So This is 2025...So Far
Life update.
I finally made it to Berwick-Upon-Tweed. As I sit and type this, I have been here two months today.
I said goodbye to Hampshire in the middle of October, suddenly a little sooner than I had planned, which included scrambling to find a different removal company that could do an earlier date at short notice, and then trying to find storage insurance, which turns out is slightly trickier if your stuff is going into wooden storage in a warehouse instead of metal shipping containers, and then trying to work out how me and some of my stuff were getting to Norfolk - as I don’t drive.
After around six weeks at my mum and dads in Norfolk, taking walks and eating far too much cake, things moved, or rather I did, although I didn’t know it was definitely going to happen until the day it happened – that wasn’t stressful at all!
On December 3rd my dad dropped my mum and me off at Peterborough station and we took a train to Berwick, still not having exchanged or completed on the house after having to wait for last minute confirmation that the boiler and electrics had been checked, it all finally happened while we were on the train.
Moving to a new place at the beginning of December is strange, there is a busy energy in the air with the run up to Christmas, normal life feels obscured somehow, like it is all a bit of a novelty. Everyone kept asking me if I had settled in, and I just kept replying, no, I just feel wonky – not like anything was wrong – just wonky, plus I think it can take quite a long time for a new place to feel like home, especially when you have only previously spent a total of 10 days there. Why do we always assume that we can settle somewhere immediately, why do we never allow ourselves to pause and take the time and space we deserve, to adjust?
I threw myself in emptying boxes, and trying to catch up on Christmas shopping (which I still haven’t completed). Days flew by, but in the first month and a half, the Christmas tree went up and went down again, I visited Alnmouth beach, and I’ve started to explore the area I now live. I walked down to and along Spittal beach, walked the Berwick walls several times, walked down to Berwick pier to see the lighthouse, and taken a walk along the river to find the remaining parts of Berwick castle. I’m finding Berwick wonderful, it has all of these small pockets of beauty and interest scattered around a busy, built up, little town that has so much character. I have to remind myself that this is still all new, that really I have barely been here any time at all. I am slowly starting to note the normal, the mundane, the everyday, like the noises my boiler makes, that there is a spot where I step on the floor in my bedroom and it makes one of the other upstairs doors open, that there is a man who walks his four tiny dogs twice a day, that around 3 pm someone with a red backpack drives by on a moped. All these things slowly contribute to things starting to feel less wonky and more settled, more like home.
Starting to draw and paint again has taken some time, Christmas and new year were distracting enough, but then when it comes to my workspace, whilst I’m not the tidiest person, I can struggle to work in complete clutter, and my new room is proving to be a challenge. I have finally managed to clear my table so I have started painting, I have even entered a competition, not to win, but to back myself as 2025 begins. I still have to find homes for so many things throughout the whole house, but it is slowly getting there, it feels like everything is, very slowly, getting there.
October 2021 - Hello Again & New Folksy & Society6 Products
It is hard to believe that is has almost been a year since my last blog post. My last post was full of Inktober 2020 illustrations, and, as I type this I’m around half way through my Inktober 2021 illustrations. In some ways it is like the last year didn’t happen, it has just simply vanished, and in other ways it has been a long, hard, slog. I think, as I reached the end of 2020, and we started the New Year under lots of COVID restrictions and going into another lockdown, I felt like everything was put on pause while we waited to get vaccinated. It felt long, and I simply didn’t feel like writing blog posts – I’m sure a lot of people felt the same way. Then, as we progressed further through the year I had to face some personal difficulties, and as I’m not someone who can act all cheery on the internet if I’m not actually feeling it, I didn’t say anything at all. Things still aren’t sorted for me personally, that’ll take some time, but regardless of how I’ve been feeling, one thing that hasn’t changed, is that I haven’t stopped drawing.
I’m one cover design away from my second ‘rough’ picture book dummy being finished (‘finished’ doesn’t mean full-colour spreads here – it is rough). It is a wordless story about a robot, aiming to encourage slightly older reluctant readers. I like the idea of a book being accessible to any (sighted in this case) person, even if they struggle to read. The structure of the narrative is slightly more complex than a traditional picture book, so it still feels like you are having to read and interpret the story - just without words. I wonder if I would be told it is too complex for younger readers? But, what I always find fascinating about little kids, is how often, when ‘they’ tell a story, there is very little structure, their stories jump around like dreams, and while I think structure in books is important, I’m wondering if kids would be as baffled by a more complex structure, with multiple characters, as adults would think, or would they just take it in their stride? I think it would be interesting in find out.
I’ve also recently reopened my Folksy shop and my Society 6 shop. My Folksy shop is currently only accessible to those in the UK (postage and tax to other countries has become pretty expensive for the time being) and it is selling some of my handmade polymer clay jewellery, (I’ve also made all the polymer clay beads used in the jewellery).
I am now also selling a small selection of greetings cards featuring 5 of my woodland animal illustrations. I can’t decide on my favourite – I love the squirrel’s tail, but the badger is so much fun and the mole looks so sweet! I’m really pleased with them all, so I’m planning on creating more illustrations using the same characters.
For anyone outside of the UK interested in my illustrations, there is a wider range of animal friends (10 characters) available in my Society 6 store on a variety of different products (if you click on a product, others products with the same design will show up at the bottom of that particular product page). People in the UK can purchase from Society 6 too, but watch out for postage and tax, I have no control over these things.
I hopefully won’t leave it another year before I post again, I plan to fill you in on a few things that happened in the year that wasn’t, and I’ll give you a rundown on Inktober 2021 once it is complete.
Take care and I’ll be back soon. x
April 2020 – Another month gone ... but where?!?
You would think that lockdown would result in the days dragging, but April seems to have gone by in a blur of sameness, so it was a bit of a surprise when I realised that it was the last day of the month and it hadn’t occurred to me to start a blog post.
The Guardian
So what has happened in April? Well I finished the week-long instagram illustration challenge “Dream Week”, you can find all of the illustrations posted on my instagram grid. It was good fun, I’d been desperate to include one of my Caran D’ache fluorescent dry highlighters in a palette, and the colours I chose for these drawings were such fun and a bit of a change for me. I do tend to choose bright colours, but there is still usually something quite traditional about the colours I select as a whole. Dream Week saw me using lots of pinks, reds and purples, with some neon yellow thrown in. The highlighter pencil obviously wasn’t ideal for illustration, its a little too waxy, but I’m a big believer in using any medium you have at hand to make art.
‘Little Mouse’ work-in-progress
I’m also continuing to create ‘Little Mouse’ illustrations for the Inktober52 art prompt challenge. I lost a little inspiration this month, and actually considered missing a week, as all the prompts were colours. Colour prompts are great if you are a traditional Inktober participant using black ink, as a pop of colour can be really effective, but if you are already using colour the prompt feels a bit vague. However, I’ve managed to create three illustrations prompted by a colour (well, almost - I should be finishing one now), and I think there will be a final colour prompt later today, so I’m feeling pretty pleased that I didn’t let myself get too despondent or give up.
A hand washing haiku
The other thing that happened in April was mini-Gish. I’ve mentioned Gish in this blog before, it is a week long, global scavenger hunt that takes place every summer. However, since lots of people are stuck at home, the organisers thought it would be fun to create a 24 hour version, to help raise money for charity and to give people something fun to look forward to. It was a lot of fun and it also taught me that the things I create really don’t have to be perfect. I tell myself this every time I play Gish, but I always find myself trying my very best, and sometimes restarting projects, and giving myself several attempts to ‘get it right’. If you have the luxury of a week, you can do that, but I found in 24 hours the first thing I created stuck, it didn’t matter if it was wonky, imperfect or laughable, because ultimately it didn’t matter, it was just a bit of fun, (I always tell myself this, but this was the first time I truly practised it)
Tim MInchin (supposedly) in pencil shavings
I completed 5 tasks – in the last week-long hunt I achieved 9 tasks – so it just goes to show how my approach to tasks has altered, it has left me wondering just how many I can finish in the summer hunt.
Briana Buckmaster and Kim Rhodes in toothpaste, on a bathroom mirror.
For those wondering I created:
• A haiku about hand washing to be put above the sink.
• A portrait of a favourite famous person created using some kind of household waste (I chose Tim Minchin in pencil shavings, he is pretty wonky but it was 3 am).
• A miniature portrait of someone famous who makes you smile, on a mirror, in toothpaste. I chose Kim Rhodes and Briana Buckmaster.
• A representation of your dream couch carved from a potato.
• A sun hat made from weeds.
I’ve also been trying not to spend too much money this month, I have mostly been putting it towards food parcels. I had two sent to my parents and was fortunate to be on a video chat when one of them arrived. It was really nice to see them get excited about the things they were pulling out of the box. I’m also quite weak-willed when it comes to making spontaneous Instagram purchases, I’ve really tried to resist, but my willpower failed me twice (almost three times, as I almost made another purchase yesterday but you had to pay by card and I couldn’t be bothered to go and fish it out).
I bought a Sofie Hagen ‘Self-Isolation Care Package’ bundle, which included her signed book, access to two of her shows online and a handwritten card. I love Sofie, she is smart, warm and funny, but also doesn’t take any crap! Obviously I haven’t read her book just yet, it has been added to my massive to-be-read pile.
I also bought a beautiful John Bloor print entitled ‘Thrift and Rocks’. John was having a sale on instagram so it seemed rude not to make a purchase. I’ve bought a print from him previously but it was for a gift, so it was really nice to buy a print I could keep for myself this time. You can find this print here.
That was all the excitement I experienced during April 2020, which considering how restricted we are, hasn’t been so bad. I definitely still feel very lucky. I’ll hopefully be back at the end of May for another update!
End of Year Update - 2018
I guess technically we aren’t quite at the end of the year, but lets face it, it is unlikely I’ll post again before we hit 2019!
What have I been up to since August? Well, as well as continuing with a few watercolour ink portraits, I visited the Lake District at the end of September for my birthday.
As usual we had a great time visiting Grasmere, Whinlatter and Coniston Water, and this time we finally made it to Buttermere too, (it was a gloriously sunny day!).
For my actual birthday we visited The Lake District Wildlife Park; that wasn’t gloriously sunny, it was grey, damp and drizzly, but it didn’t matter because we booked a Lemur Encounter - I highly recommend everyone stroking a lemur on their birthday!
Once we were back home I hit the ground running with Inktober. I failed miserably on my first attempt last year, but this time I was organised. I used Jake Parker’s Inktober prompts and sneakily completed my sketches before we went to the Lakes, so all I needed to do was trace and paint them… The only snag was that I would be starting a five week MATS course mid-October and I didn’t want to be trying to juggle both, so I traced and painted all 31 in the first eleven days of the month.
I tried to keep everything simple, so I stuck with the same little character, a witch called Hattie who is always getting things wrong. I hadn’t intended to stick with one character throughout the whole month initially but she appeared in the first sketch and it just seemed the most obvious thing to do after that - less time spent coming up with ideas, less time thinking about palette, less time wondering how to draw a panda juggling on broken bike etc. (although maybe I’ll do that next year). I think maybe there were memories of Mildred Hubble seeping out from my subconscious, I used to love the Worst Witch books!
During those eleven days I also decided to throw in another Gish challenge about fears, so I decided to create a two page comic strip on the subject. I haven’t actually done any kind of comic strip before, but after listening to Dan Berry’s ‘Make It Then Tell Everybody’ podcast I’ve been inspired and have become really curious about using it as a way of telling stories. It is definitely something I would like to look into and experiment with.
My last main task of the year was the five week ‘Make Art That Sells’, ‘Illustrating Children’s Books’ course. I’ve written a separate post about it which goes into more detail, but basically the course helps you develop a series of images that can be used in your portfolio to help pitch your illustration work. I guess the course is as intense as you make it, it is up to you how much work you do, but I tried really hard, getting up early, working all day and also a majority of evenings, other stuff like cleaning, some cooking and life in general got put on hold. There has been a lot of information to absorb, I need to go back through it all, but mostly I was surprised by how much I could produce in what was a fairly short space of time.
I’ve now caught up on all my Christmas stuff, I’ve tried my best to buy from as many local businesses and independent makers as possible - I love seeking out individual gifts that people may not have come across before. If I remember, I want to take pictures of the things I’ve bought so I can share a bunch of creators in a post in the new year, (I can’t do it now because it will spoil all the surprises). So until then, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!