It’s nearing the end of the Summer holidays here so life feels like a combination of slow late Summer days mixed with trying to kick my brain into gear ready for the school routine again. I’m looking forward to returning to a regular schedule, but not so much the earlier mornings and packed days with all the extra-curricular activities starting up!

From the Studio

With the school holidays and client work going on, I’m sad to say I haven’t had loads of time for personal work - but I did manage to sketch out the next instalment of Rhubarb and Custard (first chapter is on my website here)!

Here’s a sneak peek of a portion of it, still very much in progress!

I’m really enjoying working on this; making it all a bit silly and drawing Rhubarb’s expressions is so fun!

Food

Very exciting news for the middle-aged amongst us - I bought an air fryer! Yes, I’m about 10 years late to the party.

It’s been really useful so far for mid-week lunches when there are just the two of us at home!

I also had a touch of nostalgia this week and decided to make an old favourite my Granny used to make. It’s called ground rice pudding! It’s a similar taste to rice pudding but it’s made with ground rice (or in this case, rice flour because ground rice doesn’t seem to exist anymore) so the texture is smooth. You can eat it hot or cold (if cold, it sets kind of like a blancmange… but trust me it is nice) and we always had it with a bit of cream and jam. I’m sure it’s the kind of war ration food other countries make fun of us for, but I really like it!

Things I’ve Enjoyed Lately

• I finished Network Effect (Murderbot Diaries #5) by Martha Wells this week. It was fun enough that I’ll read the next one, but I didn’t love it as much as the previous books in the series. I’ve since moved on to The Gate of the Feral Gods (Dungeon Crawler Carl #4) by Matt Dinniman. So far it seems to be more of the same from the previous books, which is just perfect.

• Parks & Recreation is now on Channel 4, so you can watch it for free! I watched this show quietly during all the middle-of-the-night wake-ups when my daughter was a newborn so it has such a nostalgic feel for me, I just love it.

• I treated myself to the Dishoom cookbook this week and it’s SO beautiful. Highly recommend if you like fancy books!

Have a great Sunday everyone!

Just as a reminder, all the content on my Substack is free but I would hugely appreciate it if you wanted to subscribe to support my work (including writing this blog!). It’s just £4 a month, so basically buying me a much-needed coffee (or fuelling my pastry addiction)!

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We just got back from a lovely week in Tenerife relaxing and enjoying the pool and sea. We also visited Siam Park which was amazing! Definitely earnt its status as the best waterpark in Europe for me!

Also, cats. Because it’s totally normal to photograph every cat you see on holiday, right?

Sadly none of them happened to make it into my suitcase on the way home.

From The Studio

Technically not actually from my studio, but I did a bit of drawing in my teeny tiny sketchbook while on holiday! It was really nice to get a change of scenery and draw people doing something other than walking to and from cafés!

I’ve also been enjoying my new pens (pink and orange are Tombow dual brush pens and the green and blue are Ecoline brush pens).

I’m fully booked up with client work from now until December so I won’t have as much time for personal stuff, but I’m determined to keep up my sketchbook practice as it’s such a lovely escape from digital work!

Food

Lots of nice holiday food this month! We had a lovely birthday meal at one of my favourite Cambridge restaurants - Limoncello. They do the best tiramisu!

I don’t know if it’s just me who finds this, but post holiday I always feel the need to eat much more healthily for a while. Very few vegetables were consumed in the past week or so! As such, food has been much more back to normal with some regulars like this Salmon Pesto Traybake or Quorn Bolognese. These are pretty easy so I’d recommend them if you’re looking for midweek dinner inspiration!

Things I’ve Enjoyed Lately

• I did lots of reading on holiday and worked my way through Dungeon Crawler Carl books 2 & 3 (Carl’s Doomsday Scenario and The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook) by Matt Dinniman. They are such enjoyable reads I could have gone straight onto the next one but I decided to take a little break and catch up on some Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells - currently reading number 5, Network Effect.

• We’ve been catching up on series 3 of Resident Alien which is now on Netflix!

• I get through a lot of podcasts while doing client work, and I was feeling a bit fed up of my regular ones so I started Midnight Burger - an audio drama about a trans-dimensional, time travelling diner. I’m enjoying it so far! It has a very chill vibe so very easy to have on in the background.

Have a great Sunday everyone!

Just as a reminder, all the content on my Substack is free but I would hugely appreciate it if you wanted to subscribe to support my work (including writing this blog!). It’s just £4 a month, so basically buying me a much-needed coffee (or fuelling my pastry addiction)!

I’ve realised the title for this bi-weekly post (ok, sometimes tri-weekly post) has nothing to do with art. Maybe it should be Easy Like Sunday Drawing? Or maybe the heat is just getting to me.

I hope everyone affected by these heat waves is managing to keep cool! I am not. Starting to think our upcoming holiday to the Canary Islands might be a good chance to cool down!

In the Summertime

Summer events are in full swing here! I feel like anyone who has a school-aged child probably knows that this time of year is full-on. Sports events, fairs, various end of term shows, more fairs and about 500 emails from the school each day.

It does feel like a lot of rules and routine go out of the window towards the end of the school year (hopefully that’s not just me!). But I find it’s also a chance to make nice memories. We’ve been staying up late to listen to live music at the local festival, ignoring bedtime to splash around in the sprinkler (before the hosepipe ban, may I add) and enjoying the odd takeaway when it’s just too hot to cook!

From The Studio

Firstly, I opened my Etsy shop properly this week! It’s a small start with just a handful of prints and stickers, but I’m excited to add more over time. ‘Advertising’ always makes me feel icky, but I would love it if you could check it out!

Meanwhile, I’m still plodding along with my picture book! I’m aiming to get the cover and five spreads illustrated so I can enter it into the dPictus Unpublished Picturebook Showcase (which thankfully extended its deadline until the end of July!).

Since I last wrote, I’ve done the cover and another spread; the first one in the book, introducing little Charlie!

Even if it doesn’t get picked up, I’ve really enjoyed working on this and it has been a great exercise in developing my personal style and maintaining it across lots of illustrations.

I also got a dinky little sketchbook! And new pens! I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a little embarrassing that the purchase of a couple of £3 pens made my day, but it did and I’m now using them on EVERYTHING.

While I was at the art shop buying my exciting pens I also picked up a pack of gouache! They were pretty cheap, but I have no idea what I’m doing with them anyway - so that’s probably for the best.

If anyone reading has any tips/tricks/tutorials for gouache I’d love to know!

Food

The pastry addiction cannot be stopped!

I’ll be honest - cooking hasn’t been high on my list of priorities during 30+ degree days in an old brick house with no air conditioning. Hopefully I’ll have a better selection of recipes to share next time!

Things I’ve Enjoyed Lately

• I finished The Devils by Joe Abercrombie! It was fantastic - a really fun read. Definitely not for anyone squeamish though!

• This is a bit of a guilty pleasure, but I’ve been binging old series of Interior Design Masters on BBC iPlayer. Definitely not as a way of avoiding all the actual DIY that needs doing around the house, nope.

• I played the demo for Moonlight Peaks this week and it was super cute! Definitely planning on picking up the full game!

Have a great Sunday everyone!

Just as a reminder, all the content on my Substack is free but I would hugely appreciate it if you wanted to subscribe to support my work (including writing this blog!). It’s just £4 a month, so basically buying me a much-needed coffee (or fuelling my pastry addiction)!

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Any likes, comments and shares are also hugely helpful and appreciated!

The sun is certainly making itself known for the solstice here - it’s supposed to reach 38°C in the next few days which is a bit much if you ask me.

It has otherwise been a quiet couple of weeks; probably the most exciting thing that has happened was that I got a new cabinet for my office! We’ve been in the new house over a year now and so far all my paperwork, sketchbooks and art supplies have just kind of lived on the floor of my study. But no longer!

It’s from Urban Lockers, if anyone is interested! I was gazing at some similar ones from Mustard Made for ages but these seem to be exactly the same without having to trade a kidney and your first-born for them.

Lots still to do on the house but it’s progress! And with the added bonus that I feel super organised and like a proper adult.

From The Studio

My prints and sticker sheets arrived! I’m really excited to get these on my Etsy shop - I just need to take some better photos of them first I think! I used PRINT.WORK for the prints, business cards and individual stickers and they’ve come out really nicely! I found the sticker sheets super pricey with them though so I used Decal Empire instead and am really happy with them!

I’m hoping to maybe do a market (in actual real life) later in the year too, so I’d love to hear if you have done any and have any tips!

I’ve also been continuing with my picture book idea and have completed two more sample illustrations.

This week I sent the script and dummy book off to a couple of agents and publishers I’d love to work with; so begins the long waiting game where I try and forget about those submissions completely and end up checking my emails every 5 minutes anyway.

Lastly just some café sketches and a little Father’s Day card I made for my Dad (who loves golden retrievers)!

Food

Back to regular scheduling this week with pastries! Featuring a custard bombolone from the Bake Shop - General Store in Ely!

At home I’ve been making this Pineapple & Tofu Satay Stir-Fry on repeat in the last few weeks. It sounds kind of weird but it’s really tasty, I promise!

Things I’ve Enjoyed Lately

• I’ve noticed I only listen to spooky podcasts when I do client work. Some kind of subliminal message from my brain perhaps? Either way, I’ve been enjoying After Dark again!

• It’s my last time recommending Widow’s Bay as it finished this week, and I’m sure you’re sick of me repeating it (but it’s really good!).

• I just started reading The Devils by Joe Abercrombie - I’ve had multiple people tell me it’s very good, and I am loving it so far!

Have a lovely Sunday everyone!

Just as a reminder, all the content on my Substack is free but I would hugely appreciate it if you wanted to subscribe to support my work (including writing this blog!). It’s just £4 a month, so basically buying me a much-needed coffee (or fuelling my pastry addiction)!

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Happy June! You wouldn’t think it, looking out of the window at a grey, windy and rainy day, but we had a heatwave here last week and it reached 35 degrees on multiple days. When you live in an old house that’s built for keeping the heat in (and most buildings here don’t have any AC) that’s a little warm.

We did enjoy the sunshine though as we had friends visiting; it felt like a little summer holiday! We did the usual Cambridge tourist trip of looking at Kings College, the Mathematical bridge, Isaac Newton’s apple tree, watching people struggle on the punts, and walking past some other colleges I don’t know the names of despite living here for over 10 years. We also stumbled across the Knife Angel which is currently touring the UK! For some reason I felt that was the one thing that deserved to be photographed out of the entire weekend.

From The Studio

I’ve been continuing work on my picture book idea which I’m hoping to submit to some agents and publishers soon! I’m working up a few pages into sample illustrations just to provide an example of how the art might look.

I went around in circles with this one as what I had in my head originally just didn’t feel right.

I also went back and forth between digital and drawing traditionally too as I wanted a looser feel to my work, then the colours didn’t feel right, or it didn’t feel like ‘me’.

I think when a piece feels ‘important’ it’s so easy to get in your own head! Scrapping a piece you’ve worked hard on is also always painful - but I’m so glad I did! I’m much happier with the end result.

It was also the 5 year anniversary of the ‘KidLitArtPostcard’ hashtag on social media! I think this was invented during Covid, when working from home meant sending paper postcards to art directors was no longer as effective (since they weren’t in the office, and generally finding people’s home addresses could be seen as creepy).

The idea is you can share your postcard digitally and people look at the hashtag! I don’t really know if it works, but it’s fun to join in. And as it was the 5th anniversary there was a theme - ‘Draw yourself as a kid’! Here’s mine!

Food - Everyday Edit

Switching it up this week! I’m aware I usually share the ‘exciting’ food - treats, restaurant dinners and so many pastries! But I don’t always eat those things! So I thought this week I would share the kinds of meals I eat most days - even if they are a little (or a lot) less photogenic. I love getting ideas for just everyday meals, so I hope some of these inspire you too!

Some ‘recipes’ we’ve enjoyed this week (clockwise, starting top left):

• ‘Deconstructed sushi’ - sushi rice, tuna mixed with Greek yoghurt, cucumber, seaweed sheets and sriracha. It’s quick, easy and tastes like sushi! I’ve been really enjoying it as a simple work from home lunch.

• Greek pasta salad with baked chicken breast - another work from home lunch!

• Greek yoghurt, cocoa powder and frozen raspberries (and if you’re feeling fancy, grated dark chocolate on top). A protein friendly snack!

• My breakfast pretty much every day this week has been: two scrambled eggs, half a wholewheat bagel with cottage cheese and M&S Everything Bagel seasoning, some melon. Simple, effective!

Most of these ideas come from this Facebook page (I know, Facebook, gross) - but she shares really good just easy everyday stuff.

Of course I also made some ice-cream cookie sandwiches - you know, for balance.

Things I’ve Enjoyed Lately

• Widow’s Bay on AppleTV continues to be fantastic!

• A Substack recommendation - I’ve been enjoying Amber Au’s blog The Wonky Pencil. Her thoughts on art are so spot on and I think she covers things we all deal with as artists!

• I am currently obsessed with 11riposhima on Instagram - how just a few ‘simple’ lines can create so much character! I definitely want to work on that with my own style.

Thanks for reading, and have a great Sunday!

Just as a reminder, all the content on my Substack is free but I would hugely appreciate it if you wanted to subscribe to support my work (including writing this blog!). It’s just £4 a month, so basically buying me a much-needed coffee (or fuelling my pastry addiction)!

Firstly, for anyone who noticed, I was supposed to post last Sunday - sorry! I’ve been ill, and honestly am still a bit ill. It feels pretty unfair to have a cold while it’s 30 degrees outside.

Other than being ill, the last few weeks have been lots of gardening, drawing and family activities. We did have a little trip to Cambs Lock in Huntingdon which is a really fun rabbit warren of an old building, full of antiques and various interesting things! They also have a Pokémon card shop on the top floor!

From The Studio

Trying out a fancy new subtitle instead of just ‘Art’ - I may or may not have stolen the idea from another artist’s newsletter cause I really like it. Although, my studio is mostly just the spare room of our house with a desk in. But let’s pretend it’s a really fancy lovely artist’s studio with easels and paintbrushes and a big skylight.

I didn’t realise how much I’d done these past couple of weeks before I looked back at it for this post - so I’d recommend taking stock of what you’ve done every now and then, it’s pretty satisfying!

I’ve been working away on the picture book I’m writing. I’d like to get enough done in time to submit to the dPICTUS Unpublished Picturebook Showcase, but we’ll see. This week I finished sketching out all the pages, so next I’ll be painting a few as ‘finished’ samples so I can submit to a few chosen literary agents.

I’ve also been working on things for my Etsy shop - setting up files and ordering sample prints! I made a cute little business card and a packaging sticker to pop on orders, too!

I’m looking forward to doing a proper ‘launch’ when it’s all ready! At the moment, I just have one item on there - my watercolour cat commissions (which I’ve also been working on in the past couple of weeks!).

Lastly (!!) I’ve also been trying to use my sketchbook when I remember - although I do find it hard when you’re stuck inside (ill!) or rushing around parenting.

Food

I feel like I’ve rambled on about art this time, so just a quick round up of tasty food.

Pain au Chocolat from Stir, fluffy pancakes (recipe!), an almond and plum pastry from Pastim, porchetta sandwich and poutine from Bread & Meat (for my fiancé’s birthday!) and homemade cinnamon rolls! The recipe for the cinnamon rolls is here but I didn’t follow it exactly - I proved them in the fridge overnight after rolling them instead of before. Less time waiting for a delicious breakfast in the morning!

I do feel like I should clarify I do eat fruit and vegetables the rest of the time - the spread is looking pretty beige (but delicious) this week!

Things I’ve Enjoyed Lately

• I am LOVING Widow’s Bay on AppleTV! It’s the perfect blend of comedy and scary - highly recommend!

• Ok this is not lately, but instead something I am excited about for next week! Paralives is coming into Early Access! I’ve been looking forward to this game for so long!

• We’ve been playing REPO again as they added lots of cosmetics and new monsters! It’s a fun time and a surprisingly chill way to hang out with friends!

Thanks for reading, and have a great Sunday!

Just as a reminder, all the content on my Substack is free but I would hugely appreciate it if you wanted to subscribe to support my work (including writing this blog!). It’s just £4, so basically buying me a much-needed coffee once a month!

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What Even Is a Colour Rough?

Maybe it’s not the technical term, but it’s what I call them! A colour rough for me is the stage where I take a sketch, make it smaller and throw some colours on until it feels right!

I find doing colour roughs before getting into the full illustration is a really good way to quickly experiment with colour combinations and make decisions to avoid confusion later on! It also feels much lower pressure to work messily on a smaller version before applying it to the big scary final piece.

This is a stage for playing around and finding what works!

Process

For the colour roughs, I took the sketch I already had, scaled it down (while keeping the linework on a separate layer) and just started playing with colours. I had a palette already roughly decided so I could start there for the main bits - e.g. Little Red Riding Hood herself, and the wolf!

I also made sure to refer back to the values I’d established in the sketch to make sure I wasn’t going too far away from them (check this tutorial for a good way of doing that in Photoshop!).

Nothing needs to be neat, and I mostly just use a full opacity blocky brush to get ideas down quickly!

The Wolf Sequence

I did the wolf sequence all in one go as I wanted to keep the colours consistent across all four pages. This sequence was actually a bit tricky as I hadn’t given much thought to the background colour - I didn’t want it to be too attention grabbing but I didn’t want it to look too boring. AND I didn’t want it to be too scary on the last page!

So I ended up exploring a blue background…

A green background…

And lots and lots… and lots (!) of options for the third page!

Before settling on a muted blue-green!

What’s Next?

Pretty much now my process is to draw the rest of the horse work on the full illustration! I’ll be showing that, as well as a really quick run-through of my process for the cover next time!

Thank you so much for reading - I hope you’re still enjoying this insight into how I work! Just as a reminder, all the content on my Substack is free but I would hugely appreciate it if you wanted to subscribe. It’s just £4, so basically buying me a much-needed coffee once a month!

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It has been a relatively quiet couple of weeks here, but that can be nice to balance out the busier times!

Art

Lots of sketching and playing about the past couple of weeks! I’ve been really focused on portfolio work this year, so I’ve taken a break to just mess around and explore some new ideas (particularly things I could sell at a market!).

A New Project!

I also started a new project this week - working on a picture book idea of my own! I’ve written the overall story and started doing some character sketches (can you tell it’s based on my cat?).

This also led into some exploration for markets/commissions - I’m not sure why I haven’t drawn that many cats before as everyone seems to love them!

I also started working out some thumbnails for my book. I loved doing this on paper as I work digitally so often. It was really satisfying to cut out the thumbnails, move them around and be able to replace them with ones that work better! I even stuck them all together at the end to make a little book, which was really fun (and useful to get a sense of pacing and page turns)!

Food

I’m probably going to start repeating myself because there are a few places we always go back to - because they’re so good! One of those is Manna Seoul, a food truck that does amazing Korean corndogs and fried chicken. Also they’re a regular at The Gog farm shop so you get to enjoy a lovely view while you eat!

We also visited Mangia & Bevi last week - mostly in my search to satisfy my current Chinotto addiction, but they also had a really great range of cheeses, meats and Italian snacks! Also pictured: a sausage and egg naan breakfast from The Permit Room - which I know I’ve definitely mentioned before, but we keep going back!

Things I’ve Enjoyed This Week

• We started the new series of Taskmaster which is lots of fun, as usual!

• We’ve also been watching the new series of Race Across the World - we always enjoy it and this time my daughter is old enough to watch it which is nice!

• I finished book 8 of The Expanse - Tiamat’s Wrath by James S.A. Corey. I absolutely loved this one; I think it’s my favourite of the series so far (and that is saying a lot!). I’m really sad that the next book is the last one!

Thanks for reading, and have a great Sunday!

If anyone’s tracking (I hope not) - I was supposed to post last Sunday, but we had just got back from a short trip to find a leak in our house (more on that later!) so I just didn’t quite have the energy! But there’s lots in this post to make up for it!

We had a lovely Easter break for a few days at a yurt in Stamford. We were super lucky with amazing weather while we were there, and it was a really lovely, relaxing few days! Highly recommend Stamford if you like quaint streets, cute independent shops (including a maze-like bookshop!) and lots of cafes!

Behind the Scenes

Lots of behind the scenes from my sketchbooks this week!

Our little break gave me lots of time to play around with watercolours more. In particular, I was paying more attention to light and shadow, seeing if I could underpaint blues and yellow/oranges for it, as well as leaving white space for highlights.

If you follow me on Instagram you might have also seen Rhubarb and Custard - a comic I’ve been working on!

In one of the final pages of this chapter of the comic I introduce ‘The Temple of Snow’. Of course before drawing it I needed to work out what it looks like - especially as they’ll be exploring there later on! So I did lots of studies and sketches beforehand.

Here are some older character development pages as well as a test panel I did at the very beginning of the project, too!

Finally, I also doodled this little set of characters!

House Stuff

More house improvements this month; some planned, some unfortunately unplanned.

Firstly, unplanned - we came back from holiday to find a very suspicious water stain in the coving downstairs.

It took a day of exploration (i.e. lots of drilling holes and taking apart walls) to find out a shower pipe was leaking inside a wall upstairs and dripping down into the ceiling. Not a very fun surprise! But a big thank you to my fiance’s Dad for coming over and sorting it out for us!

In lighter news, we also knocked down a wall and took up half the very large patio outside so we now have loads more space for plants and greenery (and I can dig up some grass at the other end to grow veg and flowers)!

Food

Not the most photogenic round-up of food this week! We had lots of snacks and restaurant meals on holiday so I’ve been craving just nutritional home-cooked food since we got back.

Amongst other things I made Green Curry Chicken Noodles, one of my favourite recipes from ‘Ways with Noodles’ - a Wagamama book I’ve had for a million years. I also made Leek and Cannellini Bean soup with chilli oil from River Cottage: Veg Every Day, which doesn’t look great but tasted really good!

I’m also newly obsessed with this drink - Chinotto (or Chino), but it’s really hard to find! My daughter described it as ‘the worst drink she’s ever tasted’ but I think it’s amazing! I recommend trying it if you can find it and like bittersweet flavours.

Things I’ve Enjoyed This Week

• Ok, this was a few weeks ago but I can’t believe I forgot to mention it in my last post. We went to see Project Hail Mary and it was perfection! It’s one of my favourite books so I was really nervous about the film not getting things right, but it was absolutely spot on!

• It’s been weeks, I’m still playing and enjoying stupid amounts of Pokopia.

• Books! I finished Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames. I love his writing but I just didn’t enjoy this one as much as Kings of the Wyld (the first in the series). Still excited for his next book though! I’ve moved on to the next Expanse book - Tiamat’s Wrath (#8!), which I’m already enjoying.

That’s all for now - have a great Sunday everyone!

Character Designs: Little Red Riding Hood

With my colour palette already mostly decided, I moved on to character designs! I wanted to make sure I had the two main characters ‘done’ so I could keep them consistent in my illustrations. I also wanted to settle on some ‘style rules’ for consistency too!

I started with the most important: Little Red Riding Hood herself!

One guilty admission: I actually did some really rough pencil sketches before these but I think I must have thrown them away because I can’t find them anywhere! They were awful, but they helped me smooth out a lot of ideas which meant these digital ones are much closer to the end result.

Next I refined my design with some more drawings, exploring Little Red’s personality, how she would look and move, as well as ironing out rendering style and details.

It was at this point that her bird companion came along! I felt like these designs needed something extra, and actually the bird came in really handy later on in the final illustrations to help with storytelling and visual humour to lighten up some scarier scenes!

Character Designs: The Wolf!

Next I moved onto the wolf! I already had an idea in mind based on the wolf’s character; I wanted him to look sneaky and a little bit cheeky! I also knew I wanted to use purples to fit in with my colour scheme.

I started by doing some studies using photo reference. I haven’t drawn that many wolves before and I wanted to get to grips with how they look and move before starting my design. I also had a fancy new watercolour pen I wanted to try out!

I then moved to working digitally (as that’s how I was planning on doing my final illustrations) and worked on the final design. As you can see above, I use a combination of blocking out interesting shapes in silhouette and sketching. I find silhouettes really useful for creating impactful characters and quickly exploring ideas!

I then refined these sketches, deciding things like colour and how I would render the wolf to keep him consistent with the style of Little Red Riding Hood’s character. At this point I felt like the wolf was a little bit too scary, so you’ll see later on I softened him a little (less pointy teeth, for example!).

Roughs

With my two main characters decided, I moved onto roughs (sketches) for spreads! As this is just a personal project I wasn’t planning on illustrating the whole book. If I was, I think I would have done a character design for Granny first too.

I did all my roughs at the same time as again I wanted to keep things consistent! I felt like if I took a spread all the way to ‘final’ (such a scary word!) then it’d be difficult to remember which brushes and colours I used, as well as how I rendered it (especially if other work came up in between!). So it made sense to do everything together in stages. I also added the gutter (middle of the two pages) and text at this point to make sure everything was all laid out nicely.

With spread 1 being so complex (so much foliage!) I decided to start by blocking out the values rather than sketching straight away. This helped me to organise the composition and make sure it reads well despite being so detailed. I then sketched over the top, trying to focus on big shapes (‘work big to small’ is a useful mantra!) so the scene didn’t become too busy and confusing to look at.

For the wolf’s sequence, I sketched out the illustration then added the values underneath, tweaking the sketch as I went. Again, I really like adding values at this stage to make sure the composition reads well - I don’t think you can get all the information with just linework!

I like to make most of my big decisions at this stage as it’s so much harder to change fundamental things like composition later on!

As you can see I ended up adding the bird to these too. I felt they were just too scary otherwise and they needed the bird to add some lightness! I also softened the wolf’s look, making him less sharp and pointy. I did go through quite a few options though - as you can see below! Can you spot the differences?

I also went back and did some other options for the first spread as I felt like it needed some extra interest on the first page. At this point, I chose the wolf peeking out from the undergrowth, but in the end I added the flowers too as you’ll see later on!

That’s it for now! I hope you enjoyed this insight into my working process! Next time, I’ll be sharing colour roughs, then my process from black and white to finished illustration!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here; I had a friend visit and we had a lovely time doing a mini food tour of Cambridge and visiting the Design Museum in London!

We went for the Wes Anderson exhibition which was absolutely amazing. So inspiring to see all the behind the scenes. I particularly loved seeing Anderson’s notebooks with all his thoughts and ideas jotted down, as well as all the carefully crafted props and models for each film.

Art

I finished my Little Red Riding Hood project!

I’m happy to have it done, and it was a great learning experience - especially creating the thumbnails. I do think it has come out a bit too neat and ‘digital’ than I’d like - which is no surprise given I work digitally, but in general I’m still working on loosening up and being more ‘messy’ in my art as I’d love a more traditional look. These are things I’m going to be working on as I move forward!

I’ve been working on another personal project, too - I think I shared a sneak peek last post but here’s another one, hot off the press!

Super excited to start sharing more of this soon!

Food

Between Mother’s Day and my friend’s visit, I’ve eaten an outrageous amount of tasty food in the past two weeks!

Some highlights:

• A huge pancake breakfast from Scott’s All Day in Cambridge

• Sushi from Sushi & Salad in Ely, which is always fantastic!

• For a healthier reprieve, I’ve been making smoothie bowls for breakfast and really enjoying them! The one pictured is M&S Tropical Smoothie Mix, blended up with some Greek yoghurt, half a banana and a splash of oat milk, topped with fruit and some seed/dried berry mix I had in the cupboard (usually I just use granola!).

Things I’ve Enjoyed This Week

• Still obsessed with Pokopia, of course!

• We are over half way through Happiness now and it’s still great!

• I’ve been trying to branch out to listen to more creative podcasts and I’ve been enjoying Two Cranky Creatives! It’s nice to listen to realistic and reassuring perspectives that don’t glamourise life as an artist (but are still uplifting)! I’d love to hear any podcast recommendations if you have them, too!

Have a great Sunday!

Spring has Sprung!

We briefly had some really nice Spring weather here so I took the opportunity to head out and use the pocket watercolour palette I picked up last month! It was really relaxing to get away from my desk and create something traditional; I’ll definitely be aiming to do this more often!

House Progress

We’ve also been making progress on the house, with the very old tired carpet downstairs being replaced with wood floor! And I’ve been slowly chipping away (not literally) at the painting too.

Art

I’m continuing to build up my picture book portfolio, and you may have seen the post I wrote this week that goes into more detail about my current project - Little Red Riding Hood. I’m working on the full illustrations at the moment and finished up the first one this week!

I’ve also been doing little bits of a sneaky secret project in my free time (because why have one project on the go when you can have multiple?!). Here’s a quick look, but there’ll be more to come in the future!

Things I’ve Enjoyed This Week

• I’m going to be honest, it’s a miracle this blog post got written this week - Pokopia is out and it’s all I want to spend my time on.

• I know it’s too early to get Easter stuff but I couldn’t resist picking up Marks & Spencer’s Speckled Egg Cookies! They also do their own version of mini eggs which are much better and way cheaper than the outrageous price of mini eggs this year!

• We started watching Happiness on Netflix - I love a South Korean zombie show and so far this has not disappointed.

• Did I mention how much I’m enjoying Pokopia?

Happy Sunday everyone - I hope you have a great day!

I’m currently building up a portfolio with examples of picture book work in the form of personal projects. In this case, Little Red Riding Hood! I thought I’d bring you along with me so you can see my process!

Why Little Red Riding Hood?

Moving from a career as a concept artist for games meant I already had a portfolio of art but none of it was really relevant to picture books, so I need to make new pieces!

I saw the idea of illustrating a well-known fairy tale in an article with advice about building a picture book portfolio (I have sadly completely lost where I read it, otherwise I would link it here!). Many fairy tales are in the public domain so you don’t run into issues with copyright, and it shows you can adapt to someone else’s text. Plus, it saves you the time of writing a whole new story (even if that is the eventual goal!).

Of course there are LOTS of options for fairy tales, but I landed on Little Red Riding Hood because I love to draw nature and the idea of the forest setting really appealed to me - as well as being able to have fun with the characters!

Step 1: Script

When I started the project I quickly realised I hadn’t actually read Little Red Riding Hood for ages! So I looked it up and familiarised myself, before writing down a rough script for the story.

There are lots of different interpretations around so I made a condensed version with some tweaks that felt most like the story I wanted to tell. For example, I didn’t want the wolf to eat Granny; that felt far too bleak! Instead, Granny gets locked in a cupboard then bursts out and scares the wolf away! This just felt much more like the kind of story I wanted to illustrate.

I kept this stage pretty rough; just the key beats of the story with the intention of refining the text later. It just helped me solidify the overall story in my head, and identify which parts I felt were ‘key moments’ that I wanted to emphasise with the illustrations.

Step 2: Thumbnails

I actually made one thumbnail weeks before I started the project at all.

I had this really distinct idea of a scene where Little Red Riding Hood is walking through the woods, and it kind of gave me an idea of the mood/look of the overall story (trust me, it makes sense in my head!). It wasn’t until weeks later that I actually had time to get started on the project properly!

After making a rough draft of the script I came back to thumbnails, but before I share them I want to just give a quick nod to The Good Ship Illustration’s Picture Book Course! I’ve been working my way through that and it has already taught me a lot which helped to tackle this task more easily!

Ok, back to thumbnails. I did my first round on paper - even though I work digitally for ‘final’ illustrations. I just find it easier to quickly scribble down ideas with a pencil, and it feels more loose and fun which I think is important at this stage!

You’ll notice these are super messy! But they don’t need to be neat, they’re just for me (well, and you). These thumbnails helped me work out:

• How I want to spread the story out

• Where I want to bring emphasis to big story moments

• How the story will be paced

• The mix of spreads and vignettes that I want to do

• Generate fun ideas for how the illustrations can tell the story!

Since this is a personal portfolio project and I’m not actually making an entire book I didn’t worry too much about refining these thumbnails. Looking back now, there are already changes I’d make! But since I’m just choosing some spreads to illustrate I haven’t spent as long on this as I would otherwise.

I did take these into Photoshop and did a second pass (only slightly more refined!) before the next stage:

Step 3: Colour Script

I think I did some sneaky character design before this next step, but really I think they can be interchangeable - so for the sake of this post remaining about thumbnails, I’ll go over character design later!

Next I started thinking about colour! This might feel really early, but I wanted to do a pass at this stage to:

• Check what I had in mind would work

• Create consistency across the entire book

• Explore how I can use colour to emphasise key moments and change the mood across the story

• Work out a rough colour palette I can stick to (in theory!) later on so I’m not jumping around wasting time and picking 500 different hues!

I already had in mind that I wanted the book to be primarily greens and blues, with Little Red Riding Hood as the only red thing so she would really stand out. I then thought it would be good to bring a little bit of red into Granny’s character to create a link between them - but I kept these paler. I chose purples for the wolf so he also stands out but still feels like he belongs in the forest.

Again as this is a personal portfolio project and I’m only illustrating a few spreads I didn’t do as much exploration as I might have done for a ‘proper’ project. Since it’s just for me I already had a strong idea of what colours I wanted to use and didn’t feel like I needed to change them too much. There are definitely some spreads I would look at more closely if I were to take them to a final piece!

Next Steps: Character Design and Roughs!

I hope you enjoyed the insight into my process so far! Next I’ll be sharing how I approached character designs, and then roughs for the spreads I’ve chosen to illustrate.

I’d love to hear any comments or questions if you want to post below - or if there’s anything you’d like more detail on! Or if you know anyone who might enjoy this kind of content, feel free to share it!

If you like this article and want to get future ones direct to your inbox, feel free to subscribe! All my content is free - with an entirely optional paid subscription tier if you want to support my work and the blog (and for those that do I am super grateful!).

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We had some sun this week and it got up to 16 degrees! 16! It was lovely. I saw a quote somewhere that was along the lines of “my needs are as complex as that of a dandelion” which feels very accurate at this time of year. I get a huge mood boost when the sun comes out!

Half Term and School Bugs

It was half term last week so lots of outdoor adventures including a trip to Anglesey Abbey which was very pretty with all the snowdrops, as well as some bird (and water buffalo?!) watching out in the Fens.

I’ve also been ill, which wasn’t as fun. Although I managed to make it this far through the school year without catching a bug so I’d say that’s pretty good going. I’m terrible at being ill - just can’t sit still, but this one really knocked me down so I’ve had to admit defeat and spent plenty of time watching TV and even doing a jigsaw.

Art

I’ve started my next personal project - illustrating some spreads of Little Red Riding Hood for my portfolio. I’m currently writing some posts specifically about my process for this so I’ll just put a sneak peak of one of the spreads I’m working on here, and you can expect more to come!

Food

It was pancake day here in the UK last week! We did our usual tradition of pancake dinner with lots of different toppings (pistachio cream, Nutella, banana, lemon and sugar, berries, salted caramel sauce… not all together)! It wasn’t very photogenic though (and got eaten very quickly.

I also baked a Lemon and Elderflower Drizzle Cake from Cook, Eat, Repeat by Nigella Lawson and made Sambal Chicken with Coconut Rice and Cucumber Relish from Ottolenghi’s Comfort. As with a lot of Ottolenghi’s recipes, the ingredient list and cook times were looong so I cheated and bought pre-made peanut sauce to make it all a bit easier. Who was time to make peanut sauce from scratch? It was all super tasty though if you do have the time and energy!

Things I’ve Enjoyed

• I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - I’m loving Shrinking on Apple TV. The whole aesthetic feels like it was made for me.

• I finished Dungeon Crawler Carl and really enjoyed it! Excited to read the second one, but in the meantime I’ve started a rare non-fiction book - The Theory of Everything Else by Dan Schreiber (I love listening to No Such Thing as a Fish in the gym so that’s why I picked this up!).

In case you missed it, Doodle Bugs is going completely free! All future posts will be free for anyone to read, no paywall. You can subscribe for free to receive posts directly to your inbox!

The paid tier is remaining as an option if you’d like to support my work and the blog - any subscriptions directly mean I can continue working on this, and are hugely appreciated!

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Have a great Sunday!

This is just a quick post to let you know about some changes to Doodle Bugs - starting right now!

Freedom!

I’ve been writing here for a while now and I feel like the posts I most enjoy creating are ones that (I hope) are helpful, friendly and uplifting. I’m hopeful that by sharing my experiences and process it can help or inspire others who might want to do the same things!

Having posts that are locked behind a paywall doesn’t feel like it aligns with that. So starting from now, all posts are going to be free to access!

I am going to keep a paid tier for those who would like to support my work and the blog (and to those who already do, thank you so much!), but all future posts will be available for everyone.

A little note on Sketchbook Scribbles - I have so far been doing a monthly behind the scenes of my sketchbook post called Sketchbook Scribbles for subscribers. I will be rolling this kind of content into my general posts so you’ll still get lots of nice (and plenty of bad) sketchbook content!

Weekly Posts Becoming Less Weekly

I’m also going to change my weekly Easy Like Sunday Morning posts to be every two weeks. I love writing them but sometimes I just feel like my life is not interesting enough to fill a post a week! I don’t want them to become spammy or boring, and by going to every two weeks I should have more time to work on more long form posts about bigger subjects too.

Thoughts?

I’d love to know if you have any feedback, thoughts or suggestions! Feel free to comment below or drop me a message!

And lastly just a big thank you for reading my blog!

I finished up a freelance job this week so I had a couple of days off and treated myself to some new plant friends and the most adorable pocket watercolour palette! I’m trying to build up some materials to do more sketching outside - especially as the weather gets warmer!

Art

I’ve started a new personal project! I’m doing some spreads for Little Red Riding Hood to add to my portfolio.

This week I did some thumbnails and wolf studies (of varying quality!). I’ll have more to share in this month’s Sketchbook Scribbles post.

Food

Lots of tasty food this week! I made these blueberry muffins - this is a recipe I make lots as they’re just so fluffy and good! I also made this vegan pad thai which was great for a quick, easy dinner.

Also a couple of recommendations if you live in the Cambridge area:

• Chicken Berry Britannia from The Permit Room (an offshoot of Dishoom)

• And a little hidden gem, located on an industrial estate - Pastim! The pastries, doughnuts AND sandwiches are all amazing!

Things I’ve Enjoyed This Week

• I started reading Dungeon Crawler Carl after seeing it recommended everywhere by everyone. I’m enjoying it so far!

• I think I recommended this last time, but I’m more episodes in and loving it even more with each one - so I’m recommending Shrinking on Apple TV again!

• This week I finally bought the Children’s Writer’s and Artist’s Yearbook - I’d been putting it off because I thought it would be more expensive than it was. It’s amazing - so much great information! I highly recommend it if you’re looking to work in children’s publishing.

Have a great Sunday!

Happy end of January! We made it!

It might just be because it’s sunny as I write this, but it feels like Spring is on the way (I know, realistically we’ve got months but I live in hope)!

It’s been a busy but lovely week here; seeing friends (including Echo’s brother!), eating pastries, a bit of bouldering and topped off with Mike Wozniak’s new show, which was fantastic!

House Progress

I’m finally painting with actual colour! All the damp proofing, mist coating, priming, filling holes, sanding, taking random bits of wood off the walls (???) etc is done in the dining room and I’ve finally been able to start just doing the fun bit.

We went with Farrow and Ball ‘Pink Ground’ which is a really satisfying warm pale pink.

Next up is painting the adjacent room the same colour, doing a second coat on everything AND painting the doors. I’m undecided whether to paint them white or be brave and go with a secondary colour (like a pale blue?) - I would love opinions or suggestions!

Art

Not much to report this week as I have been doing client work, but I did some people watching and sketching at a local café. I really love doing these little drawings - they’re very relaxing!

Food

Lots of frozen egg whites left over from various recipes = a very large pavlova. This one had a layer of lemon curd under the cream and was very tasty! I loosely used this recipe for the meringue but I never really bother with the vinegar/cornflour as I don’t find it ever needs it (also, putting vinegar in seems kind of gross?).

Things I’ve Enjoyed This Week

• I treated myself to a pair of trousers from Lucy & Yak this week and (much like everything I’ve ever bought from there) they are super comfy and soft - as well as being a really fun print!

• I started watching Shrinking on Apple TV - I’m only a couple of episodes in but it seems really fun and sweet so far!

• We had some friends over this week and played Monikers which I’d really recommend as a super fun casual board game!

I hope you have a great Sunday!

I bought a new sketchbook at the beginning of this month. I got the cheapest one I could find so I don’t feel bad drawing terribly in it. So, you know, brace yourselves. I’ve put some of my most embarrassing drawings so far at the end of this post as a lovely treat.

Cows

I’ve posted about my cow piece a bit already this month but I did have some more ‘research’ sketches I did for it - some fun wobbly cows for you.

Bug Jar

I’ve also already posted this piece but I’ve got some more behind the scenes for you!

Read more

A Slow Week

It’s been another quiet week here; a bit of house progress and some dog walks, mainly. I have learnt what a ‘mist coat’ is and have done that to the fresh dried plaster after the damp proofing we had done at the end of last year. I’ve also primed the new skirting boards ready to paint. All very exciting.

Food

This week we went to Kanto - a Filipino/Korean bakery in Cambridge. I tried the kalamansi cinnamon bun and ube pandesal and they were both super tasty! So soft!

In terms of things I made at home - I wanted to recommend this Nutella Mousse by Nadiya Hussain. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s one of my favourite desserts and it’s SO easy to make (I suppose with the caveat that you need some kind of electric mixer/whisk).

I also regularly make ramen ‘with stuff’ inspired by this recipe as a quick easy working-from-home lunch. This week I had some carrots and edamame beans lying around to add in, as well as some garlic and ginger (clearly I was feeling energetic) and then a fried egg, some crispy onions, sesame oil and sriracha on top!

Art

I finished a new piece this week! This was inspired by another childhood memory - I used to love exploring my grandparents’ garden and collecting bugs in my bug jar. They had a huge buddleia bush full of butterflies but I don’t think I ever caught one!

I’m feeling really happy with how this one came out; it feels like it’s my own voice and style which is what I’ve been really trying to focus on developing.

You’ll also be able to see some behind the scenes and progress on this one in an upcoming Sketchbook Scribbles post!

Things I’ve Enjoyed This Week

• I’ve been playing Tiny Bookshop - it’s a game where you run a small second hand bookshop and make book recommendations to customers! It’s the perfect game to tune out and relax with, and they’re all real books so I’m actually getting book recommendations myself! As I play more I’m uncovering a really sweet story and characters too - I really recommend it if you like cosy games!

• I also really enjoyed this article by Christopher Thornock about drawing ‘honestly’.

Happy Sunday everyone!

This is what I came up with - I’m sure there are lots more, and I’d love to hear if you have anything to add in the comments!

1. Don’t Undercharge

And never ever work for free.

I put this first because I think it’s probably the most important.

When I started freelancing I had no idea what to charge and had very low confidence. So I chose to charge my first professional client (a sizeable games studio) £100 a day and I felt very guilty about even asking for that. Looking back now I can’t believe it - it’s so low, they must have thought they’d hit the jackpot!

It can be really tempting, especially when you’re starting out, to charge very low rates or even work for free to feel sure you’ll get work, or are at least getting experience. BUT! When you do that, you undervalue yourself, your skills and experience, and every other artist in the business. If one person is charging $5 a day, that becomes the expectation and then no one can afford their groceries. You are a skilled professional and you deserve to be paid like one!

Also, in my experience the lowest paying clients tend to be the most difficult to deal with. Their reluctance to pay a fair rate often indicates a lack of respect for you and your profession, or just a dodgy vibe (or why not both!). It’s a bad feeling to be working on a project knowing you’re being underpaid for the effort you’re putting in, and an even worse feeling when your client is also really tricky.

You need to work out a sensible rate that both reflects your skills and time, but also as a freelancer you need to cover your own sick days, holiday, pension payments and your own equipment. Also, there will be times when you are between clients and you need to cater for those too, because (I’m assuming) you need to eat and pay rent all year round.

There are lots of guides and calculators out there to help you work out how to set your rate - Anoosha Syed’s one was the first guide I found that really helped me when I was starting out!

Additionally, a note on working for free - unless it’s something you really, really, really want to work on and enjoy doing, you’re almost always better off working on your own portfolio projects as they’ll be more in line with the direction you want to go in.

2. Taxes Aren’t That Difficult

Oh hey, it’s about money again!

A disclaimer this is based on my experience as a sole trader in the UK. I don’t run a physical shop, I just work digitally for clients so I don’t have to worry about any physical goods or buying lots of materials/stock.

Taxes were a big worry of mine. Going from your employer dealing with it all to having to do your own tax and interact with the government sounds super scary. But actually it’s been pretty simple. Don’t forget it’s a system used by (and supposedly designed for) millions of people who are also self-employed. If they can do it, so can you!

Two things I do highly recommend: have a separate bank account exclusively for work so you can track your income and outgoings (for those sweet expense claims!). And if you can afford it, something like Monzo Business Pro or Coconut (mentioning these two as I’ve used them, but lots of others are available) can be really useful to save you time adding everything up for your tax return. They also make invoicing really easy (and your invoices look nice and professional too!).

3. Know Your Rights

Did you know when you create art, even if it’s commissioned (paid for) by someone else, you still own the copyright? I feel like this is something that I learnt when I went freelance. As an employee usually the company you work for owns whatever you create during company time (and sometimes even outside of company time, check your contract!). But as a self employed artist, you own the copyright of your own work and you should be careful about ensuring that is both clear and respected.

In my private commissions I use a contract that specifies that my client is receiving a license to use the artwork for a specified purpose that we have agreed upon. That means I retain the copyright to also use it however I want. Sometimes a client (especially bigger companies) might want to buy the copyright from you (often called work for hire) - this means that they would own the art you have created and can do anything to it without your permission. Including adapt it, modify it and sell it on. As such, I’d recommend being really careful about giving your copyright away and if you do - make sure you charge extra for it.

4. You Can Build a Network

It’s true that it’s really important as a freelancer to know people. A lot of jobs come from word of mouth and personal introductions and recommendations are so valuable.

That said, I didn’t have much of a network when I started freelancing. I’d worked in the games industry for nearly 10 years, but only at 2 companies that were mostly made up of the same people anyway. I got my first two freelance jobs from people who I had worked with at those companies, who had then moved on to other things. From those jobs, I started to build up more of a network and it expanded exponentially from there.

I think you can build a network so much more easily as a freelancer than as a full time employee. You meet other freelancers who naturally move around a lot, and you make connections through the different jobs you do too (as long as you are nice, reliable and professional). Before you know it, you know lots of different people who all have connections in lots of different companies!

5. You Are Good Enough. (And a bit of Fake It ‘Til You Make It)

When I decided to go freelance I told a colleague at work about my plan. He laughed at me and said ‘You’re not ready’. Big confidence boost!

At the time, I’ll admit I kind of agreed with him though. My image of a freelance artist in games was a 40+ year old man who was highly established, experienced, slick and mainly worked on hard surface sci-fi cool games. I’m sure you know the stereotype.

But when I went freelance suddenly a whole new world opened up to me. There were all sorts of diverse artists freelancing successfully. There are so many people out there making so many different games (or books, or magazines, or board games, or any other thing that needs art) that you can (and should) be yourself and own your personality and skills. Someone will love it.

On a related note, I was not at all confident of myself or my skills when I started. But you don’t tell people that.

It’s an uncomfortable truth that as a freelancer if you don’t put yourself out there, you won’t get work. As an introverted person that can feel very difficult but you really do just have to fake it ‘til you make it. I felt awful sending my first email to a company asking if they needed any artwork, but over time some of those emails worked and got me jobs. Nowadays I don’t even think twice about reaching out to people.

Throw yourself out there, no matter how much your tummy hurts, and do the best job you can - that’s all anyone can ask of you. Everyone’s making it up as they go along anyway!

I hope these tips helped or inspired you! I’d love to hear about your experiences or if you have any other tips for freelancers - feel free to leave a comment below!