A COUPLE who accidentally shot to global fame for drawing their own World Cup sticker book with colouring pencils are at it again.

Only this time Alex and Sian Pratchett are penning Panini-style portraits to accompany the biggest contest in the country – the General Election.

But with their subjects “overpaid” and “not doing proper jobs”, the Pratchetts joked that the two projects are not all that different.

The couple from Iffley Road were egged on to take the new challenge by some of the 2,300 Twitter followers they accrued during the World Cup.

Mr Pratchett, 31, said: “We were watching the first election debate on TV, I was using Twitter and someone tweeted me saying ‘you should draw these guys’.

“I was looking at Farage with his neck flapping away and I thought ‘I could do that’.

“They do have some pretty exciting faces and if I was being really mean I could say they don’t have proper jobs and they get paid way too much.”

But he added: “I’m not cynical enough to say that.”

So they once again got out their colouring pencils and set to work.

Mr Pratchett, who manages Scribbler Cards on New Inn Hall Street, said: “We shared them on Facebook and got a lot of friends laughing at it.”

So far the couple have drawn some arresting portraits of the seven party leaders who joined the big debate including Cameron, Miliband and Clegg.

But they have also widened their net to capture the likeness of prominent party sidekicks like Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls and former prime minister Tony Blair.

Mr Pratchett said: “Ed Balls has got a big face which I thought would be quite easy to draw – but my wife thought he looked like Toad of Toad Hall.”

The couple’s quirky pictures were first catapulted to international notoriety when they started drawing their own World Cup sticker book last summer.

They had originally planned to auction the sticker book but ended up too attached to their handiwork.

Instead they have created a large vinyl display of some of the stickers, which they hope will be displayed at Modern Art Oxford in the next few weeks.

There are currently no set plans for the new leaders’ pictures, although the couple were keen to put them on a new blog.

Mr Pratchett said it had been a childhood dream to complete a Panini sticker book.

But when he told his wife he planned to spend their limited budget on hundreds of stickers, she suggested they draw their own.

Oxford Mail:

  • Husband and wife Alex and Sian Pratchett with their World Cup sticker book

Mr Pratchett, who like his wife is originally from South Wales, said the charm of the portraits had been the questionable talent behind them, and he said the couple had strived to keep that style in their latest works.

He said: “The whole point of the World Cup drawings was essentially that they weren’t any good.

“We’ve been looking for another project ever since and we thought this might just fit the bill.”

The couple did not reveal who they were planning to vote for.