Last minute changes

This Katie trail is a funny old thing. It has been surprisingly difficult to make look really fun. Catherine Raynor, who will be making a Sylvia the dragon trail, makes "fun" seem so effortless, whereas my illustrations suddenly seem hopelessly conservative. Anyway, I had a change of heart with the front cover and added a picture frame to make it more colourful and interesting (I hope).


But the inside trail was a real problem. One of the activities involves drawing the answers to clues in little picture frames. I drew them and drew them, and jumped up and down on them (I expect, if you look closely, you'll see the footprints!). But I could not get them right. They looked boring and ugly and graphically the page didn't work at all.

As I sketched them out for the umpteenth time I realised it was the quick drawings I liked. The careful pen-and-ink illustrations were too studied and worried... and dark and rigid. So I got out my son's colouring pencils and: hey presto! a solution.

The artwork arrived safely in Edinburgh so now I must just wait to see how it all comes together...