It always amazes me how people accept and understand the ‘trappings of authority,’ and by that I mean somebody with a badge, a clipboard, a white coat or a high–viz jacket. So I wanted to play with this notion by having one of the main characters, a rat, be the most awful obvious conman but keeps trying his luck with poor Edgar using a never-ending set of ludicrous accessories. I love how Edgar eventually decides he’s had enough and of course, manages to get his revenge as the rat’s greed is his downfall.

This was my very first book working digitally, and I’ve included some very, very early pieces that were exploring the media, making art but learning how to do it at the same time. I made literally hundreds of sketches and drawings for this book.  It was quite challenging, but enormously freeing too. You can see that Edgar started off very much like my own Edgar, but then I decided that the character needed to look a lot younger, so I changed his proportions to reflect that. I also had such fun making the rat’s expressions so incorrigible!

I also wanted Edith to be not sitting at home passively waiting for her brother to return, cause we girls aren’t into that. So Edith is renovating their house and is always busy. It was such fun designing both the characters, I’ve included some very early sketches and some very early pieces as I was teaching myself how to use all the different brushes and create my own textures.

I like to draw in sort pencil than scan in my artwork and digitise it. Then I colour it digitally but also use a lot of my own made patterns/textures.