Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Day 66: Drawing a viking with Cressida Cowell


Check Cressida Cowell's How to Draw... a viking.

Cressida was born on 15th April 1966 in London.
She still lives in London. She is married to Simon Cowell (not THAT Simon Cowell), and she has three children, Maisie (12), Clemmie (10) and Alexander (7).
She studied at Oxford University, (English), and St Martin’s and Brighton University (Illustration).

Books & Ideas

Cressida has been writing books since she was 9 years old, but the first book she had published was in 1999, when she was 33. It was called Little Bo Peep’s Library Book, and it was a picture book.
Cressida illustrates the Hiccup books herself, but she also writes picture books that other people illustrate. She has had 20 books published, 10 Hiccup fiction titles, and ten picture books, including the Emily Brown books, illustrated by Neal Layton.

She has just finished writing the tenth Hiccup book, How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel. There will be AT LEAST eleven books in the series. (She is a little nervous about saying exactly how many, because she keeps finding that there is just one more to write...)
She got the idea for the Hiccup books from childhood holidays spent off the west coast of Scotland. 

She doesn’t quite how she thinks of the funny names for the characters. She tries to make the names sound like the character of the person they are describing, so a rather unpleasant, stupid person will be called ‘Dogsbreath the Duhbrain’, for example. The Vikings really did have very descriptive names, such as King Magnus Barelegs, Olav the Stout, Eric the Red.

Remember to visit Cressida's Web site to find out more about her and her work!

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