David We didn’t have a great deal of money when I was growing up and we didn’t have computer games or anything like that. But my mum was able to get hold of lots and lots and lots of blank paper from her workplace. So I just drew all of the time and yes I made comics and magazines for my brother and sister and friends. We had a comic club where a few kids and I would create comics together in my friend’s shed. It was a really great time and absolutely sparked the fire inside me to make this my actual job someday. I have no idea where most of these comics are now. There are probably some remnants of them in various attics, garden sheds and birds’ nests around Bedfordshire.

David Thank you, and that’s very kind of you to say so. A few years ago I made a conscious decision to stop trying to have a style and just draw naturally. I really went back to basics and drew how I used to draw when I was seven, making comics just for fun. It was really liberating. Before this, I found that trying too hard to define what my illustration style is was actually becoming pretty counter-productive. And even worse was when I was trying to draw in a similar way to other illustrators.

David When I gave myself permission to just be me and draw how I liked to draw, things started really happening with my career. Also, one thing I learned was that sometimes what you consider to be mistakes can actually be what other people like about your work. For example, I always hated the way I drew legs. I could never seem to get legs to look right. But then, when I started to be brave and put some of my drawings out into the world, I had a fair few comments from people saying how they loved the way I drew legs. They thought that they looked really unique.

So, maybe that’s what ‘style’ actually is: mistakes that other people find aesthetically pleasing.

David I started teaching pretty soon after graduating from Camberwell College of Art & Design. I thought it would be a good job to do for a while just to pay off some student debts and work out what I wanted to do with my life. But, I didn’t expect to enjoy teaching so much, and ended up staying in the job for nearly ten years. I think that when you teach, you automatically develop interpersonal skills as you come into contact with so many different people all of the time. You have to be compassionate, a good listener and have empathy to people as individuals. You also develop a strange confidence that you are forced to have when you are in charge of 20 to 30 people.

Even though I didn’t really realize it at the time, I guess that all of these things do go into my storytelling in one way or another.

I do try to keep teaching workshops every now and then. I like interacting with people and sharing my experiences. So much of what I do now I do on my own in my studio and it’s nice to reconnect with the human race through my teaching.

David Last year was absolutely crazy with lots of exciting projects being completed. And due to the way that the publishing industry works, it’s great to see so many of those projects hitting the shelves so many months after they were completed.

“Space Tortoise” and “Planet Awesome” (Or ‘Earth, My First 4.54 Billion Years’ in the US) were written by the authors Ross Montgomery and Stacy McAnulty respectively, and I had so much fun turning their words into pictures. I love working with authors and I really enjoy the challenge and responsibility of visualizing the worlds they create.

Also last year I collaborated with Andy Stanton on a picture book called “When I Was A Child.” That also comes out later this year and I can’t wait for people to see it. It’s really poetic and emotional, which is quite different from the anarchy of Andy’s previous books.

I’m also really excited that there will be a sequel to “The Bear & The Piano” out at the end of the year (although I think it will be published in America in 2019). It’s called “The Bear, The Piano, The Dog & The Fiddle.” It was really lovely going back and seeing what the Bear was up to now and looking at an interesting way to tell a new story about this character. Again, I’m really excited to hear what people think.

I’m happy to say that so far 2018 has been just as bonkers as last year was with projects, so there will also be a fair few books coming out in 2019 too. Which is phenomenal. I still can’t believe I get to do this for a living. It really is a joy.

David Yes, I read as much as I can. I’m a strong believer that you should always stay a student of your profession and I am always looking for new work to be inspired by. I really like feeling jealous of people. It spurs me on to be a better illustrator. I get so (happily) jealous of illustrators like Jon Klassen, Oliver Jeffers and Sean Tan. They are just such masters at telling stories through images.

Twitter and Instagram are essential tools at discovering new illustrators and some of my fairly recent discoveries are Karl James Mountford, Eric Fan and Lorena Alvarez (and many others). Their work is so easy to instantly fall in love with and gets my own creative juices going.

David When I decided that I was going to seriously pursue illustration as a career, I decided to challenge myself do a drawing a day for a year and put them online for people to critique and comment on. This was whilst I was still teaching full time, so I had to fit in each drawing around all of that as well as all the other things that happen to a person on a day to day basis throughout a year. I also got married during that year and all of these other crazy things. It was a good way to develop a discipline, and it gave me an opportunity to look at other techniques and materials for making illustrations. But the thing that I really wasn’t expecting was the degree to which the project attracted attention. This was a few years ago now and it was quite an unusual project for the time (whereas now it’s a bit more commonplace I suppose) and after a few weeks, it really started to take off. At the start of the year I probably had a few people like my mum and brother and a few friends following the project on Facebook. But by the end of the year I had people from Japan, America and all over the place following it and leaving nice comments on each day’s drawing. When I finished the year, I had 365 drawings and did some exhibitions with all of the drawings. The whole thing was a great experience and -unknowingly at the time- it got my work some great exposure that led to lots of cool new opportunities.

David One of the main thing’s that the ‘Drawing A Day’ project did show me is just how important that aspect of promotion is now to visual artists. The project did give me a bit of an unusual platform for my work. I always tell students that they should try and think of a unique way of showing your work. How is your work going to stand out in a very crowded industry where hundreds and thousands of people all want to do what you want to do? At the time ‘A Drawing A Day’ did that for me. It got me noticed by some publishing companies such as DC Thomas who gave me some of my first professional commissions.

Also, my agent actually found me on Twitter. I posted an image that got shared around a bit, and she happened to see it. From there, I was signed to The Bright Agency who have been very important to my career.

I know that it’s annoying sometimes, and remembering to keep track of it all can be frustrating, but social media has been incredibly helpful to me over the past few years.

David He has just turned six, which is a great age to be able to share things with him and run ideas by him. He is so honest and I can instantly tell if an idea is a hit or not. If he loses attention after a few minutes of me telling him a story idea, I know that I should probably scrap it.

The next book I am writing will be about aliens and U.F.O’s, and he is loving it so far. In fact, he is helping me design the aliens, which is great fun.

Yes, he likes drawing, and tries to get involved with what I do as much as possible. It is only recently that he has realized that his dad’s job is quite unusual. He doesn’t understand why other dads don’t have drawings of bears and giants up all over the walls of their houses.

David I would bloomin’ love to. There has been talk of me coming to visit and it would be great to do some book signings and maybe even some workshops. The problem is at the moment finding time to fit it in. There’s just so many exciting projects going on at the moment and everything is crazy. But yes, hopefully one day soon I can come over and high-five everyone.