Mike Spoor

Mike has been illustrating since 1992 for dozens of major publishers worldwide, mainly in Children’s books but includes editorial, advertising, character development in licensing. He loves drawing humorous characterful depictions of people and animals with expressive faces and postures.

The origin of his styles lie in early inspiration during his childhood from moody landscapes of Northumberland, the Lakes and Wiltshire plus a contrasting sense of humour from the Goons and The Beano. At Art College in Cheltenham he studied Ceramics then qualified with a B.Ed and MA in Education, going on to teach Ceramics in schools and Art College in Kent until 1991, moving to Australia where he worked for the Flying Arts School then began illustrating full time. Returning to the UK with his enlarged family he continues to illustrate, teach, run workshops for schools, Skype sessions, and he practices working with a range of media in traditional, mixed, digital 2 and 3D and photography.

Titles include the million-seller Dinosaur Cove series, hundreds of other picture/story/trade books and awards include ‘Simultaneous Story Time’ , ‘Queensland picture book of the year ‘ and several nominations. He has appeared at literary festivals in Edinburgh, Hay, Oxford, Cambridge, Sofia International School (Bulgaria), Ipswich StoryArts ( Queensland), AllSaints (Perth) and Artist in Residencies at Dromkeen and Billanook Primary School, Melbourne.