In bed with Bette Davis, a box of ideas and a day of play

Story Street #15

Happy New Year! Here’s my linocut festive armadillo, hoping that 2024 will be a good one for you. If you have woken up thinking “Hmm, I’d love to have some creative fun this year”, why not sign up for my online comics class, starting on 10^th January?

Scroll down to see my Glastonbury-themed comic from last term’s Zine Swap…

So what are my plans for 2024? I’ve just had a look back at my post from this time last year – and my big plan was to start painting. Well, nothing ever goes quite as you expect it to. I got side-tracked by a massive mural and all sorts of other things – but at least I did a short oil painting course in 2023 and dug out my paints. I also found some fruitful subject matter in my Dad’s old shipyard photos, which I spent an intensive few weeks exploring through collage – I’m going to pick this project up again in paint during the coming year.

Early December seems AGES ago now, but thankyou to everyone who came along to the Putney School of Art Christmas fair – it was lovely to see you there. And thanks to all your purchases, I was able to give a big donation to Save the Children’s Gaza fund the next day. It was also on the following day that I began to cough, and shortly afterwards found myself in bed with a hot water bottle and my third bout of Covid.

Can you guess what my comfort-viewing was? You can’t beat a bit of Bette Davis! The first time I had The Virus, I watched both Paddington films back-to-back and cried pretty much from start to finish, so at least some things have improved.

Once I had clambered out of my sick bed, I got busy with the finishing touches on a chapter book I’ve been writing for about 5 years. It features Zines, protests, and this little character:

I laid out the first four chapters to page with all the drawings in place – it took me right back to my magazine days, doing layouts in Quark Xpress (I used to LOVE doing those). This time, I had to learn InDesign, and I watched multiple YouTube videos about how to do things like wrap text around an oddly shaped image.

I found one very useful video, but I had to watch it over and over again as the voiceover was in such a relaxing Scandinavian accent it kept putting me in a trance, then I instantly forgot where to find the Vector Mask layer in Photoshop. Definitely more than a touch of ‘accidental ASMR’.

The book is now all ready to send out on submission, so I am keeping my fingers crossed. I really enjoyed writing this story, and am already jotting down ideas for a follow-up…

Diving in

Now it’s time to dive back into my ideas box and come up with something new to develop. Here’s the box:

which is stuffed with little dog-eared scraps of paper:

I made it a few years ago when I heard that Allan Ahlberg has an ideas box, and that he once wrote the words ‘jolly’ and ‘postman’ on a scrap of paper after spotting a cheery whistling Royal Mail worker.

On school visits, I like to get children to guess how many years those words stayed in the box until Ahlberg fished them out and made the bestselling classic ‘The Jolly Postman’ (I’ll tell you the answer at the end of this newsletter). I really recommend making an ideas box – how about that for a 2024 project? It’s SO much better than a notebook, where things tend to get buried forever. You could decoupage it with your favourite Christmas cards. Now, time to dig in and get started…

Speaking of ideas, just before the end of term I sneaked in a return visit to Albermarle Primary School, where I had the absolute pleasure of reading all the stories the children had written following my visit a few weeks ago. There were so many lovely tales – and I was really touched when one girl gave me a book she had made specially for me to keep. Here’s the cover of ‘The Panda and The Drum’ – isn’t that a glorious illustration? I’m jealous!

A Day of Play

After Christmas I was feeling a bit stale, so I decided to treat myself to a day of play – getting out all my art materials and making marks with no specific outcome in mind.

I was really looking forward to it. But when the designated day arrived, I went to extreme lengths to put off getting started… urgent hoovering, pencil sharpening, and frantically hunting for that one special missing pen nib I had set my heart on using. Why was it so hard to start playing?

I was planning to make stencils and use my Panpastels, but I couldn’t find them anywhere, and my scalpels were all blunt. Restlessly rummaging for unfindable things did not put me in the right mood.

Then I decided to listen to ‘Sunday Feature’ on BBC Sounds about Maurice Sendak – as recommended in Fiona Woodcock’s excellent newsletter, The Woodcock Dispatch. It made my head burst with inspiration: I’m going to have to listen twice, it was SO rich and wonderful. And while I was listening to all these wise thoughts about creativity, my fingers were finally liberated to play.

I learned that Sendak used to do fantasy sketches to music when he wanted to get his imagination going – the idea was that he would finish drawing when the piece of music ended. I like that idea.

I used one of my Dad’s old brushes to make an inky swoosh with a mix of brown and blue fountain pen ink, then used two pen nibs and some bleach to add details. And somehow a series of strange landscapes populated by giant people and tiny ones emerged…and I had some delightful, purposeless fun!

The Sendak programme was so good that I had to keep stopping drawing to make notes. Jungian analyst Margaret Klenck said of him: “the books explode into him and he’s joyful, not scared – or if he’s scared, he gets over it. That’s what we have to do when we create. We have to not be afraid.”

It’s SO true.

Here’s another quote from the programme which resonated with me, from Improvisation teacher Viola Spolin:

“Through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves. It creates an explosion that frees us from handed-down frames of reference, memory choked with old facts and information, and undigested theories and techniques of other people’s findings.”

Let’s all say ‘no’ to undigested theories in 2024...

Online comics class

If you fancy doing some spontaneous visual storytelling this year, why not join me in my online comics class? The new term starts on Wednesday 10th January, so there is still time for you to sign up. You’ll get a live weekly dose of quirky prompts, cheery chat, regular feedback - and new friends all over the world. Take a look at the details here,  

and email me asap to secure your place. You can choose between 11-1 and 7-9pm (UK time), and the classes take place on Zoom. All this for only £164 for 10 weeks!

You’ll also be able to join in with this term’s postal Zine swap – it’s always a highlight. Last term the theme for the morning group was ‘Something Supposedly fun that I will never do again’ – and here’s the one I made in response, all about how I was finally cured of Glastonbury FOMO.

I’m still hoping to get hold of some tickets for Plastonbury 2024.

Froggy fun

It’s nearly a year since my funny non-fiction book So You Want To Be A Frog, illustrated by Neil Clark, was published by Walker Books. And at the end of the month I’ll be running a frog-themed session at Stepping into Stories, a brilliant children’s book festival in Herne Hill, in south London - there are LOTS of excellent speakers, so do check out the whole programme. Here’s the info about my event, which is on Wednesday 31st January 2024, 4-4.45pm (booking link below):

Have you ever wanted to leap twenty times your own body length? Can you drink through your skin? Or catch food with your tongue? Join author Jane Porter to learn all about frogs in a fun, interactive session where you will invent a new frog species and leave with your very own frog club badge.

Oh yes I did!

It was at Stepping into Stories three years ago that I first met the amazing storytelling Pantomime Dame Mama G – and I was thrilled to be invited by her to a Gala performance of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ at Stanley Arts just before Christmas. I haven’t been to a panto for as long as I can remember – and I loved it. Thankyou Mama G for making my face actually hurt with laughing so much! Here I am being totally out-sparkled by the cast of the show…

Find out more about Mama G here:

After all those sequins, it’s back to the usual dull grey mild weather of a London January, but I’m going to leave you with a little snowy drawing from my diary three years ago – the lockdown snowstorm. It was a happy day in a strange time…

Apologies for absence of fiddle news in this newsletter – normal service will be resumed soon. But don’t worry, I have been practising lots of tunes.

See you on 1^st Feb – I am looking forward to #HourlyComicsDay. And don’t forget to sign up to my weekly comics class if you’d like to have a comics day every single week.

Oh, and The Jolly Postman was in Allan Ahlberg’s ideas box for FIFTEEN YEARS, which drops many a jaw in a primary school classroom! If you have enjoyed this newsletter, do share with a friend:

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