If you were creating a world of your own, what would it look like? Would you build your house out of brick - or out of jelly? Would it be on the ground or in a tree? Would your shops sell envelopes and sweets - or shoes for superheroes? Would you ride a train to town, or a dinosaur?Taking the reader on an extraordinary visual journey through her imaginative world, award-winning illustrator, Laura Carlin, inspires children to look, draw and make - first from life, and then from the imagination through sharing her own personal thought-processes and drawing techniques. Using the narrative of a day - from getting up in the morning, to going to bed at night - Laura shows children how she records every day things and events on paper, and then improves them through her wild and witty imagination - helping children form a visual manifesto of their own world, and enthusing them to find enjoyment and entertainment in drawing and creating with the most everyday objects.
Laura Carlin studied at the Royal College of Art, and won several awards including the Quentin Blake Award two years running, and the National Magazine Award. She also received the Uniqlo Fashion Illustration Award in both 2003 and 2004, which enabled her to travel to Shanghai and Tokyo. A prolific drawer and painter, she also works on ceramics. Laura currently works in an advisory role with the development of Quentin Blake's House of Illustration. She is also a regular visiting lecturer at the University for the Creative Arts at Maidstone. As a commercial illustrator, Laura's work has featured in publications such as Vogue, The New Scientist, The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph and The Independent. She has also illustrated several children's books and was voted in 2009 an ADC Young Gun, one of the 50 most influential creatives under 30 years of age. She is also the winner of the prestigious 2011 V&A Illustration Award.