The market season is drawing to a close. Here in Melbourne it’s getting chilly and the leaves are changing colour to mark Autumn. I’ve only been doing markets for two seasons and recently I’ve been reflecting on the whole experience. I started it just as we were coming out of the pandemic lockdowns and I …
I’ve been creating work on the iPad for some years now. It changed everything for me. I could talk about improved workflow and efficient delivery of work to clients. Yawn. But, my absolute favourite thing about it is exploring brushes and textures to work in different ways. It’s like preparing a canvas with paper and …
Decades ago I trained as a teacher. Before I’d had a chance to work out what I really wanted to do. Does anyone know what they want to do at 18, or what they’re good at? I did a pretty good job at pretending to be a primary school teacher for a while. But it …
You may have noticed that I got very enthusiastic about writing for the past couple of weeks. I had decided that I could put out three blog posts a week ongoingly. Why? Well, it seemed like a good idea of course. I do this a lot with all sorts of things. I can never manage …
My best-selling products at the markets are the collections of small doll ‘Sew Together’ kits. When I first designed and made them I honestly wasn’t sure how much people would like them. But I found that after a few weeks I needed to order more fabric. The ‘Little Bag of Friends’ are particularly popular, especially …
We need a mini-break! The first three months of this year have whipped by at break-neck speed. It’s just as busy as it was in pre-pandemic days. Perhaps we’re trying to keep on the treadmill to distract ourselves from the nightmare that is going on in the rest of the world. With horrific floods in …
It’s been a little over a month since I started selling at local markets. Packing up my car the night before with tables, gazebo, card stands, 20kilo weights in case of wind gusts and boxes and boxes of stock. Then leaving the house at 6am to travel to a field and set up shop with …
This week I had a whole lot of fun uploading some patterns and illustrations to Redbubble. It was incredibly easy and I made a sale almost immediately! That was a big boost. Why wait? What have you got to lose? I’ve put off adding designs to lots of different types of products because I honestly …
Tomorrow is the publication day for this lovely picture book celebrating some of the heroes of the catastrophic bush fires that took place in Australia early in 2020. I’m really proud to have illustrated this book, especially as it’s so local. It was a super fast deadline but fortunately there were no compromises and the …
Where do you find support and encouragement when you work alone? I signed up to attend a SCWBI event for illustrators. I would love share some of my work for ‘peer review’ (when I’ve figured out what that is) but honestly, after ten years of working as a professional illustrator, I’m not sure I’m ready …
Another 100 days Once or twice a year I take on a ludicrous but entertaining art challenge. It’s always an interesting journey. I’ve had some that have failed miserably because I just wasn’t in the right space or at all organised. Others have been an adventure. In 2013 I created pop-up sketchbook diary for The …
It’s hard to believe how quickly the past two months has disappeared. When I last wrote I was finishing up on my #100daysofanimalsinhats project with The 100 Day Project. I really got into the swing of it towards the end and stared getting to grips with using Adobe Illustrator and building my skills. I also …
