Hello!

Firstly, I am very sorry that it has been ages since I last posted - I was working very hard finishing the first year of my Animation MA at Central Saint Martins! It was brilliant and tiring and I am very pleased with the outcome of my first one minute short - which not only moves, but also looks somewhat like my illustration work, Joy! If you'd like to have a little look at it and see some of the process, look no further than here: http://joannaboyle.myblog.arts.ac.uk

Secondly, since I am now on my summer holidays until the end of September I have set myself a vast number of projects to work on! I am very excited to say that I will spend the next three months developing at least two new children's books!(three if I really get it together and work like a machine)
In the process of finishing these I will be uploading reams of character studies, storyboards, concept designs and diary-like posts describing how its all going. Look forward to it!

Also (as if that weren't enough), I have set myself a little mini "just for fun" project, which I have dubbed: Jo's Summer Water colour Challenge! Since finishing my college work I have spent the past couple of weeks re-aquainting myself with watercolours and have really enjoyed both the process as well as the result. I am not sure what I am aiming to achieve professionally with these watercolours, as they have a very different in look to my digital work. But I am still proud of them and wanted to post them on my blog. And so, I have set myself a challenge to take unused sketches from my old sketchbooks and bring them to life as watercolours! I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I am enjoying making them!

I miss cornwall....

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/38-reasons-you-need-to-go-to-cornwall

Hiya! 10 copies of my book are up for grabs at Goodreads - follow this link for a chance to win!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20656759-the-tip-tap-dancing-cat

Week 3 and 55 days until publication! (although my publisher has been hinting that it may be a bit sooner than that...) Enjoy this cat stolen from a page of my sketchbook!

And here is something new I've been working on! Its in early stages at the moment but I have high hopes for it!

  62 Days to Go!

      69 Days to GO!!!

It is only 69 days until my first book, The Tip Tap Dancing Cat is published - and it's about time for a really long post about it! It has been almost three years since I first thought up the story and I am  happy to be able to finally send it out into the world! The idea originally came to me while watching Strictly Come Dancing. I started drawing lots of dancing figures, which then became dancing cats. Drawing cats doing all sorts of crazy dance moves was so much fun I realised I had to think up a story for them! In the past couple of years the book has gone to 3 different book fairs and been reborn in various different styles, but plot wise it is almost exactly the same as it was the first time I drew it.

Recently I was rooting around in some old sketch books and found my first dummy book - it is just bits of paper scribbled on and stuck together with masking tape but I thought it would be fun to show!

                                                   

 

And here is what it looks like NOW!!!!

                                   

The Tip Tap Dancing Cat will be released on the 11th of April

and is already available to pre-order on the Waterstones website:

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/joanna+boyle/the+tip-tap+dancing+cat/10090966/

Many thanks to the lovely people of Pavilion Children's 

for all their hard work in bringing this book to life!

P.S. Although I am very cool and will NOT be counting down the days until the release date, I WILL be posting a cat sketch every week until then, just for the fun of it!