I first started drawing dragons during my time at Edinburgh Zoo, and used them as a vehicle to develop illustration techniques.
Dragon Tangle started out as a Dragon’s Year Calendar based on the medieval Book of Hours convention, where illustrations depict typical countryside activities associated with each month of the year.
After a suggestion by author Tania Connelly, where she described the chaos inflicted by a nor' west gale on a fair in Timaru, the book evolved into a day in the life of two dragons that go to a carnival.
Red Dragon
In the dragon’s castle
Going to the fair
Originally designed without words, Scholastic were reluctant to publish the book without text and I made the great mistake of using a rhyme, forcing the reader to fly past the very drawings I wanted them to linger on.
We tried to redress this in the paperback by placing a little quiz at the end of the book, encouraging readers to revisit the separate character stories told in the illustrations.
Dragon Tangle won the Choysa Book Award in 1990