UUGGHH!

by Claudia Boldt

Slug is sad because no-one thinks he is beautiful. Then he meets Spider who knows that she is beautiful, no matter what anyone else says. Slug decides to ask others what they think is beautiful and gets more and more confused – everybody says something different, from poo to the postman. Finally, Slug and Spider find a new way to look at the beautiful world they live in.

The fascinatingly retro-styled illustrations in this book represent a fabulous world where Slug and his friends explore the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and show us that even the smallest creatures are lovely.

Publisher: Child's Play

Claudia Boldt

Claudia Boldt was born in Germany but now lives in London. She attended the Glasgow School of Art, and then Kingston University, London, where she graduated with her Masters in Illustration in 2007 - the same year she founded Cloud Cuckoo Studio with fellow illustrator Katharina Koall in London's East End.

Already with two books to her name, UUGGHH! and Star Gazers, Skyscrapers & Extraordinary Sausages (both Child’s Play), Claudia loves to write and illustrate fun and slightly absurd comedies for four-year-olds, which are as equally entertaining for adults.

Cloud Cuckoo Studio clients include The Savoy Hotel and Waterstone's Books Quarterly. Claudia's work has been exhibited in London, Zürich and Berlin and has been selected to show at the illustrators exhibition in Bologna.

She received a Booktrust Best New Illustrators Award in 2011.

Illustration Technique

Claudia studied product and graphic design and started illustrating during her Illustration MA at Kingston where she started her first picture book, Star Gazers. She began with screen printing and linocuts as she liked the texture but couldn’t get the effect she wanted.

She then found a way to combine indian inks and line drawing by scanning them into the computer and building up the layers like a collage in Photoshop and adding colour. She said that you can try things out on the computer more easily but likes the edges of her drawings to be natural so doesn’t cut them out on the computer. She often has 20 versions of an illustration after this process and has to decide on which is the best one.

Claudia Boldt