People often ask this and it is such a difficult question to answer! This is largely because I'm never working on just one book at a time - for instance at the moment I'm working on my 'Cub's First Winter' book, plus I have a cover and spread to do for two new books which the publishers then take to the Frankfurt book fair - and if they go down well with other people there the whole book will then go ahead. Plus I'm designing this website, plus I have some pencil roughs to do for another upcoming book for a different publisher. Plus I only work part-time as I also look after my children, so you can see it's difficult to keep track of how long I'm spending on each project! In general though, for a 12 spread book I like to allow a couple of weeks to complete the pencil roughs and 2-3 months for the artwork, but as I say, I'll be doing other work at the same time - it's good to have different projects going on simultaneously as often there's waiting periods whilst the publisher looks over the roughs or artwork so far and comes back with any amendments or ideas.

As far as each piece is concerned, there really is no set time - each illustration just takes as long as it takes! I'm not a fan of labouring over each piece just for the sake of it though - often they come together very quickly indeed but of course some will take longer, needing tons of preparatory sketches, mock ups of different colour palettes, library loads of reference materials gathered etc. But as I say, most are not rushed but just naturally come together pretty quickly - a rough for a spread can be done in 30 minutes and the colour in 3 - 4 hours.