New pictures for the Nutcracker will be posted over the festive season. So why not stop by to take a look and see how I’m getting on with the new book? Have a lovely holiday meanwhile, and thanks for your friendship. X
Category: Ella Bella
This is a post category for posts about Ella Bella Ballerina and includes posts imported from the original Ella Bella Ballerina blog on Google Blogger.
Going Nutty
Here are a few preliminary sketches for Ella Bella Ballerina and the Nutcracker… to get you in a Christmassy mood!
Nutcrackers galore
Snow fell from the sky as I stepped from Edinburgh Waverley station and out onto Princes street, where a winter wonderland of fairground rides, ice skating and music welcomed me to Edinburgh this weekend past. I was there to launch the fantastic Art In Schools competition for the National Galleries of Scotland and their sponsor […]
Remembering Scheherazade
At last the big day arrived! Sinbad and Scheherazade with Robin Browning and the de Havilland Philharmonic Orchestra at the Weston Auditorium in Hatfield… and it whizzed by in a whirl of music and colour and hundreds of children jumping around to Rimsky-Korsakov! Other music was from Nielsen’s Aladdin suite; and my astonishing costume was […]
Ella Bella and Swan Lake… in Saffron Walden
Here are some pictures of the magical afternoon in Saffron Walden last month with the Uttlesforde orchestra. The programme included Peter and the Wolf, Bizet’s “Children’s Games” and ended with Swan Lake. As I was painting on a huge scale, I didn’t do separate pictures for Swan Lake as done in Hatfield and Cheltenham. This […]
Tales from the land of TinTin
With my head still spinning from the concert in Saffron Walden, I set off last Monday for four days in international schools in Brussels. Not having ever been before I was looking forward to the trip enormously (not least for the chocolates!). Plans were thwarted when an Albanian refugee jumped off my train and died. […]
Swan Lake in paperback!
Ella Bella Ballerina and Swan Lake has been out of stock since last Christmas when the hardback sold out. But from today, the paperback edition is available, so now there is no excuse to not introduce your children to Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece! And don’t forget: I’ll be illustrating the story, live on stage, with the Uttlesforde […]
I had expected – as October arrives – to be wrapped up in blankets in a freezing studio… Yet, an extraordinary heat wave has embraced the British Isles, an “Indian Summer”, predictably coinciding with the end of the (so called) Summer Holidays, and less predictably with the new Ella Bella book. And so I find […]
A real life Ella Bella!
I love coincedences. I suppose a little girl called Ella, being nick-named Ella Bella isn’t all that big a coincedence. Nor that she likes Princesses and Ballet. But when she goes to Ballet Classes held by a teacher called Miss Rosa… well, that really is extraordinary. Her mother emailed me with the story, and to […]
Sultanas for breakfast
I’m starting every day with a very healthy diet… of reading matter. Now that the Scheherazade concert is confirmed I am researching in earnest which stories by the Sultana Scheherazade I should tell around Rimsky-Korsakov’s music. I’ve chosen my story to match the third movement “The young prince and young princess”. It’s a fabulous tale, […]
