This month’s image for Arena’s 2012 Desktop Calendar is by Christopher Gibbs. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is from the book cover published by Gollancz.

We are thrilled to announce the arrival of the wonderful new book for young readers by Alex T Smith about Claude and his sidekick Sir Bobblysock, who’s walk in the park leads to a walk on a tightrope as he becomes the star of the show.

Alex and his publisher Hodder Children’s Books are holding an art competition for Claude fans to have the chance for their own illustration to appear in the next Claude book. You can read all about it on Alex’s brilliant blog, where you’ll find lots of other goodies, and gorgeous drawings mainly about dogs (and occasionally rabbits).

Poppy aged 6 has been lucky enough to have her artwork appear in the latest edition of Claude, you can see it here…

And this book available from all good booksellers, it’s had so many good reviews, here’s just a couple.

The Bookbag “The illustrations are wonderful … using the black, white and red colours. Claude and Sir Bobblysock are perfectly depicted throughout and I like all the quirky humans in the story too, sometimes complete with hairy legs! The artwork has a great style, lots of character and humour in the rather retro-looking pictures.”

Library Mice “The combination of Alex’s talent for writing as well as drawing, his quirky artwork,his retro sense of style and his witty sense of humour create a lovable hero and hugely entertaining and pacy stories that work well both as short stories for independent reading or as a fun read-loud.”

This month sees the release of Alex T Smith’s new book Ella, it starts…

Once upon a time, there was a ladybird called Ella.

The story actually started in Alex’s mind a few years ago on a romantic trip to Paris with his then fiancée (now wife), Jemma. He told the story to his editor at Scholastic and she loved it, so we signed contracts back in January 2008 to work on the picture book together. But it takes a long time for the process to happen and Alex worked through 9 draft versions of the text before everyone was happy with it. Drawing the character of Ella wasn’t easy either, he went through several design stages before she felt just right.

At first she had a little pillbox hat and heart shaped antennae

Then she was scribbly

Then she was painterly .... Then she changed shape

Then Alex got on with designing the whole book and started work on the roughs, this stage takes quite a long time and relies on the help of the designer, Emily who layed out the text on the pages for him.

The first three spreads first roughs

And after that stage, with comments collated, onto the exciting part – the colour artworks. Alex works digitally, firstly drawing and painting, scanning those into photoshop and adding texture, pattern and colour to create his storybook worlds. This one was hard, it’s set in Paris from a bugs eye point of view, so scale might be a problem.

Alex likes to do a sample colour spread to see how the colours will come together, and he chooses his palette.

Colour Rough First Artwork and Final Artwork

But sometimes things change right at the end.

The End Stage 1 & 2

Happily ever after

We like a nice romantic ending, our little ladybird Ella finds true love with Pierre, the famous artist spider. A Cinderella story with a difference, this would make a great Valentine’s gift and is available on Amazon to buy as a hardback or paperback, or from your local bookshop, where you’ll get a smile too.

Leading on from his Sherlock book cover illustrations for Radio Times, Christopher Gibbs has illustrated BBC Music Magazine’s January cover.

Chris is a regular contributor to the magazine, one of our favourite pieces being his cover illustration celebrating Handel’s 250th anniversary in 2009.

Chris was asked to adapt his recent cover image for the inside of the magazine for ‘The 50 Greatest Recordings Of All Time’. He had to work closely with the designer, Dav Ludford, as it was essential for the text to work well with the images.

Back in September 2011, we blogged about Frances Castle’s lovingly hand-crafted CD covers and limited edition books for her record label Clay Pipe Music and showcased images from her forthcoming release, Tyneham House.  Frances continues to win admirers including none other than Jarvis Cocker. He recently selected her as a future star in a 20th anniversary edition of Dazed & Confused. The magazine’s co-founder Rankin, photographed a series of 20 covers for the special edition featuring new portraits of 20 iconic cover stars from Dazed’s past and 2o rising stars chosen by each celebrity.

You can see Frances’ ‘Webisode’ interview here on Dazed TV.

The Fields Lie Sleeping Underneath by The Hardy Tree

Thalassing by duo Michael Tanner and Kerrie Robinson.

Photograph by Rankin

To celebrate the return of the popular BBC TV series Sherlock, Radio Times have teamed up with Penguin to offer 3 Arthur Conan Doyle classic books. Christopher Gibbs has illustrated the covers for A Scandal in Bohemia, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Final Problem and Other Stories.

If you’re interested in collecting the series then you’ll have to buy copies of this week’s Radio Times and the following 2 weeks to collect the tokens.

Best wishes for the New Year. ‘Camel Train‘ by Aleksei Bitskoff is January’s image from Arena’s beautiful 2012 desktop calendar. If you haven’t already received your very own calendar, we still have a few left so do contact us if you would like one. First come, first served.

We love this animated Christmas card from Wish Films, based on Simon Bartram’s Bob, The Man on the Moon. The animated card can be seen in this link.

One year left to wait for The Hobbit. John Howe is back home from New Zealand where he has been working with Alan Lee conceptualising the world of Middle Earth.

To all of our creative clients and dedicated artists, we would like to thank you for your support this year and we look forward to working with you again in 2012.

Thanks to Alex T Smith for his delightful Christmas illustration.