For my latest children’s book I have once again raided the archives for a story I wrote over 30 years ago.

When I first became a freelance writer/illustrator I was a stay-at-home Dad caring for my 4-year-old son, Dan. Back then, books about writing for children were few and far between, but I managed to find a couple of good ones which really inspired me. I set about jotting down ideas and sketching artwork. One of these stories I  resurrected and published last year as ‘Lucky Dips and Christmas Wishes’ and the blog I wrote about it can be found here.

In my archives I also found a story entitled ‘What’s In The Sack?’ about two robbers  called Smash and Grab, who are wrestling with a giant sack they have stolen. It was a pretty sketchy idea and only one early illustration that I made survives. The two robbers pictured here, counting their ill-gotten gains in a tavern, are very different from those in my updated story. I liked the idea of two useless robbers who fail in all their nefarious endeavours. I was keen, too, to include a large mysterious sack that keeps changing shape and size.

My preliminary sketches had the two robbers as male but I changed this to make one a feisty woman who is clearly the brains of the outfit.

I sketched out the story, both words and pictures, in a few hours and then revised it until I was happy with the way it panned out. Then came the big job – creating the artwork. I fancied a change of style so instead of using my usual watercolour wash over ink drawings I used some marker pens I had recently bought. I remember using these in my days working in advertising agencies and being quite pleased with the results. I found that colouring in using marker pens a smoother look to the illustrations, which I liked.

After scanning the images onto my laptop I was able to clean them up in Photoshop before making up the pages using InDesign. In the main, I was happy with my original sketches and the finished artwork reflects this.