Illustrate It Competition: The Lucky Book.

I recently entered my illustration for the Illustrate It competition. The competition was to illustrate two pages from selected text from The Lucky Book.
The competition has now gone to the voting stage and I really hope you will vote for mine!

London poem.

After the Bowie exhibition I felt inspired to write a little poem in the same way he creates his lyrics: by writing stuff and chopping it up and mixing it about. My writing isn't the best but I did have a lot of fun writing it and chopping and mixing it up. Hope you enjoy it:

We walked in sunny London
We smiled and stood.
We jumped on many trains,
friendly dark theatre, people.

Musicals in grass,
our feet hurt
We frowned
Love too much food.

We ate brilliant art,
and rolled in the terrifying art
and bounced till we got amazing sunburn.


ALSO...

We met and
saw
London.

Tuesday in London/ the Last Day in London.

On our last day in London we packed our bags and dumped them at Euston station while we enjoyed our last day.
We went to the V&A to get our tickets for the Bowie exhibition and then we went to the Borough Market and had a salted beef sandwich and sat in the sun for a while as we had achey feet and were feeling a bit grumpy from it (and we got a tad lost which didn't help!). After a yummy dinner we went to Brick Lane and got lost again as I was trying to find Atlantis... we were about to give up but eventually found the art shop and I got my favourite yellow ink and brown ink! Yey! I can do some painting now!

We then went to the Hummingbird Bakery and got some red velvet cupcakes before heading to the exhibition. When you head into the exhibition you are handed headphones attached to a little cassette thingy that would play different songs, or play people talking in the videos you passed throughout which was really cool. There were many outfits/costumes worn and designed by Bowie aswell as music sheets, hand written lyrics, videos and album artwork. I found it amazing that noone was dancing around! I was rocking side to side whilst listening to Starman. Then we stepped into a room with a video taking up all the walls of Bowie and lots of people were bobbing their heads to it which was lovely (it was also nice to have a little sit down in a dark room and listen to great music with people who love great music too!). If you live in London you should definitley go and see it! Especially since it's in such a lovely art gallery/museum with wonderful carved marble busts and statues!

PS. I got an awesome lightning bolt badge/brooch from the exhibition shop!

After the exhibition we sat outside and ate our yummy red velvet cakes and fed the crumbs to some cheeky pigeons. We then stocked up on water and other drinks (as it was boiling) and sat about in Soho. We nattered and people watched and talked to pigeons. It was really nice. We then got to the station and ate a cake from Patisserie Valerie. They do amazing cakes! I ate a lot of cake that day! We then got our train and listened to Queens of the Stone Age...

and that is the end of my amazing adventure in London... i'll be back soon! I PROMISE!

Monday in London.

On Monday we awoke early to make sure we got the train/bus on time to arrive at the Harry Potter Studio tour. The music from the films played through out and we got to see propers, costumers, creatures and set pieces. It was really magical ( I know, i'm lame!) and made me feel like a kid again. I must red the books again soon! We had some butter beer which was very sweet, and kinda like a coke float. I liked it! and it gave me a sugar boost, which is why i'm pulling such odd faces in some of the pictures! After the tour we headed to Honest Burger and had a yummy burger and cider.

We then wandered about Soho again and watched Les Miserables. The stage was amazing as the centre of it span round, so that when an actor was walking along it made it seem like they were actually going somewhere. Javert's suicide scene was fantastic aswell: a bridge lowered from the ceiling, as he sang he climbed over the edge and was stood on the ground/hanging on to the bridge and then the he let go and the bridge lifted back up to the ceiling and a light shone down and spun about looking like water. SO clever. I nearly cried a few times as the story and music is quite moving. We had very good seats with a great view and it was lovely and loud. I really recommend it!

Saturday and Sunday in London.

SUNDAY



On Saturday we went to the Borough Market where I ate the best Salted Beef Sandwich with mustard and pickles! It was amazing! I then ate a goats milk salted caramel ice cream! It was one of the best ice creams i've ever eaten! You should try their pistachio flavour aswell as it tastes just like them! Which was a lovely suprise as I have tried pistachio ice cream in the past and been disappointed. We bought some treats and drank sangria whilst sitting in the sun. Then we went to Soho and had a wander in some shops aswell as having a cold drink in the sun (again! It was SO warm and sunny!)and then we went to the Prince of Wales theatre to watch The Book of Mormon musical which was hilarious! After the musical we went to Hamleys and had a smoothie.

On Sunday we didn't really have anything planned, so we had breakfast at our hotel and decided to go to Hampstead Heath (close to the meat!). Whilst there we did a lot of sitting on benches, playing with dogs, laughing at dogs swimming, coming across a strange fellow, having a little ramble and a lie in the sun. We stupidly decided to go to Camden... I say stupidly because it was ridiculously hot and ridiculously busy but I had a giant piece of pepperoni pizza and a big churro with dulce de leche inside it! We got pooped on by some cheeky starlings and headed back to the hotel to watch some crap telly and drink cider. Rather a lovely weekend, wouldn't you say?

Friday in London.

We arrived in London late on Thursday, where we found our hotel and got settled in.
On Friday we got up early and headed to Camden, where we had breakfast at the Diner. I had the buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup and a hard shake - peanut butter and bourbon...so good! After a yummy breakfast we headed into the Camden Lock/markets where we nosied about the shops, ate churros with salted caramel and had a nice sit in the sun.

In the afternoon we met up with Viv and we went to Vauxhall Farm where I got to boop some pig noses and stroke rabbit feet, as well as gobble at a turkey and stroke some sheep heads. The pigs were my favourite by far! With their rubbery noses and grunting! I did a bit of drawing and then we went to Tate Britain. It was nice to wander about and look at some wonderful and terrifying (McDonald's Room) art. After the Tate we headed into Soho where we found Honest Burger and I must say, they do the BEST burgers...with red Leicester and an onion chutney. With the burger came chips with rosemary salt! I'd never tried such a tasty chip!

With full bellies we made our way over to Gosh Comics for Gary Northfield's comic book launch for Teenytinysaurs! I got my comic signed and I drank some beers and chatted with the super talented Fred Blunt who was a really nice chap who put up with my waffling! I then got to meet An Vrombaut who created 64 Zoo Lane (which I used to watch as a child with my nephew... I must admit that I still love it!) we had a nice chat about illustration and animation! It was really nice to meet her and all the other lovely people. Maybe next time i'll be braver and talk to more people. It also inspired me to kick my own bum into gear in regards to getting my work published as I felt a bit like the odd one out as pretty much everyone there was published!

Before we went back to the hotel I wanted to try and get a photo with Viv where it looked like we were floating (basically caught jumping)...but it didn't go quite to plan but we got a fun gif out of it! and a lovely gentleman complimented us on our jumping skills!