JoJo finds inspiration in Edinburgh

Edinburgh Inspiration and Christmas pudding

JoJo Gnome Sound Quilt

Sitting in the garden, on what is probably the last lovely day in summer, waiting for the paint to dry on the back of my Sound Machine Quilt just now. The front is shaping up quite nicely  …so fingers crossed it all fits together. Typically I am making it up as I go along!

Watermarked blip puppet

Spent most of last week working in Edinburgh at the Festival. I love this time of year in the capital with all the buskers and mad looking people handing out flyers. Top favourite sights were a really sad looking puppet (which seemed to follow me round the town), the very tasty food market just off Princes Street and the Man Ray exhibition at the Portrait Gallery.  I didn’t know what to expect from the exhibition but found out quite a bit about this surrealist photographer and documenter of the literati and glitterati of his time. I hadn’t realised he was also a painter and surprise surprise I have a couple of postcards of his work on one of my mood boards (love those kind of coincidences). Best of all was the bus I spotted with the exhibition advertised on the side…much better than buying a tee shirt, catching the bus!

Watermarked man ray bus

On the book front, met a couple of interesting children’s authors at the Edinburgh Book Festival this week. Adam Britten is a teacher who writes about Super Heroes and did a great talk. He really made the young folk in the audience think about the stereotypes they carry with them and challenged the whole notion of heroes. Delighted when he shared his all time hero as Stephen Hawking.  Another author who caught my attention was Gareth P Jones, his latest book is called Constable & Toop and is all about Victorian ghosts. He gave a great interactive talk, which included the opportunity for the young audience to decide what direction the story was going and finished up by playing the ukulele.  Both of these authors really underline the fact that when an author gets up in front of children with their work they have to really lift the work off the page and engage. It might not just be enough to write a great book!

 

As for my writing, the coming week will be about Christmas as I am putting finishing touches to drawings for my book, which will be out in November … working title JOJO GNOME AND THE SMELL OF CHRISTMAS.  Drawing Christmas pudding is making me want to eat some. The sad thing is they will be in the shops any day now!

 

 

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