So this post is a little overdue (it's been a very hectic and exciting few months!) but I wanted to finally show you some of the portraits I drew when I was booked for live illustration at House of Fraser Manchester last March!
The event was to celebrate Mother's Day, so shoppers could get their own bespoke live portrait (or portrait from a photo!) to take home when they bought a frame from the homeware department.
I had lots of young families having portraits painted for their mums, gifts for friends and even the fabulous Doris who was celebrating her 80th birthday that day and wanted a special portrait (how amazing is she?!).
I love creating live illustration instore, it's definitely hard work, but it's amazing to see how thrilled people are with their portraits, and brilliant to see a unique selling point for instore shopping! I assigned 15 minutes to each portrait, and blocked it out into slots to make it manageable throughout the day (six hours of drawing is intense!). I love the challenge of drawing a sitter when they're right in front of me, it's a great opportunity to hear interesting stories, meet new people, and get in some good life drawing practice!
Huge thanks to LiL Collective for bringing me on board! Hopefully I'll have some new live illustration dates for you soon, or if you'd like a portrait yourself head to my family portrait Etsy listing!
Hey everyone! So the past few days have been pretty stressful, as after my Windows PC updated, my pen tool in Photoshop CC would constantly pan the page instead of drawing a line. With multiple book deadlines coming up, and Photoshop completely unusable for digital drawing, it wasn't exactly great timing! I trawled the internet for apparent fixes, spoke to both Microsoft and Adobe, and found a huge amount of conflicting information on forums and help centres "add this file to this folder", "roll back the update"...it was a bog of information, so after some serious trawling, I wanted to share the way I fixed it in a few clear steps to help any other digital artists. To fix the Window's Ink pen tool pan glitch for Photoshop: 1 - In your computer's search bar type the letters ' cmd ' 2 - Right click on the 'Command Prompt' app and select 'Run As Administrator' 3 - On the black and white text input box type: reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Pen /v LegacyPenInteractionModel /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
4 - Press Enter
5 - Test in Photoshop (it worked for me straight away), or restart your computer. That should hopefully fix it! I'm finally back to illustrating, and I'm relieved to see I haven't lost pressure sensitivity with my pen (as some of the other fixes mentioned might happen). It is pretty disappointing to read Microsoft's statements on the issue, which seems to completely gloss over the fact that an awful lot of people use pen input as professional creatives and not just to pan around web pages...but hopefully with these fixes we'll all be back on track creating amazing digital artwork! You can find this fix on Microsoft's answer page here.
March was a busy month for me, lots of deadlines, lots of places to go - but I was thrilled to finally take part in Joanne Hawker'sMarch Meet The Maker project on Instagram! Jo's a schoolfriend of mine, we grew up together and were berated by the same graphic design teacher for being silly together in class - so it's been amazing to see her project connecting so many creative people across the world who are just so passionate about making!
March Meet The Maker is basically a month of prompts for people (generally Etsy sellers) to reveal the person behind the products and let their followers know a little more about them, their creations, their passions and work environment! I took part in as many days as I could (it was a little tricky to do every day, especially with visits to Cornwall to see my Granny), and had such wonderful feedback.
It often feels easier for me to fill my Instagram feed with commissions, scrappy illustrations and prints, so it was quite a change for me to be like "Okay, here's my workspace! Here's how I create these images! Here's the park I love walking to on my break!" and get such insight into how so many other creatives go about their day to days.
It was brilliant to scroll through the hashtag and discover so many new talented creative people, and it really drove home the strength of the creative community. Here's to makers!
I’m so thrilled to finally show you this very meaningful project I’ve been working on: 'My Anxiety Handbook'!
Written by psychologists Sue Knowles, Bridie Gallagher, and co-authored with Phoebe McEwen, the book guides young people aged 12-18 through their issues with anxiety in a warm and light-hearted way. I was so thrilled to have been asked to illustrate the book with relatable, character-based spot illustrations - especially as I have suffered from anxiety myself.
The book delves into the psychology behind anxiety, as well as promoting useful self-care steps, a journal section, and lots of really insightful personal experiences with anxiety written by a huge range of people – from young people at school, to England footballers, and, well, me!
It was incredibly nerve-wracking to fully share my experiences with anxiety or the first time, but it was therapeutic to write it all out, contained, and in such a safe and welcoming place as this book. It would definitely have been reassuring to read something like this when I was little, so I hope in sharing my experience I can help someone else.
The illustrations were lovely to draw. I’ve been doing a lot of work for school-aged children and young adults lately, and this book was a great chance to create a set of characters to reflect the fact that anxiety can affect anyone – no matter what they say, what they look like, or how they present themselves.
The spot illustrations were all created using brush and ink linework, with digital shading – keeping them simple, with a focus on relatability - presenting the text in an engaging and illuminating way! I was also asked to create hand-lettering for the journal section in the back, with titles guiding readers to note down their experiences and help unravel and identify the different strands of their anxiety!
It's a really special book, and it was an honour to work on it. If you fancy a copy you can pick it up online , in bookshops like Waterstones, or hopefully, in your local library!
Hourly Comic Day 2018 was last week, and yup, I'd forgotten what a toughie it is from last year (seriously, I had to take a day off afterwards to recuperate!) - but as with so many of the illustration challenges I set myself, it was incredibly rewarding! Hourly Comic Day challenges creators to post one comic for each hour of their day, in real time, on February 1st. Think of it as a kind of diary comic, an insight into that artist's behind-the-scenes, and if you follow the hashtag #HourlyComicDay, a glimpse into the different lives of creators across the world.
I love it! Sure, you let yourself in for around 16-18 hours of almost constant drawing (or at least being "on it" thinking and preparing the next comic), but it's pretty cathartic to take that time to focus inwards on your life, what you like to draw, and your thought processes. Hey, it's even nice just to be able to look back at what on earth I did on a particular day too! Last year I collated my Hourly Comic Day strips into a book called 'Drawn Until Dusk', and I've had an incredible response to that through selling it at comic festivals up and down the country, as well as through my Etsy shop. This year I wanted to introduce a bit of colour (yup, I like to make things incrementally harder for myself) and roll with a slightly sketchier, looser style. This time I was drawing directly on-screen, rather than via a graphics tablet, and my god did my hands thank me for it (you might remember the Wacom-claw panel from last year?). With my new-found portability I actually managed to get out and about to draw the comics this time, and set-up shop in a local café or nestled on my sofa instead of just sticking to my desk. It's really interesting seeing how the comics turned out, I don't know if other artists do, but I certainly didn't have any kind of plan of what the comics would be like, or even what I'd do on the day content-wise. I kind of like that spontaneity, and that risk that every panel might just be me sat at my computer forced me to get out of the box, and, well, the house, and brought forth new ideas.
A lot of the comics seem to feature odd little moments between me and my partner, or small introspections. I love seeing that what ended up being in the comics is such a reflection on my world and my personality - I guess that makes sense, I was constantly focusing on the small moments I noticed throughout my day. It's been lovely to hear how relatable and honest people have found these.
Trees and nature also seem to feature heavily! I think that's mostly down to the fact I spend so much of my time wandering through nearby parks and forests, and they're definitely one of my favourite things to draw! Okay, yes, trees are pretty easy to draw quickly (and that provided some relief!), but it was great to be able to indulge myself in experimenting with really simple mark making and colour to bring a sense of atmosphere and environment. I'm usually pretty perfectionist, so it was kind of liberating to be forced to let go of that through facing thirteen one-hour deadlines throughout the day!
Thanks so much to everyone who liked, commented, re-posted and sent me messages of support on the day - especially from the other artists taking part (seriously, go and look through the hashtag, there's so many amazing threads!). You can find my full series on the Twitter thread, or on Instagram!
So, today, I'm working a exciting new comic project - so, if you liked what I did in one day, I can't wait to show you this! 💕
Comic festival season 2017 is finally winding up for me now, and I have to say it's been my busiest year ever! It's been brilliant to spend time getting to know so many new comic-industry faces, and an honour to have been invited as a guest to so many of the festivals this year. Everyone's been so incredibly welcoming!
In September I popped over to Leeds for Thought Bubble Comic Festival. Thought Bubble is always a special one, it was my very first comics convention a few years back, I created the festival artwork last year, and it's always brimming with such friendly creators and enthusiastic attendees! This year the convention moved from The Royal Armouries into the city centre, with the convention spread over four venues centred around the town hall and millenium square. The new location definitely gave the festival a different feel: it was by far the busiest convention I've ever had, but there were a few sleepy-looking people complaining about the security queues and distances between tents (a little extra walking never hurt, right?).
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I managed to pick up a few choice prints and comics from the festival (all weirdly colour-themed, see above!), plus a gorgeous mermaid pin given to me by the insanely-talented Jen Bartell (this year's festival image creator!). I always end up wishing Thought Bubble was a three-day festival so I could grab a little bit of extra time away from my table to pop around and speak to everyone! With the help of Andrew, we grabbed some footage and for the very first time you can see a little video summary of my weekend above, or on Youtube right here!
In October I travelled up to the Lake District for The Lakes Comic Art Festival in Kendal. It was good to see so many people acknowledge the earlier Twitter dispute, and build on conversations on how to create a more supportive and diverse comics industry - we definitely have a long way to go, but it's good to see something positive sprouting out of such a horrible situation.
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At the end of September, I was invited to take part in the festival's window art trail - where businesses in Kendal are matched up with artists and community groups to create unique window displays as part of a trail around the town. The theme this year was 'superheroes', and as I was matched with the wonderful Staff of Life bakery, I created a life goddess! Drawn in Posca pens, the goddess grows and nurtures the ingredients used by the bakery: wheat, damsons, elderflower - a force for good, nature, and...food!
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I love illustrating on windows, it's such a different experience than being constrained to my usual small pages of paper - it's expansive and freeing! It was great to integrate with the products in the bakery, and to create something beautiful to draw customers in! This was the first time I'd been to LICAF, and it was a pleasure to be so warmly welcomed to appear in the Page 45 room with the Page 45 comic shop team, and other incredible creators like Felt Mistress, Johnathan Edwards and Emma Viecelli. What a bunch of heroes!
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One of my very favourite parts of the festival was running children's workshops in the cartoon-a-room. I ran two (iiiiiiincredibly busy) kids' workshops giving an introduction to comic creation to through shape! It was great to be able to represent female comic-creators to a new generation, and it was really fantastic to see so many young people coming away from the workshops with comics they'd made in the session, saying they were going to go home to create more! This year LICAF was partnered with the Toronto Comic Art Festival, and I managed to slip away from my table to pop into a talk by Jillian Tamaki - an incredible Canadian illustrator and comic creator, who's inspired me for years! Another huge highlight was the 'Finnish Village', which was home to, honestly, one of the best exhibitions I've ever been to: Felt Mistress (Louise Evans) &; Jonathan Edwards' 'Archipelagogo'. It's a gorgeous combination of felt character sculptures, paired with Johnathan's beautiful paintings incorporating the characters! The colours were bold, the characters were stunning, and it was such a treat reading through the backstories of each set of characters and how they lived on the islands. If you ever get a chance, definitely try to catch one of their exhibitions, it's well worth seeing in person!
So I'm finally winding down, my stock is packed up and ready for my etsy store, and I've made a ton of new friends. Thanks so much to everyone who's been so hugely supportive these past few months! I'm working on an exciting comics commission right now, as well as some of my own author/illustrated narratives - so by the time convention season is around again I'll have even more to show you! If you missed out on the opportunity to grab a signed print, comic or book at any of the festivals this year, you can find (almost) everything over in my Etsy shop right now! Until next year!
It's been a fair few weeks since we waved goodbye to season seven of Game of Thrones on tv; but I wanted to finally share my Thrones-inspired illustrations with you, and give you a peek at my process!
Working pretty neatly within the 'Ice and Fire' framework, I decided to illustrate Jon Snow, and the 'Mother of Dragons' herself, Daenerys Targaryen - what a, um, pair! So, as a little heads-up, these are inspired by the Game of Thrones characters, not direct portraits, so yes, there's a bit of artistic license here!
These were both illustrated using a combination of watercolour and digital illustration, which is my favourite way to work at the moment! For the first time ever, I created a video showing my entire process (from digital sketches, to traditional painting, then back to digital!) for my Daenerys illustration, and you can watch it here! Sneak a peek :)
So despite a growing list of comic festivals under my belt, LFCC was my very first London / three-day convention. So I arrived at the con with some seriously late nights of preparation, some analytics studying, a tum full of butterflies, and a whole batch of freshly printed comics!
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The convention was heeeeaving with celebrities and fans stampeding to meet them - which made everything quite surreal! I'll admit I had one or two squeako moments being in a lift with Benedict Cumberbatch; having my portrait of Mads Mikkelsen handed to him; and getting helped off the coach by John Rhys-Davies (Gimli!), who happens to be, almost officially, the nicest person in the entire universe.
As well as selling all kinds of prints, comics, books and original art on my table; I also spoke on a panel discussing 'Creating worlds for children'. The speaker line-up was stuffed with talent from the children's comic and publishing worlds! We chatted in front of an audience on everything from digital media vs print, what we enjoy most about working for a younger audience, to how we develop our ideas! It was great to discuss so many of the key issues in the children's illustration industry right now, especially given the breadth of perspectives the panel formed, and the insightful questions from the audience! The festival comic zone was put together by the brilliant Tony Lee, and it was great fun to sneakily illustrate this family portrait (above, centre) he'd asked me to draw as a present for his wife! Live portraits and commissions have always been one of my favourite things about festivals, it's always so great to see the reactions people have when they see the finished pieces!
The festival was an exhausting but fantastic three days - I felt so welcomed by the other guests, and so looked after by the festival team! They were all absolutely incredible, and I came away completely brimming with inspiration and ideas. Roll on Thought Bubble, the convention bug has seriously grabbed me again!
