Earlier this week I headed over to HarperCollins HQ to be interviewed by my brilliant editor Alice Blacker as part of a series of Facebook Live events. I love chatting to Alice so we had a lot of fun. I even taught her how to draw a hula-hooping dachshund.
See it in it's entirety below...
Look! I've done a painting, an actual painting using paint and everything, of a sausage dog dressed as David Bowie! It's called 'Doggy Stardust' (well, of course it is*) and you, YES YOU, can own it.
It's part of the Stars On Canvas 2016 auction which is raising money for Willow Foundation, which is a great charity providing special days to seriously ill young adults. The ten-day auction started yesterday and runs until 27 November. Click here to bid now. GOOD LUCK!
*I also considered "David Bow-wow-ie"
The brand new range of Odd Dog Out cards, gift wrap, notebooks, bags (and lots more cool stuff) is out now. I've made these in conjunction with my friends at Roger la Borde and they are available at all good boutique card shops, museums, posh shops like Liberty & nice garden centres. So, y'know, places like that. Keep an eye out for them. If you prefer to buy from the comfort of home, you can browse all the products on my site (click here) and order online.
Want to win a signed and personally dedicated copy of Odd Dog Out (I'll even draw a sausage dog in the outfit of your choice!)? Enter my twitter competition by Friday 11 November to be in with a chance...
My old website broke a month or two ago so I've built a new one. It features all of my book stuff (including some previously unseen bits and pieces), my cards and gift wrap, #PackedLunchPostIt, my limited edition print shop (included a special website-launch 20% discount), lots of free downloads for the kids, event info, FAQs, press cuttings and all of my latest news. And probably more stuff that I've forgotten to mention too. Have a browse at www.robbiddulph.com. Hope you like it
I had a great time this afternoon at the award ceremony for The Book People's Bedtime Story Competition this afternoon. It's a nationwide competition for 5-11 year-olds which aims to find the best young writer in the country. I was honoured to be asked to read 8 year-old Mae Osbourn's prize-winning story Harley Asks a Favour. It's astonishingly good. It's about a little dog who wants some help getting his frisbee down from a tree. I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more of young Mae in the future.
The ceremony was hosted by Kate Silverton and head judge Fearne Cotton was also there to present the prizes. I also got to meet fellow authors/illustrators Cressida Cowell, David Roberts, Neal Layton and Mark Walden. So, all in all, an inspiring and fun afternoon. Thanks very much to everyone at The Book People for putting on such a great event and to Jo Hardacre at HarperCollins for accompanying me.
Hurrah! The Grizzly Bear Who Lost His GRRRRR! is published in the US today by HarperCollins 🇺🇸🐻🏅🏅🏅❤️
Some special spookiness from my sketchbook to you...
Uncle Fred
Watercolour owl
The deep dark wood. With a cat in it.
Here are some pre-Halloween pumpkins I've just painted in my sketchbook.
It's half term! So here are a few bits and bobs to keep the kids busy for, oh, about three seconds. First up, can you spot the sausage among the sausage dogs? 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭
Next, can you (or your little ones) navigate the maze and help Odd Dog find herself?
This one is a bit trickier. Can you spot the 6 differences between these two cow dogs?
I've saved the hardest until the end. Can you spot the 12 seasonal words hidden somewhere within this illustration?
There you go. Hope you had fun :)
We are spending half-term in St Ives down in Cornwall and spotted Piers Torday's amazing book (sporting a cover designed by me) in the St Ives Bookseller on Fore Street. Great to see it in it's natural environment.
Excited to be able to (finally) show you all the cover of my fourth book, "Sunk!" - a pirate adventure for Penguin Blue. Publishes March 2017. 🐧☠️⚓️
There May Be A Castle by the brilliant Piers Torday is published today by Quercus. I was lucky enough to draw the cover and some bits and pieces inside too. It's SUCH a good book, highly recommended for children and adults alike.
Those of you who follow me on Instagram or Twitter will probably know that I draw a picture on a post-it note every day for my youngest daughter Poppy and put it in her lunchbox to brighten up her lunchtime. Well, a couple of weeks ago HarperCollins and Waterstones put on a small exhibition in London featuring 150 or so of the 600+ post-its that I have drawn over the last three years…
Amazingly, the Evening Standard covered it…
And so did BuzzFeed.
Since then it has gone crazy. I’ve been interviewed by ABC News, The Huffington Post and The Metro, and the notes have been featured on MarthaStewart.com, India Today, Bored Panda, Stuff, 360doc and countless other blogs and websites. What a strange experience it is to be involved with something that goes a bit viral. Pretty exciting though.
As the media buzz dies down you can rest assured the #PackedLunchPostIt notes will go on. Poppy is showing no signs of changing from packed-lunches to school dinners, despite my encouragement! You can keep up to date with the notes by checking out my daily posts on Twitter and Instagram.
Now, who fancies a sandwich?
Bit of news. I am very excited to be illustrating DJ Christian O'Connell's first children's book, Radio Boy, which is out early next year. And it's brilliant! ⚡️📻🎙
My third book is published in the UK today. Hope you and your little ones enjoy Odd Dog Out.
This is pretty amazing. The sister of a Telegraph journalist saw some of Poppy’s packed-lunch post-its on Twitter and told her about them, so she got in touch and asked if they could make a video. This is what they came up with. Cool, huh?
You can she lots more of the post-it notes themselves on Twitter here, and on Instagram here.
Hello! It’s been a while.
I haven’t posted anything for about 6 months (v naughty of me) so I thought I’d do a mother-of-all-updates update now to make up for it. Here’s everything that’s happened since (just before) Christmas…
*deep breath*
You’ll be relieved to hear that my youngest daughter Poppy’s Packed-Lunch Post-its are still going strong. In the build up to Christmas (I know, it’s seems like a lifetime ago) we had an advent theme. Here they all are…
January was spent artworking my third picture book, Odd Dog Out. This is my favourite bit of the book-making process. Just me in my little studio for a month painting away. Such fun. Here’s the cover…
and here are a few teasers…
HarperCollins also released the blurb for the interweb:
It’s a dog’s life in the big city…
For busy dogs
A busy day
Of busy work
And busy play…
But one dog doesn’t quite fit in. It’s lonely being the odd dog out, when all she wants to do is find her place in the world. She’s willing to go to the other side of the world to look for it… but it might take a different kind of journey for her to discover that maybe where she’s meant to be is right back where she started…
A gloriously illustrated story about leaving home and finding yourself, from the bestselling and award-winning Rob Biddulph, author of Blown Away and GRRRRR!
I will post some more teasers and updates as we get closer to publication day (August 24).
We lost a couple of my musical heroes early on in the year and as such I was moved to draw a couple of tribute sketches. First David Bowie…
and then Prince…
After Christmas, Poppy’s Packed-lunch Post-its took on a Star Wars theme (’cos we loved The Force Awakens so much)…
On January 29 my second picture book GRRRRR! was published in paperback. Here’s the cover complete with a sticker saying how ace I am (!)
And here’s the fab window display at Waterstones Darlington…
A couple of days later Blown Away was published as a board book. Perfect for little ones with sticky fingers. I am so pleased with this version - it looks so cute. As does my nephew Lewis in this picture…
The beginning of March saw another World Book Day. Here’s Fred from GRRRRR! doing his bit…
And here are Alex Tucker and Pearl MacMurray in their Fred Bear and Penguin Blue costumes…
March also saw GRRRRR! shortlisted for the Independent Book Week Book Award which is, obviously, very exciting.
It is, however, up against some extremely stiff competition so am certain it won’t win, but what an honour to be selected alongside the likes of Julia Donaldson, David Walliams and Judith Kerr…
In March I signed a new four book deal with HarperCollins. I really love working with the team who are the best in the business (they have just been named Children’s Publisher of the Year for the third year in a row to prove this point) so was absolutely thrilled to put pen to paper. Here’s the story in the Bookseller.
March also saw me leave my job as art director of the Observer Magazine to become a full-time author. It was a very bitter/sweet moment for me as I will really miss the people that I’ve worked with for the last nine years. On the other hand I’m hugely excited about my new adventure in the world of books. I feel very lucky to have this opportunity.
In April I read Blown Away and GRRRRR! via Skype to a group of children who live in Bangalore, India. My cousin Fran and her family are currently living out there (she has her own blog actually, click here to give it a read. It’s SO good) and she set the whole thing up. It worked really well and the kids were amazingly talented. All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable experience that I hope to repeat very soon. Maybe next time I can actually go out there in person! Here are a few pics…
Several international editions of my books have been published so far this year including the Norwegian version of Blown Away, and the Greek, Spanish, Catalan and French versions of GRRRRR!
I’ve made a couple of GRRRRR! birthday cards with the lovely people at Roger la Borde. Here they are. They’re foil-blocked too although you can’t see that in these pics. Available from all nice card shpps, garden centres, museums etc. There’s also a Father’s Day one but I’ll post that next week nearer the big day itself. I have also just finished a huge Odd Dog Out range for them. More of that later too…
My favourite show, Game of Thrones, returned to TV screens in April so I did some drawings of the penguins from Blown Away dressed as the characters. Couldn’t resist…
Meanwhile, I was still drawing a picture on a post-it note every day for Poppy. The current them is Disney films in chronological order. Here are the first 50…
I was very pleased to support the brilliant 3000 chairs project set up by Nicola Davies in response to the government’s decision not to allow lone refugee children a safe haven in the uk. Click here to learn more about the project. Here is my contribution…
I’ve also been eventing…
…getting some amazing letters from my readers…
…proofing Odd Dog Out…
….practising with my new water-colours…
….getting exciting about the upcoming theatrical adaptation of Blown Away…
…and doing several secret projects that I’m not allowed to tell you about yet…
So all in all, it’s been an extremely busy year so far. Hence no blog posts until now. Sorry that this one is such a monster, but at least I now feel up to date. Well done if you’ve made it this far!
You can always follow me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for slightly shorter updates in real time.
For now though… BYEEEEEE
Got a lovely surprise on my commute home last night when reading the Standard. Blown Away was included among the best books for young children in their London Life section. “Beautifully illustrated and wittily written” apparently. *Blushes*.
Read the whole thing here