Adventures from the next book!

Sorry to have been away from blogging for so long, I have literally been snowed under creating my new book with Christine! Its very exciting and really quite different from Everything Alice, but Im afraid it will be a next summer when all is revealed so a bit of a wait. But for now I can divulge a few of our adventures over the last few weeks.

We began the shoot in a London studio, possibly on the hottest three days of the year. Here I had a studio set built along a traveling show theme, it looked fantastic! Here with photographer Verity Welstead, we not only photographed a baby ( my gorgeous nephew) but animals too! Both were fine...

It was so hot in the studio, we all felt like our brains were being a bit frazzled, and no matter how much we had the air conditioning on, it seemed to make no difference, if not worse! This was until the last day when we realised that we had had the heating on full blast!... Honestly.

Then it was off to the farm in Sussex. The farm we visited was just down the road from Christine's parents house and had a very traditional Victorian feel to it. Full of chickens, pigs, barking dogs and a Peacock with a serious bee in his bonnet with Verities car! It was very funny, we think it was because she could see her reflection in the black paint, it was a bit like two girls in a backstreet brawl, the Peacock was scratching and screeching and jumping on the cars bonnet!

Im going to conquer this beast!

I wonder if it can see me?

We had planned to shoot outside, but of course, this is when it rained, and rained, and rained.
Lights were rigged outside under umbrellas and wrapped in plastic bags, shone through the windows of outhouses to give the effect of daylight. Golf Umbrellas were held over doorways, to stop the sheet rain ruining any of the shots, and I believe it or not was in head to toe waterproofs, not a look I would generally go for... we were like three damp Doris's!

At least the ducks were loving it!

Trying to make it look sunny

A damp Chrissy...

Puddles, Puddles, Puddles!

Oh yes...

Protecting the props & camera from the sheet rain

Over the course of the few days we were at the farm, thankfully the weather did improve. And we did make some little orange friends along the way... well Verity did. We were determined to get a Chicken in at least one of our shots, and hilariously, Verity became known as the Chicken Catcher!

Christine bacame obsessed with developing the skill of folding the photographic reflectors, which quite honestly you do need a degree to do, watch the film below and you will see what I mean! Athough this film is a little unfair as I literally stoped fiming as she finally did it.

But the weather did finally get better.... And we made a few more friends along the way....

the biggest pig I have ever seen

okay yes, this is a bit scary!

Then it was time to pack up our cars and leave. We shot the remained of the book at my house, all with a bit of flu and sightly deaf after our extreme weather conditions.

I am now about to embark on the illustrations, namely the front cover, for the Frankfurt book Fair in October, and Christine has begun the graphic design work. We are both delighted with the photos and can wait to see it all come together!

The next book in the Everything series will be out next summer, published by Quadrille.

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