Baby’s First Train Robbery
The final instalment of Jim Whalley and my Baby Frank books, published by Bloomsbury Children’s books in 2021. This time we’ve sent Baby Frank off on holiday, where he gets in a spot of steam-powered trouble with the law. This book was a joy to illustrate, drawing on my childhood memories of happy holidays on the north Norfolk coast. Created using gouache, pencil and Procreate for iPad.
The Peninsula Paris hotel commissioned me to make a Christmas card to send out to their clients during the 2020 covid shutdown. The brief was to ‘welcome guests back inside’, even though they couldn’t visit the hotel at the time. So we made a fun sort of dolls’ house design, with vignettes of Christmas life inside this iconic Paris hotel.
Part of an ongoing series of illustrations for a Boundless magazine diary column by the journalist Liz Fraser,
following her family’s move to Venice. Gouache, pencil and digital.
The Dinosaur Awards
The Dinosaur Awards: written by Barbara Taylor, illustrated by me, published in 2021 by Frances Lincoln books.
This was great fun to draw: a heavily-illustrated collection of ‘awards’ for dinosaurs, which required a balance of fun and scientific detail.
Drawn mostly on Procreate for iPad.
Illustrations for a Saga magazine feature about funny moments with grandkids. Gouache, ink and digital colouring, 2018
Colgate University alumni magazine commissioned me to illustrate a piece on students’ memories of their teachers.
The cover was drawn from a book club’s recollection of their English tutor who came to their reunion meet straight off a hiking holiday.
Stuff I’m doing in the real outside world
2020:
All events cancelled due to Coronavirus restrictions.
2019:
Wednesday 6th February: Bishops Stortford Book Awards, Baby’s First Bank Heist children’s event and signing.
Saturday 22nd June: Read bookshop, Holmfirth, Yorkshire. Baby’s First Jailbreak book launch. Reading, drawing lesson and game for children and drinks for the adults. Tickets £1 from here.
Tuesday 25th June: Ricoh Arena, Coventry Book Awards: Baby’s First Bank Heist signing.
Saturday 19th October: Goole, East Riding Festival of Words. Baby’s First Jailbreak reading, drawing lesson and game for children. For event info check here.
Sunday 20th October: Ilkley, Yorkshire. Ilkley Literature Festival. Baby’s First Jailbreak reading, drawing lesson and game for children. For event info check here.
2018:
Monday 23rd April: I’ll be giving a hands-on tutorial on how to make a comic using an iPad Pro at the Apple Store, Regent Street, London. Event starts at 6.30pm
Saturday 5th May: Free Comic Book Day signing and drawing at Gosh Comics, London with Guardian cartoonists Tom Gauld and Simone Lia
Saturday 30th June: Bradford Literary Festival, children’s event with Jim Whalley about Baby’s First Bank Heist, our new children’s book
Saturday 8th September, Royal Academy of Art, London: The art of the graphic novel – Stephen Collins and Isabel Greenberg in conversation with Rachel Cooke. Event info here.
Sunday 13th October: Ilkley Literature Festival. Baby’s First Bank Heist reading, drawing lesson and game for children. For event info check here.
2016:
7th May: Signing and drawing at Gosh! comics London with Tom Gauld, Simone Lia and Krent Able, 2pm-3pm
9th April – 25th July: Perth, Australia
Comic Tragics: the Exploding Language of Contemporary Comic Art – exhibition at Art Gallery of Western Australia. Originals from Gigantic Beard and my Guardian comics will be on display alongside work by Gabrielle Bell, Emma Talbot, Ander Nilsen, Dash Shaw and others.
28th January – 31st January: Angouleme Festival, France
I’ll be at the Editions Cambourakis table all weekend with copies of my new French comics collection (table N50, Le Nouveau Monde)
2015:
Sunday 4th October: ‘Alternate Worlds’ discussion, Royal Festival Hall, London. I’ll be talking with cartoonist Isabel Greenberg about how we make the fictional worlds of our comics. £8 adult ticket – details and booking info here.
22nd August: I’ll be selling my new comic Bad Likeness at Safari Festival, at Protein in east London: 31 New Inn Yard, London EC2A More details here.
20th and 21st June: I’ll be selling books and prints at ELCAF, Hackney (E8), London. More details here.
14th March: Warsaw, Poland – Interview talk at Klublokawiarnia Tam i z Powrotem (more info here)
14th March: Cracow, Poland – Wojewódzka Biblioteka Publiczna Comics Festival (signing and talk)
30th January – 1st February: Angouleme Festival, France – I’ll be at the Editions Cambourakis table (N45, Le Nouveau Monde)
2014
Saturday 6th – Sunday 7th December: Book signing in Milan, BAO Boutique, Via Vigevano 6, 4.30pm
Wednesday 19th November: Paris – BDNet comics shop, 26 Rue de Charonne, 75011. Signing from 5pm
14th-20th November: Colomiers BD festival in France from for the launch of Gigantic Beard (French edition). I’ll be at the Camourakis table for pretty much the whole weekend.
17th – 19th October: Kendal, Cumbria – Lakes International Comic Arts Festival. I’ll be taking part in a talk on humour in comics as well as selling stuff in the Clock Tower from the Jonathan Cape stall most of the weekend.
Saturday 11th October: New York Comicon – panel talk on Editorial cartooning with the New Yorker’s cartoon editor Bob Mankoff from 8pm.
Friday 10th October: Joint signing with Roman Muradov at Desert Island in Brooklyn, NY from 7pm-9pm
On Thursday 9th October: Launch for The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil US edition, published by Picador, at Bergen Street Comics in Brooklyn, New York, from 6.30pm
Tuesday 7th October: Manchester Literature Festival – talking graphic novels with Nick Hayes and drawing things in copies of Some Comics.
25th September (7pm) at Gosh Comics, London: a signing and launch of SOME COMICS BY STEPHEN COLLINS, a collection of my short comics old and unseen. Includes the best of the past five years of my editorial comics, as well as new and unseen work. Gosh have an exclusive bookplate edition on sale limited to 200 copies only, and will also be selling exclusive prints and displaying originals of my work.
30th April – 2nd May: Napoli Comicon, Italy – signing and selling at the Bao stall
1st April 2014: Hamburg, Germany – I’ll be doing a Q & A talk at the Hamburg Literaturhaus, from 7pm onwards
BABY’S FIRST JAILBREAK
Baby Frank’s second outing was published in 2019, documenting the further adventures of our well-intentioned infant recidivist. This time there’s a rival baby-led zoo in town – and Frank needs to spring the inmates to freedom! Published by Bloomsbury children’s books.
Since 2011 a large part of my life has been spent writing and drawing semi-topical comics for Guardian Weekend and Prospect. It sends me insane in on a weekly basis but I love it too. Mostly I don’t take on comics commissions outside these publications because I find them difficult and time-consuming to make. They’re basically miniature comedy sketches about whatever I think is ‘in the air’ at the time, and they never feature recurring characters or continuing plots. Sometimes I paint them but mostly I do ink and lettering on paper and then scan and colour digitally, for the sake of meeting deadlines. Some of these strips are collected in my book Some Comics By Stephen Collins (Jonathan Cape), and a selection of limited edition prints are available in my shop.
Jeff Bezos for Guardian Long Read. An article detailing Jeff Bezos’s future space ambitions for Amazon. Amazingly this depiction isn’t all that far from what the richest human in history actually wants to do with his ‘winnings’. Created in Procreate and Photoshop to a tight deadline.
