Let’s Go Sailing

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Place Names – Ugglebarnby

Some place names sound less like an actual place and more like a character from a story.

This week –

Mysterious Rocks

This is an illustration of a scene from the book ‘Shine’ by Jill Paton Walsh. It’s a fantastic young adult science fiction story published in the 80s, about families settling on a new planet. In this scene the children discover the mysterious rocks they have been using as a playground are not rocks after all…

Stuck in the mud

Dino Buddies

Eavesdropped – Too Faint

Eavesdropped is a drawing game for 1 or more.

You play it like this:

1. Listen out for snippets of conversation you hear as you go about your daily business – people overheard in a cafe, or a fragment of conversation in the street, that kind of thing.

2. Turn the first coherent comment you overhear into a picture.

3. Share the result. And you’re done!

This week –

Sketches from the beach

Here are a few sketches of people on the beach at Robin Hood’s Bay, where I’ve been staying. The weather across the week was changeable so the beach-goers ranged from sunbathers to determined British holidaymakers braving elements with ice-cream stubbornly in hand. The couple in deckchairs had even come equipped with umbrellas, which came out a couple of times. I really enjoyed sketching from life, trying to capture people before they moved on. There’s nothing like it for getting you to take notice of you surroundings.

Jack’s Favourite Thing

Here’s another original page from Jack’s Worry, before it was scanned in and the final text added.  This is from the opening pages of Jack doing his favourite thing – playing the trumpet. I used messy, punchy paint splats in brassy colours to show the music – that’s how I would imagine trumpet music would look if you could see it.

More of Jack’s Worry

Here’s an early colour sample from when I was designing the look of the characters for Jack’s Worry. In the end I did away with a mouth for the Worry and gave it more a look of anguished blankness.

But in any case, this is how it starts to look for Jack when it starts to get really worrying.

Jack’s Worry is published today!

Jack’s Worry, my second picture book as author/illustrator, is out today!  (in the US at least. Those in the UK will have to wait until early May…)

It’s somewhat of a landmark book for me as it’s the first one without the word ‘No’ in the title (see The Nowhere Box and Nobody’s Perfect).

Here’s what the reviews are saying:

“Zuppardi successfully describes a universal fear and provides a simple mind-set that even a preschooler can use to help overcome that fear.”
—School Library Journal

 
“Ideal antidote for anxious kids facing their own Worries.”
—Kirkus Reviews

 
“Performing in a first musical concert can be a nerve-wracking experience, as Zuppardi has artfully visualized…The acrylic-and-pencil illustrations truly transmit the amorphous nature of worrying, using convincing facial and body language, followed by huge happy smiles portraying a joyful resolution.”
—Booklist

 
“Scribbly pencils and expressive bursts of paint readily capture the big, intense emotions Jack is feeling.”
—Publishers Weekly