dane Bauer, is a fantastical romp in a spooky bone forest. Fingers crossed it will find a publisher in the UK too. Woooooo!!!!!

Introducing SketchJam: Sketchbooks & Beer!

By Lynne Chapman

No, not exactly a SketchCrawl this time. SketchJam is SketchCrawl's younger brother, so to speak. It's a brand new, musical idea that I tried on for size this week.

Remember how the snow scuppered our chance to draw an orchestra recently? Well, I've been mulling things over with my good friend and fellow artist Martin Hinchcliffe (who also did this lovely painting). We've cooked up another way to draw live music.


SketchJam's world premier (!) started at the Cubana in Sheffield on Thursday evening, where we were entertained by soul and jazz from the 50s and 60s, played by Simon Peat on the Sax, with Joel White on vocals and keyboard.


It was wonderful, and I was bobbing up and down (while also trying to draw!) to all the old favourites I remember my mum and dad playing when I was young. Unfortunately though, as you can see from my sketches, we couldn't really get close enough to the musicians, plus it was a bit dark and VERY warm, so we moved on after a bit, just down the road a way, to The Grapes:


Our merry band of 7, some old hands from previous SketchCrawls, but some new faces too, huddled happily over sketchbooks and beer in a cosy side bar, drawing the locals:


We thought we had missed our chance, yet again, on the music front, but we discovered at 9.30 that we had struck gold: a knot a old folks in the corner suddenly whipped out guitars and spent the rest of the evening taking turns singing wonderful folk music!


We had a smashing evening and all drew and painted our socks off until about 11.00. It was so casual and friendly, bantering with the singers and generally chilling out to music and drawing. What could be better?

Email me if you live in my neck of the woods and fancy coming to the next one.

THE LITTLE WHITE SPRITE

My new book, to be published in March 2011 is The Little White Sprite; a story about a  boy who encounters a mysterious creature inside an old hollow tree.  On one level it's all about a child entering a magical world, being persuaded to stay but in the end finding he can safely return back again to where he belongs. On another level, the sprite has echoes of nature spirits that are said to be the life force of trees.



The Little White Sprite paperback edition ISBN 9780956510815 and hardback edition ISBN 9780956510839 will be available  in March 2011 from Amazon and bookshops via Gardners and Bertrams.