Matt Buckingham has illustrated the new Fairy Tale Twists series of books written by Katie Dale. The Not-So-Evil Stepmother and The Wickedest Witch are published this month by Orchard Books. The rhyming story takes a familiar fairytale character and reveals their version of events – as you’ve never seen them before! Each book is packed full of Matt’s hilarious illustrations, here are just a few to be getting on with.

In fairy tales we often find
that stepmothers are so unkind.
But listen, folks, that’s just not true -
here’s a different tale for you…

The Wickedest Witch
The Wicked Witch is scary, right?
She’ll wave her wand, give you a fright?
Don’t be so speedy to agree -
she’s pretty cool…just wait and see!

Jonny Duddle illustrated the fantastic, action packed cover and insides for Will Gallows & The Thunder Dragon’s Roar, published this month. Following on from the success of the first book by Derek Keilty, this tale continues the adventures of space cowboy, Will, who risks life and limb as he does battle with the deadly Thunder Dragon to uncover a sinister plot.

Published by Andersen Press

Arena’s latest recruit, Euan Cook, has been creating some wonderful new samples as well as developing ideas for a short comic. Explore more of his work on his new online portfolio and here is some bonus material taken straight from his sketchbook.

Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us at Arena HQ. Here is Christopher Gibbs’ Valentine Masque.

Marvellous news has just reached Arena HQ, Jonny Duddle’s second picture book The Pirates Next Door (Templar Publishing), has been shortlisted for the Picture Book category in this year’s Waterstones Children’s Book Prize.  Now in its eighth year, the prize champions new and emerging talent in children’s writing.

All winners will be announced on 28th March so watch this space and if you haven’t already bought yourself a copy of the book, the first edition hard back is sold out but the paperback is now available from Waterstones.

Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2012 shortlist includes Claude In The City (Hodder), by  Alex T Smith, selected for the Fiction 5-12 category. Alex’s charming story about the adventures of a little dog called Claude and his friend, Sir Bobblysock, was also recommended in the Richard & Judy’s Children’s Book Club.

All winners will be announced on 28th March at the award ceremony at Waterstones’ flagship shop in Piccadilly – we can’t wait.

We have updated Kristyna Litten’s online portfolio to keep up with her ever expanding range of new samples and commissions.

Recently she has illustrated a fiction cover for Egmont, two non-fiction 3-D books for Walker Books and editorial pieces for National Geographic Traveller. Here’s a taster, but don’t forget to look more closely at her portfolio which also includes illustrations from her debut picture book, Chicken’s Can’t See In The Dark, published in June 2012.

Uniforms at work

FAMILY SURVIVAL GUIDE for National Geographic Traveller

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.