I'm a big fan of Pullman's novels. I adore the trilogy, His Dark Materials, particularly the part where Lyra and Will have to leave their daemons to visit the land of the dead; that got me right in the gut. I got to see some of the film set for The Golden Compass on one of my morning coffee runs to Greenwich, when they were filming the banquet scenes in the Painted Hall. And on my first visit to David Fickling's office, I arrived in Oxford a few hours early so I could make a special trip to the Botanic Garden, where the trilogy ends. (I originally intended to visit the garden on Midsummer's Day, like in the book, but, well, I'm not a total fanatic, like those people who camp out in front of cinemas a week before a Star Wars film comes out.)
That bio I wrote for the DFC site, so long ago... I just saw it and realised I'd made a claim that I was going to post a new sketch on my blog every day. I made that pledge in art college, but I don't want to stop doing my own drawings. I'm pretty sure that keeping this blog and feeling sort of accountable to posting things regularly really made my work grow in the past couple years, and I've loved getting feedback on what I was doing. I've been very bad about it lately. I'm going to do my best to keep to that one-a-weekday promise, even if I don't always succeed!