Tony De Saulles

I enjoy holding cartoon-illustration workshops and talk about working as a writer and an illustrator.

Encouraging young people to draw and write is tremendously rewarding for the artist and invaluable for the children. We all have a great time!

My workshops provide lots of hints and tips for aspiring writers and illustrators. We dip into the world of Horrible Science (which I’ve been illustrating for 20 years), the Bee Boy trilogy and other titles both fiction and non-fiction. If it’s of interest, I’m happy to talk about: the life of a writer/illustrator, the writing/illustrating process and illustrating on computers.

I have held workshops at The Edinburgh Book Festival, The Cheltenham Festival of Literature, The Bath Festival of Children’s Literature, The Hay Book Festival and many others around the country. If possible, I try to get parents to draw too. Grown-ups often seem hesitant at the start but by the end of a session they are usually laughing and enjoying the experience as much as their offspring.

Details

5 - 12 year olds (KS1 just watch while I draw/talk - KS2 draw with me)

Maximum of four (1 hour each) preferably with the first session mid morning if I need to drive any distance on the day

45 minutes to one hour + time for signing

Depending on my illustration workload, I’m happy to travel to most places if my expenses are met

Car @ 40 pence per mile but will sometimes take train if easier

Please email us for details

Yes

Tony De Saulles website

Fiction:
Bee Boy: Clash of the Killer Queens (Feb 2018)

Horrible Science:
SLIMY TIMELINE
THE DEEP DARK SEA and CRABS, DABS AND ROCKPOOLS both Orion Early Readers
Horrible Science HOUSE OF HORRORS (2013 winner of Blue Peter Best Book With Facts)
99 DEAD SNOWMEN (published by Headline)
and many others

Ilkley Book Festival 2013 
You can’t get too many Urghs and Yucks in a session with Tony de Saulles, illustrator of the hit book series, Horrible Science. Reviewer Jane Cameron was suitably disgusted.
What a fantastic art and science lesson I witnessed last weekend: a theatre hall packed with kids eagerly clutching clipboards and hanging onto Tony’s every word – or penstroke. The co-creator of the latest, Blue Peter award-winning book, House of Horrors, romped through his session – getting the children to do more drawings in 45 minutes than they’d probably done in a week.

He started out with a marvellous conjuring trick, in which the drawing of a fish apparently viewed through a porthole quickly transformed into a plate of fish and chips with the addition of some bubbles (peas), the seabed (chips) and a knife and fork.
It was a great start – the students weren’t going to play truant in this class. Not only were they listening and watching but also copying Tony’s artwork throughout.

Any parents under the misconception that copying was somehow cheating were soon put straight: “You may not think you are learning anything but every time you copy, you get better at drawing,” said Tony.

At the end of each drawing, his audience would hold up their efforts so everyone could see how individuality creeps into all creation, whether copied or not.

In no time at all, they were producing cartoons of something nasty: a toilet seat (with a face, of course). “Pee, poo and bacteria!” exclaimed Tony in answer to his own question about what’s in the 60,000 droplets that may land on your toothbrush when you flush the loo. The kids were in turn disgusted and delighted.

While drawing the life cycle of a fly feeding on a cowpat, they learned some of the language of cartoon: wiggly lines can mean hot or smelly, or both. Parallel lines denote movement. Floating eyebrows on bulbous eyes are cartoon musts.

Throughout his whistle-stop tour of graphic illustration, which climaxed in an image of a flea-infested slobbering dog, Tony deftly included memorable scientific information for the children.

The next day, my eight-year-old daughter earnestly explained to her Dad that it was not dust on people’s pillows that caused them to sneeze, nor even dust mites, it was dust mites’ poo. Well done Tony, I wish my lessons had been like that.

St. Edward’s Junior School, Cheltenham: 
Thank you so much for attending our Presentation day at St Edward’s Junior School. Your contribution was just perfect! It is not an easy feat to inform, educate and entertain an audience whose age ranges from grandparents to children in the Infant Department, but you certainly ‘pulled it off’! 

Whitchurch Primary School, Reading:
The staff and pupils of Whitchurch Primary would like to say a BIG thank you for the time and effort that you put in to our very successful Science Week. It was thoroughly enjoyed by all the children, staff and parents of the school. 

Youth Libraries Group:
Dear Tony, I would like to thank you on behalf of the YLG and all our day school delegates, for getting our Non Fiction course off to such a good start. You set a really good, informal tone for the day, and I was very intrigued by your approach to talking to children. 

Big Draw Weekend, Compton Verney:
I would like to take this opportunity in thanking you for your extremely hard and fantastic work as part of the Big Draw event at Compton Verney. Please keep us in mind for next year’s Big Draw as we would be very keen on running such a brilliant event again. 

From children:
Dear Tony, thank you so much for teaching me how to draw, I showed my mum my picture and she thought that I traced it. Megan. Year 5 

Thank you for visiting our school. It was unbelievely fun. I went home with my signed book and drew and drew and drew. Charlie 

Dear Tony De Saulles, thank you so much for coming to our school and showing us how to draw cartoons. It was my favourite part of discovery week. Molly 

Thank you for the amazing drawing workshop! I loved it. And thank you for the visit. I particularly enjoyed drawing the shark chasing the fish and you signing it! Aidan 
Dear Tony de Saulles, I would like to thank you for volunteering to come to our school to show us how to draw Horrible Science pictures. Since the lesson I’ve not been able to stop drawing. Oliver. Year 6

Dear Mr De Saulles, I am writing to thank you for coming in and sharing your fantastic gory, funny pictures with us. You have made me soooooo interested in your drawing we copied that I haven’t stopped copying them at home. 

Tony de Saulles Amazon website

Awards:
Blue Peter Prize for Best Book With Facts 2013 (House of Horrors)
The Thomson Reuters Award for Communicating Science 2010 (Wasted World)
The Junior Aventis Science Book Prize 2004 (Really Rotten Experiments)
The Rhone-Poulenc Junior Science Book Prize 1997 (Blood, Bones and Body Bits + Ugly Bugs)