Collage cauliflowers, cow parsley - and my Brief Encounter with AI

Story Street #7

I had an unsettling experience earlier this month - I was exposed to AI for the first time. You can read my comic diary entries about it below: but first, something much more reassuring…

This is my favourite time of year: the cow parsley is sprouting on the river banks, the young oak leaves are the best shade of green-gold, and I’ve been watching magpies build a nest in the tree outside my bedroom window with some unfeasibly long twigs. To celebrate the start of summer, here’s Dennis (above), the main character from my too-long-paused graphic novel The Ghost Carp – he’s wading in the river on a May morning, entranced by a grey wagtail.

The Ghost Carp is a re-telling of Moby Dick, set on the river Wandle, inspired by my 20 years of volunteering at river clean-ups. I’m releasing it in four parts, and it’s been an embarrassingly long time since part 2 was completed. But now I’ve got my inks out again and I’m enjoying getting back to this yarn – you can find out more about it here:

The river Wandle has been much in my mind lately, as the big mural I’ve been working on with local schools is gathering momentum. I’ve got several more workshops scheduled in May, and yesterday I joined the Spring Festival at Paradise Co-operative, a wonderful local community garden, and ran a collage workshop there to gather material for the project.

I had a succession of keen young collagists throughout the afternoon, as well as a visit from the Mayor of Wandsworth. Last time we met, he made a collage night club; this time he created a Matisse-influenced interpretation of Paradise Co-Op itself, with his favourite vegetable, a cauliflower, in the foreground. I really enjoyed the day and had some fascinating conversations with everyone who dropped by, about all sorts - from punk rock to the exact colour of turnips.

(By the way if you are not already a subscriber to this newsletter and you’re enjoying it, do subscribe here - and keeping reading, there’s much more below!)

A very big book

Back in March I visited Evelina Children’s Hospital and worked with children on the wards to make collages on a theme of ‘Growing’. Then during April I put all their work together in a giant book, which I then delivered to the school. Here’s me and Sinéad, the Primary Lead from Evelina, with the finished book (I bound it using Japanese stab binding - a little bit wonkily):

And here’s a glimpse of what’s inside - didn’t the children make some lovely artwork? I really enjoy this kind of collaborative project, and I am looking forward to going back to Evelina in June for some concertina book and comic workshops.

A very special publisher meeting

I had a treat earlier in the month – a visit to Walker Books to talk about a brand new collaboration with Jenni Desmond. I’ve loved Jenni’s art for a long time (we actually first met 15 years ago at Putney School of Art), so I was thrilled when she agreed to illustrate a new picture book story I’ve written. We went through Jenni’s initial character sketches with Editor Nic and Art Director Louise, and then looked at thumbnails for all the spreads. Jenni has already captured the sensitivity of the main character PERFECTLY.

The photo below shows the fun of chatting through the options, with many enjoyable side-excursions into the pros and cons of animal accessories, sleeping in hammocks and how long it takes to learn the ukulele (watch this space…).

I’m not going to say any more about the book yet, except that it’s the most autobiographical story I have ever written. I can’t wait to tell you more! But here’s a clue: I usually like to make a toy of the main character in my books - and for this one I am going to need LOTS of grey velvet…

You can watch me and Jenni chatting about her illustration process for a previous book, Fourteen Wolves, in this video:

I’ve mentioned before how much I love banners. A couple of weeks ago I dug out my climate change one and headed up to Westminster for ‘The Big One’ – a weekend of peaceful protest about this Government’s failure to respond fast enough or seriously enough to the climate emergency. It was a chilly rainy day, but that didn’t dampen spirits – here’s me with my slightly soggy banner…

And I loved seeing the creativity of other people in action:

A Very Brief Encounter

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about AI, and I had been letting it merrily breeze over the top of my head. But last month I got talking about it with my nephew, and he let me have a go on Chat-GPT (thanks Clem!). He’s from a family of academics, and they are all worried about the effect AI is already having on university education.

I started tentatively with a few easy questions, and Chat-GPT’s chirpy eagerness to please and humble apologies for getting things wrong started to make me believe in it as a sentient being. Then I got it to try some creative writing… you can see what happened in this extract from my comic diary…

Seconds later, there was a four-verse poem, in rhyme.

Then I tried giving it another story-writing challenge…

By this time I was starting to get really quite fond of it, when suddenly…

Have you tried Chat-GPT or Bard yet? The implications are HUGE for all of us in the creative field. And I haven’t even started to look at DALL-E, which does the same but with images… and I recently heard on the radio a new ‘Oasis’ track – created terrifyingly convincingly by AI.

I’d love to know what you think – let me know if you’ve tried AI yet in the comments. Are you worried about it too?

I’m going to end with a picture book recommendation: Silver Linings by Fiona Woodcock. I love Fiona’s style – she creates her work with many, many stencils then uses blow pens for a truly unique effect. Her latest book is all about how even optimists need cheering up sometimes – and gave me a great excuse to make paper boats with my weekly nursery class.

You can see me chatting to Fiona about her work process on a previous book here:

And if you’d like to buy a book, I’ve got a handy page on Bookshop.org with recommendations as well as my own books.

Finally, if you are anywhere near Derby, do come and join me on Saturday 27th May for a workshop at DEDA - part of Derby Book Festival. It’s free but you do need to book, using the link below. I am really looking forward to catching up with some very old friends there!

That’s all for now! See you on 1st June…