The Drawing Nook

Science and Me

Tue, 16 May 2023 20:56:56 GMT

What is science to me?

Science. It’s a subject which is sometimes given the same status in primary schools as Maths and English but sometimes isn’t. It’s often viewed as a resource-heavy lesson, meaning that, as a teacher, you have to go and find lots of equipment from different cupboards around the school to teach your lesson. Not every teacher loves teaching science, but I’m one of the ones who do.

So what changed?

So back to the big question - what is science to me?

To me, science is so much more than solids, liquids and gases. It's more than food chains and evolution and it's definitely more than worksheets and "what were my results?" questions. For me, science is about having real-world problems and real world investigations. Science is about underpinning big ideas and big questions with evidence and experience and giving lots of opportunities for investigations. Just recently my class explored how to build pulley systems to help fruit farmers in Nepal and become planets to help understand our place in the universe.

I'm excited to give children so many more opportunities in science, and I can't wait to plan more exciting and active science lessons both next year and beyond!

Pocket ideas

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 16:51:18 GMT

What's the idea?

If you've been anywhere near my Instagram in the past few months, you might have noticed that I am currently studying for my Primary PGCE course here in the UK. I'm five months into my course and soon I'll be starting my second school placement - that means I'll soon be back in the classroom teaching!

It's probably easiest if I first explain to you how my PGCE works. It's a year-long course and at the end, I should (fingers crossed!) be a fully qualified primary school teacher ready to start in September. In the most basic terms, my course is split into 2 parts: lectures at university and school placements. University lectures are where we learn what is taught at school and how to do it. School placements are where we go into schools and teach in the classroom with the support of some wonderful class teachers.

Something I have found throughout both my time at university lectures and on school placements is the importance of resources.

Resources, resources, resources! They're so important and can really help to kick-start a project or idea.

Now, I'm not talking about "fancy" resources like microscopes, equipment or experiences. Whilst these are important and hugely beneficial in classrooms, I'm focusing on the smaller resources. The activities which are super simple to do, don't require many materials but have the potential to make a big impact on the children. Fun activities, activities which can be adapted and used to fit lots of lessons and activities which, might not be new, but can be effective all the same. I want to put them in one place - here! This is hopefully going to be a "back pocket" of ideas which can be used to support learning; both in the classroom and at home.

As often as I can, I'll be uploading some pocket ideas of activities here, so feel free to try them for yourself.

A day in The Wild Place

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 21:40:13 GMT

The other weekend I got the chance to do something I’ve not managed to do in a very long time…go on a trip to the zoo! We were going to The Wild Place, Bristol Zoo which I had never been to before and I was very excited.

The weather was truly miserable, it was cold, rainy and there wasn’t even a hint that the sun would come out. I was wearing my thickest and warmest coat, two jumpers, three pairs of socks and my wellies. I was determined that whatever the weather, I was going to thoroughly enjoy my day. And enjoy it I did! As soon as we were off the coach groans could be heard as everyone realised that yes, it was raining here too and yes, we were still going to walk round the zoo.

First stop was the giraffes. Now if you’ve followed my art over the past year or so you’ll know how much I LOVE to draw giraffes. There’s just something so characterful and cheeky about their faces and their long necks are a dream to draw. So, with no sight of the giraffes outside, we headed inside the barn and there they were. They smelt very giraffe-y and were a lot bigger in real life. We headed up to the upstairs observation deck which had a lovely thick railing, the perfect size to perch a sketchbook. Out came the pens and pencils and I set to work. I’ve never drawn a giraffe from real life before but I’ve drawn them so many times recently, it felt almost natural. One of the giraffes was called Tom and he was thoroughly enjoying his lunch.

There were lots of animals to fit into the day so it was a quick drawing in the giraffe barn and then we were off again.

Next up, we went on a march to find the bears. We had seen the signs and pictures so diligently followed them along to a wooden walkway. We accepted that maybe it was a little bit soggy for the bears to be out and about waiting for us so maybe they’d be inside. What we didn’t think of was that they’d still be hibernating…which they were. It took us a while to realise this so we were looking and looking. We saw lynx up in the tress, wolves prowling in their enclosure below but no bears. This meant that a little bit of imagination was needed if I was to still get my bear drawing from the day. So, instead of from real life, I drew the bears as I think they might have looked if they were stuck in the rain too - soggy, grumpy and with a rather big umbrella.

I can only remember drawing in the rain on one previous occasion. I was in Berlin on a University trip and I was sat on a bench with my tutor drawing the "Berliner Dom". I drew for a few minutes but then scurried to be under a tree whilst my tutor braved the rain and kept drawing. There's nothing wrong with drawing in the rain, it's just not something I ever really think of doing. For this trip though, I was prepared. It had been raining when we left in the morning so I knew it was going to be a wet drawing day. I packed a brand new sketchbook (one without any previous drawings in which I didn't want ruined in the rain) so I was ready. Turns out, some of my pencils are water soluble which made for some interesting textures. I was drawing a rainy bear so the rain just seemed to make it all the more believable.

Next up we went to see the monkeys. I must admit, we had found the monkey enclosure earlier in the day when we were searching for the bears and had gone the wrong way. We didn't see any at that point but luckily, when we went back they were out and about in the rain. Now, trying to draw a monkey as it has it's lunch, behind a thick glass screen and in the midst of 9 prep children trying to also have a look is very hard so it's no surprise that the monkey drawings are something that I will look back on and have a laugh. Some of them don't even resemble a monkey.

We stopped for lunch (a very nice and warm Panini) and then in the last hour we ran off to find the meerkats and the wild boars before heading to the shop and then getting back on the coach home.

So what art materials did I take with me? I know I’m not one for being precious about my sketchbooks as I mentioned in my previous blog po s t but I did take a brand new sketchbook with me this time. I knew that it was going to be very wet and that I had drawings in my other sketchbooks which were part of bigger projects and not something I wanted ruined. My sketchbook of choice was an A4 Royal Talens. I took an A6 one too just in case it was too wet to get the big one out of my bag but I never used it. I took my tombows, pencils and watercolour paints with me and I used everything except the watercolours. My newly found water soluble pencils were definitely a highlight of my drawings.

I honestly can't completely sum up into words how much fun it was to be drawing out and about again after so many years of zoom drawings and drawing at my desk. Hopefully there'll be lots more drawing trips coming up so stay tuned!

Sketchbooks

Sat, 05 Feb 2022 15:10:16 GMT

Sketchbooks. Something so mundane and so ordinary for any illustrator but something that is also so important. I’ve been using sketchbooks for years. I remember when I was younger and I got a portfolio case for Christmas which was full of sketchbooks, pastels and charcoal. I was about 10 at the time and absolutely loved to draw (not much has changed). I used to have some “how to draw books” and would diligently copy the drawings in there and wonder how on earth the original artist managed to draw them without having something to copy. Those initial sketchbooks slowly filled up and more were bought. I don’t think I have ever thrown away a finished sketchbook, they’re all still stored around the house collecting dust. There’s just something so lovely about being able to look back at the journey my art has gone through and to remind myself of just how much has changed.

But let's go back to the beginning. I got my first “proper” sketchbook when I started secondary school. In art class we were each given an A5 sketchbook and told that this was going to be our book for the next three years. It was black, bound and seemed so fancy. Each week I diligently took it home and did my allocated two pages of art homework. I studied artists, made copies of their work and drew my own pictures. For the next few years that was the only sketchbook I used. Can you imagine, three whole years and I still didn’t finish the sketchbook. I hit GCSEs and the word “sketchbook” took on a whole new meaning. Initially I didn’t think it mattered. I vehemently argued with my mum that my GCSE sketchbook wasn’t important and wasn’t worth much of my final grade. I thought the only art which mattered were our large scale paintings called “prep pieces” and that the sketchbook was sort of a secondary thing which didn’t matter. Mum thought otherwise and told me to ask the teacher if I didn’t believe her. The next lesson I did just that and I have never forgotten the look on my teacher’s face as I said “My sketchbook doesn’t matter right?”. The poor man looked both horrified and astonished as he told me that yes, they were important and were actually worth 70% of our final grade. Oops. I guess that should’ve clued me in to just how important sketchbooks were. Did it though? not really. At least not in anyway I would recognise today. My GCSE and A Level sketchbooks were beautiful and were almost works of art themselves. They were polished and detailed with hand painted backgrounds, boarders, hand cut lettering for all my titles, text hand written on acetate layers so you could life the flap and still appreciate the painting underneath and so much more. They are a far cry from my raggedy sketchbooks nowadays which come out with me in the rain and have pages missing.

This way of thinking about sketchbooks carried on into my university course where we were told in definitive terms that all our work should be done in our sketchbooks. That was where any rough ideas and thumb nailing was to go, that was where experiments and doodles were to go and that was also where all out artist research and essay prep was to go. It became singlehandedly the most important thing I owed whilst also being one of the least precious. Claire, my uni tutor, once said that if we went wrong or spilt something on our sketchbooks then it shouldn’t be the end of the world. It was strange at first and initially I still tried to make my sketchbook look “nice” but this wasn’t A Level or GCSE anymore. At those levels you were only filling three or so pages a week and there was time to make it look good. On my illustration course I was filling three pages in a morning and there just was not enough time to get the hand cut letters out or to paint a pretty background. It became a working document and something useful, not just something nice to look at. Don’t get me wrong I was still producing beautiful work and polished finals but the sketchbook wasn’t the place where that was happening.

In my first year of university I was also introduced to the idea of “drawing out”. We had a separate module which ran alongside our main project which was called Observational Drawing. It was a simple module, all we needed to do was draw. We were encouraged to do a drawing every day and it could be of absolutely anything. I drew my uni kitchen, my plants, my flatmates and my family. I drew the boats around Plymouth and my desk. I drew anything and everything. I remember being told that the aim of the project was to get us so used to drawing it was second nature. By the end of the course you should be able to drawn anything from memory.

“You will be able to draw a tree without looking at a tree”

And so it began. From then onwards I was always drawing in my sketchbook. I don’t think I’ve been on a single holiday since without one. They’ve travelled with me to Venice, Berlin, Switzerland, France, Canada and so many more places. I’ve drawn on days out, in the car, on the beach and in the garden. Finding the time to draw is one of the most rewarding things to do in our day. I’ve talked about it before but when lockdown rolled around drawing was the only thing I could do (alongside the obligatory baking). I spent so many days in the glorious sunshine sat in my garden just drawing. I must admit there’s only so many times you can draw the end of your garden so I travelled virtually. I hopped onto google maps and from the comfort of my garden I was transported to India, Vietnam and Africa and my sketchbook came along with me.

So what sketchbooks do I use and what do I take with me when I go drawing? I've used a Royal Talen s sketchbook ever since I found them in a small art Shop in Plymouth during my first year at University. The paper is super thick, off white and pretty durable - the sketchbooks have a lovely feel to them too and come in lots of different colours. I have an A4 one which feels like my "proper" sketchbook where I'll do a big A3 drawing across a double page using reference drawings and observation. I love this sketchbook but it is a little bit too big to comfortably carry around everywhere unless you like to always take a rucksack with you. This means I also have small A6 and A5 sketchbooks which are the ones I normally take with me on days out and walks. They're small enough to fit into my coat pocket but also big enough to fit a nice sized sketch o nto.

I'm also an avid brush pen and pencil lover. I use Tombows, Fabercastell Pencils and Derwent Pencils and layer them up to create a drawing rich in texture and layers. I also take my watercolour palette with me to bulk out the backgrounds and colours. I always try and change which colours and pencils/pens I take with me on a drawing trip as it makes my sketchbook more interesting and fun to look through.

How I use sketchbooks has changed so much over the past 14 years I've been drawing in them and I'm sure it will change again in the future. You can use your sketchbook however you like and the exciting part is figuring it all out.

New Beginnings

Sun, 29 Aug 2021 13:23:20 GMT

It's been a while hasn't it? I think it's been a good few months since I’ve written a blog post and this was pretty much my face when I realised just how long it's been!

Life just got away from me and before I knew it I was packing up my art supplies and moving to start my new job. If you follow me on instagram you’ve probably seen me ramble on about personal projects and portfolios, which is what I’ve been doing for the past few months (and also why I've not been around much).

I applied for my new job all the way back in March (doesn’t time go fast?) but the start date wasn't until September so that left me five months to work on my art without worrying about job applications and CVs. I knew I wasn’t going to get this sort of opportunity again for a while so thought “why not update my portfolio, website and do a project just for fun?” so that’s exactly what I did. I know as illustrators we’re told to always have an up to date portfolio on the go but I must admit, I’m the kind of illustrator who enjoys making art too much. I always put off the scanning, editing and putting together of my work because it takes so much time. In the time it takes me to get three sketchbook drawings up to portfolio standard I could’ve done a whole day of drawing and produced five more sketchbook pages! But portfolio updates have to be done sooner or later and my last one was ages ago so it desperately needed to happen. My work has changed and developed so much over the past year and half that I was actually excited to see what it would look like formatted nicely together. I always work in A4 sketchbooks, normally across a double page so I end up with an A3 drawing. I’ve only got an A4 scanner though so that always means a lot of frustration and hope that the scanner gets through (it’s also very old).

Scanner woes aside, I also find it hard to work out just what to put in my portfolio. As a general rule of thumb I try to stick to around 20 pages because no one wants to sit through 50 pages of my work, no matter how good I think it is. So on a random day in May I got together all my most recent sketchbooks and a pile of sticky notes and set about trying to choose. I sticky noted almost every drawing. Which was a problem. But I told myself that you never know what they look like edited and some might come out better than others so I might as well scan them all. I should add that I like to work in Royal Talens sketchbooks and they have an off white, creamy coloured paper. When I edit drawings I always like to put them onto a white background so there’s some magic which has to go on to make sure that the colours stay true to how I want them, even when the base paper colour changes. I also became a pro on my scanner settings. Normally I don’t give them a second look and just click “scan” but this time I made sure to adjust the backlight, exposure, noise correction and other fancy toggles I had completely ignored before. Eventually I managed to get some settings which made the scanned image look pretty much the same as the drawing, but with the creamy paper taken away. Turns out I was right and some cleaned up better than others. Grey is a really tricky colour to get right. Some of my grey pens come out so similar to the cream background that trying to take away one often takes the other away with it. So that instantly got rid of some drawings for me, which was a bonus (although I have since gone back to those drawings, scanned them in again and they’re now in my portfolio).

At the same time as my portfolio update I was also revamping my website. Another bonus of scanning in more work than was needed was that any that didn’t make it into the portfolio could still go on my website. There’s always something so satisfying about seeing the best of your work displayed together and having a website always makes me feel like a “proper illustrator” you know, along with having a million plants and more pencils than you need.

I think since starting my website it’s only been updated a handful of times. The main reason for the massive delay between the last two updates was that I knew how quickly my art style was changing and didn’t want half and half. Ever since October last year when I joined the Henley School of Art animal life drawing sessions, I’ve been drawing from observation regularly and it’s really changed the way in which I work. I went through a phase of only creating my illustrations with foam stamps. It was great fun and quite niche but as I started to develop that way of working I realised it was quite "tight". Everything was drawn within the lines and my work was lacking movement. I talked about this in my last blog post "Pens, Pencils and a Sharpener " and how as soon as I started working from observation there was no time to make stamps which forced me to loosen up how I worked. I was also waiting to have a decent sized portfolio of work behind me all in a similar style before revamping the website. I know we’re told “not to worry about our style” and that “it developed naturally” - the second one I definitely agree with, but at the same time I also believe in consistency and wanted to have a cohesive website.

Now onto the fun bit - what’s coming up next. As I said at the beginning I’m moving across the country to start my new job and I’m trading in the city for the countryside. Growing up I always dreamed that someday I would move to the countryside, live in a big old house and draw all day. The big old house part will have to wait but I will be in the countryside and I’m hoping there’ll be time to draw. I’m really excited to start work in a few days time and I’m also excited for all the drawing opportunities. It’s a beautiful town with some absolutely stunning views and the wildlife’s not bad either. I’m meant to be packing light but there's a big box already full of sketchbooks and art materials. There’s a quaint little art shop in town too (which I already have a loyalty card to) so I should be sorted. I’m not really a huge fan of drawing landscapes but maybe that will change over the next year - I’ll definitely be by the pond drawings the ducks.

So that’s me, that’s where I’m at right now. Now that my portfolio is up to date, my website is up to date and my personal projects are done I’m thinking there might just be a bit more time to write some blog posts so I’ll hopefully see you again soon!

Pens, pencils and a sharpener

Mon, 11 Jan 2021 12:21:24 GMT

Pens, pencils and a sharpener - the staple of all art supplies. That’s what you start out using when you first try and draw and it’s these simple media that often get overlooked when something fancier comes along. For me my media choices have varied hugely throughout my life.

When I first started studying art “properly” at GCSE it was all about the paint. Our art teacher spent many a lesson teaching us how to use watercolours and my sketchbook was soon filled with paintings as well as the must have pencil drawings. Then we got what we’d all been waiting for - permission to use the oil paints in the corner of the art room which we’d been eyeing up for the past couple of years. I hated it. Me and oil paint do not get on. Looking back now it’s probably because I absolutely refused to “water it down” with white spirit or other paint thinners. “That’s not what artists do and it’s certainly not what I do” was definitely a mantra I went by. What did that mean for me? Well, the paint was gloopy and it took about three weeks to dry. Not ideal when you’re working at an obligatory three sketchbook pages a week and “my paint’s still wet” isn’t really a valid excuse. Don’t get me wrong I absolutely loved GCSE and A-Level art but the media choices weren’t what was making me love it. Throughout the four years of art at school I tried photography, ceramics, printmaking, pencil drawing, painting, pen and ink, sculpture (we won’t think too much about that one) and mosaics. The only media I looked forward to using were the pencils, printmaking and pen and ink which is almost the exact media I work in now. Funny how it works out isn’t it. I am glad I tried so many different media. It definitely prepared me for university (I was accepted on all the courses I applied to without a foundation year) and who knows, maybe I could have found a hidden love for ceramics which would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

By the time university came around I’d decided I’d had enough of paint and wanted to study illustration - a clean and crisp discipline well removed from any hint of large scale canvases and oil painting. Before I’d even started university my media choices had completely changed. We were sent a pre course list of art supplies which we would need so Mum and I scurried off to Hobbycraft to see what we could find. This bizarre list included everything from acrylic paint, oil pastels and paint brushes (not too bad) to some two inch household paintbrushes, a car sponge and some candles (just what had I gotten myself into?) Safe to say the car sponge and paintbrushes were used, the candles not so much. Upon arrival at university we were also gifted a bag full of art goodies which included more oil pastels, pencils and a new sketchbook which was very exciting - university meant landscape sketchbooks whereas school had been portrait books. Somehow I think the change in orientation also helped the change in the direction of my artwork. I wasn’t working in a way which encouraged me to try and recreate my A-Level work I was working in a new and fresh way with new media to boot.

My first year at university was a whirl wind of media choices and experimenting. I tried almost every way of working I heard about but they didn’t all work and they certainly didn’t all get good feedback. Sharpies? maybe not, digital drawing? definitely not, watercolour? promising, but there wasn’t anything unique about it. I even did some drawings with boot polish just to see how it turned out. Second year soon rolled around and the media choices started all over again. I tried my hand at collage, black brush pens and fabric patterns which were all promising and slowly but surely throughout the beginning of second year my work was improving. Then I started my last module of the year and I began a project which, looking back now, started a process which has led me to where I am now. I did printmaking again. I started a project in collaboration with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History called “Bringing the Oldest Multicellular Organisms to Life” and I was trying to imagine how some of the oldest fossilised organisms would have looked when they were alive. What better way to draw a relief fossil than with some relief printmaking? I thoroughly loved the process of taking drawn pencil studies and turning them into prints. I spent most of my time in the print room and came out with a collection of twelve etching prints showing a wide range of fossils. At the end of the module I got my highest mark so far on the course and it really goes to show how enjoying your media can make such a difference in the outcome of your work.

I went into third year of University a little unsure about whether printmaking was “it” for me. I knew I wanted to specialise in the children’s market on my course and couldn’t really see how those two fit together. I went through the initial experimentation again which seemed to be inevitable at this point and started the year doing ink drawings before moving on to coloured pencils for a children’s book in the first half of my final project. Let’s just say the coloured pencils weren’t doing anything for my work and I went into my last ever university module with the knowledge that if I carried on working like that, I might not get the first I had been working so hard for. A rethink was in order and one of my tutors casually mentioned stamps in a tutorial. That piqued my interest and I came back from the shops a little while later with a selection of foam, foam board and glue and set about making myself some simple stamps. It was so freeing and quick and really allowed me to layer my illustrations. I started with a block base colour and then used brush pens on top. I finally had movement in my work (a seemingly unobtainable notion which I’d been trying to achieve since first year) and my drawings had real life to them. I loved it, my tutors loved it and when it was suggested I take it one step further into screen printing I could’t have been more excited. This way of working lent itself brilliantly to screen printing and although I hadn’t screen printed since a taster session in first year, I booked myself onto another taster session and went from there. I produced some of my best work of my degree in this module and the children’s book I made was Highly Commended in the Pan Macmillan prize that same year (2019).

Leaving university was a step into the unknown. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the screenprinting as I had no access to all those materials. I’d bought myself a printing press at the end of my first year and so I dabbled with relief printing again as well as continuing with the stamp making. I revamped my portfolio to include more stamped illustrations and really developed this way of working. Then Covid happened and we were plunged into lockdown and uncertainty. A constant for me was drawing and I endeavoured to draw as much as I could during this time. I was at home with not much to do - why not use that time to draw, develop my work and see where it would take me. At this point I’d grown to love Tombow brush pens and was using them as much as I could. As with anything it takes time and practice to get to know the media and learn about it’s different applications. I took to drawing along to online lectures and these brush pens were brilliant for fast drawings. I then got some coloured pencils and, mindful of how I used them poorly in my third year, applied them sparingly on top of the pens. My observational drawings improved so much over the course of the summer and I’d added a new media to my list of go to art supplies. I also discovered the Goodship Illustration on Instagram and absolutely loved their Friday drawing sessions. Again, it made me create work quickly and not worry too much about what it looked like. We drew underneath a box, with our non dominant hand and with sticks and when you’re drawing like that you definitely can’t be too precious about your work.

I found an absolute gem in the Henley School of Art in Autumn 2020. They are a small studio based in Henley-on-Thames and in normal times run courses and life drawings and are just generally awesome. Covid meant that they had to take their studio online which is where I heard about them. My university tutor Emma Carlisle advertised their animal life drawing sessions on instagram and I signed up immediately. There is nothing more exciting to me than live animal drawings. The first week was marine life, birds of prey the next and I found myself reaching for the pens and pencils more and more. There wasn’t time to cut out stamps and then draw on top so my work was a lot “looser” and oh, the movement had returned to my work! I am constantly amazed at how much I have gained and continue to gain from these drawing session. Strictly timed exercises, longer drawings and an absolutely brilliant community gave me a great space to develop my work and has restarted my love of sketchbooks.

Looking forward to 2021 I am so excited for all the animal drawing sessions I’ve booked with Henley and I think I’m going to get back into printmaking. My press is waiting for me, I’ve just got to come up with some designs. I’m finally at a point where I feel I could make some great prints inspired by all the work I’ve been doing. I’m also keen to mix my media. Can printmaking and stampmaking go together? Can I use my brush pens on my prints? Of course I can! there are no rules, I can do whatever I like. If it goes wrong it goes wrong and then I’ll add it to the growing list of media I’ve tried, but what if it goes right? There is so much wonderful media out there and I am truly lucky to have been able to try out so many but when it comes down to it, what do I take with me on a drawing day out? Pens, pencils and a sharpener.

Lockdown

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 14:48:24 GMT

As we start to emerge from our weird lockdown haze, I thought it was a good time to reflect on how my practice has developed over the past few months.

So lets start at the beginning. Where were you when lockdown started? A question no doubt everyone will know the answer to. For me, I was in the middle of an amazing temporary job at Pan Macmillan Publishing, London. This was an opportunity which only came about as a result of the effects of COVID-19 on the book printing factories in China. I was a temporary Dummy Book Maker and was loving every minute of it. Me and my friends Jennie and Lydia had just started going to a wonderful little museum called “The Museum of the Order of St John” in our lunch breaks to draw on location. We had plans!

Lunch break drawings

Then Monday 23rd March happened and it all came to an abrupt halt. I worked from home when I could for the first week, but there’s only so much you can do at home without access to the printing facilities and when all the industries are slowing down.

After that week I thought … what now? and so, like many people across the country, I did some baking, some crafts and even a bit of gardening. Scones and fairy cakes were my go to snack, with the occasional carrot cake as well. I went out for my allocated one walk per day and saw the town I knew as bustling and lively fall silent. The parks were empty, schools closed and everyone crossed the road when they saw you coming.

Baking, crafts and gardening kept me occupied for a short while.

It was at around this time that mum got ill. We’ll probably never know if she actually had COVID-19 but either way we self isolated for 14 days and hunkered down in the house, watching the news briefings every evening and wondering what on earth the world had come to. As the days went by mum recovered and everyone across the country started to adjust to lockdown life.

After the initial shock of the sudden pause on life, things settled and wonderful resources and activities were suddenly popping up all over the place. Zoos were live streaming their animals, artists were having virtual drawing sessions and fun online events were being organised. If anyone knows me personally, they know how much I love drawing animals so I couldn’t be happier when I started seeing animal webcams pop up on my social media feeds. Me and my friends Jennie and Sophie quickly arranged to virtually meet and then draw from these live streams together. The first zoo we “visited” was Chester Zoo where the zookeepers showed us round and we could see red pandas, sun bears and penguins having their lunch. We talked and drew for hours that day and arranged to have another drawing session soon.

Some of my favourite drawings from the livestream

As the days turned into weeks, the virus was in full swing and it didn’t look like we were going to be let out anytime soon.

It was at this point I decided that I might as well use this time productively. I’d seen a lot of people on social media saying they were uninspired and struggling to be creative in such worrying times which was fair enough, but I suddenly had loads of ideas. Something that was taking off on my instagram feed was people drawing from google maps (why had I not thought of this before?). I initially saw the idea from Emma Carlisle and her lovely drawings of Kyrgyzstan on her instagram with her friends and I knew I had to try this too. So a couple of days later there I was in my bedroom wondering through the streets of a small Indian village. I’ve never visited India before. Never even thought about visiting India before but when my little google map man landed there I knew this was going to be great. The colours, buildings and vehicles were all so different to what I’m used to here in the UK and I couldn’t wait to get started.

India

I had so much fun stamping this picture! Yes, the Tuktuk wheel might be a bit wonky but I love it nonetheless and honestly, everyone might be onto something with these google map drawings. It’s a great way to see different locations from the comfort of your own home and with no pressure to create something “perfect”.

I also went to Turkey, Japan and then back to India again.

As the weather got sunnier and sunnier I slowly emerged from my bedroom and relocated to the garden and the sunshine. Having a change of scenery was refreshing and being in the garden meant that there were lots of new and interesting things for me to draw. Plantpots, flowers and bird feeders all made for interesting compositions and I even discovered that there is a magpie nest with very demanding chicks at the very top of our neighbours tree - hopefully they’ll come out soon so I can draw them! I thoroughly enjoyed working in the garden and soon my time became taken up with online lectures and virtual conferences . Me and my family have spent a lot of time in the garden throughout lockdown and I'm not sure what I would have done if we didn't have one.

Drawings from the garden

So now to the present and as lockdown eases and rules are relaxed, we’re learning all about our “new normal”. We can meet friends and see family members but only if they’re part of your “bubble” or at a distance. We can go back to work but have to wear a mask in enclosed spaces and we now don’t really have an excuse to spend all day in the garden drawing. As work picks up again and new projects emerge I will always look back at these strange three months with a mixture of feelings. Opportunities were lost, plans were rescheduled and family members were miles away but at the same time I was able to focus on my practice and learn a little bit more about what I like to draw and how I can go about it in future. Oh, and maybe mum will finally be able to get a hair cut soon!

OxGVC 2020

Sun, 14 Jun 2020 14:47:48 GMT

COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown impacted so many industries and events it’s impossible to keep count. Museums and galleries that would normally be bustling with people were now empty and large events were cancelled with little to no intention of rescheduling. As a result of this, the internet became the answer. Suddenly events were taking place remotely and people from all over the world were meeting virtually.

A similar thing was happening in the scientific world. Now, I won’t pretend that I know about the geological conferences and events that take place each year nor will I pretend that I would’ve been able to go to them normally. All I know is that I have an interest in geoheritage and fossils and I was lucky enough to work on a project in my second year of University with Dr Jack Matthews at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH) illustrating Ediacaran organisms. As these geological conferences and events were being cancelled I noticed something on my twitter feed - The Oxford Geoheritage Virtual Conference (OxGVC) was happening and not only could anyone sign up - it was also free. Anything free and with the opportunity to draw along to had me interested. I signed up, got my confirmation email with links where all the online sessions would happen and waited for the conference to begin. Hosted by Dr Jack Matthews, Dr Lucie Kubalíková, Dr Helena Tukiainen, Dr Lubomir Strba and Dr Taha Yours Arrad, the virtual conference promised 60 talks (both flash talks and longer lectures) from all over the world and it definitely did not disappoint! From the very beginning people were presenting their work live from Brazil, Morocco and New Zealand and we were able to ask questions in real time in the on screen chat.

As well as being an opportunity to learn about geoheritage projects, having over 60 speakers throughout the week was also a great way for me to practice portrait drawings - but what started out as practice soon developed into a little project. By mid week I had 30 portraits and thought “what am I going to do with these?”. Then I remembered being in year 1 or 2 at primary school and getting to do the infamous class tea towel. For anyone not familiar with this, it’s sort of a school tradition here in the UK. Each child gets to draw a self portrait which is then added to the class tea towel and parents can buy a copy to keep. My sister and I still have ours and they’re a great laugh to look back on which is why I was beginning to think that making one for the conference would be a great idea. It would be a nice way for all the speakers to remember the event and I was guessing that not many of them would’ve had their portrait drawn before. Hoping I wouldn’t offend anyone, I got to work drawing the remaining speakers each day and collating them each evening. Even now I think it’s a wonder that I managed to get all 60 speakers drawn. It’s common knowledge in our house that our WiFi isn’t the best and I was sat outside in the garden (far, far away from the WiFi router). The more people I drew the more anxious I was that the wifi was going to cut out. I was completely invested in making this tea towel and it would hardly work if I had to miss one or two people off because I’d missed their talk at the very end. Somehow though the signal stayed strong and I managed to see everyone’s face long enough to get a portrait done. This is probably thanks to my Dad as he kindly agreed to clear his work schedule and only took zoom calls in the mornings before the conference and in the evenings once it had finished for the day. As mentioned earlier our poor WiFi was never going to manage both and Dad, sometimes sacrifices have to be made!

The finished virtual tea-towel

I have to admit here, I even surprised myself with this project. For as long as I can remember people were my least favourite thing to draw and I always struggled to get a likeness. Even at A- Level art whilst everyone was painting portraits - I was there drawing plants. Now there’s nothing wrong with drawing plants but looking back it is quite impressive how long I managed to put off drawing people. One of the few times I did do a portrait it was of my mum and it was for an A-Level project. I couldn’t quite get her hair right so I drew her completely bald instead (I’m very sorry mum!) I proudly handed it in and never admitted to my art teacher that it was supposed to be my mum. He’d met her before and knew with certainty that she had hair. I must have done something right though because when she saw it, mum was puzzled and asked me why I’d drawn her long dead father. Somehow I’d managed to capture a similarity although she was quick to tell me that he did used to have hair. Considering all this, I wouldn’t have thought that at the end of the week I’d have drawn over 60 people but here we are and I have! I think the time constraints really helped me focus on how to get a likeness with the least amount of work. Some of the talks were only 5 minutes long so there wasn’t really time for me to be picky with details or try too hard. It was more instinctive and impulsive. For these portraits I used Tombow brush pens which I discovered in my third year of University when I was drawing out in Berlin with one of my tutors on a course trip. She had a seemingly unlimited supply of Tombows and kindly let me try some out and from then on brush pens have become my go-to pen choice.

The first drawings in Berlin using Tombow pens Brush pen practice once I got back home and bought some myself

As well as cancelling conferences and events around the world, COVID-19 also cancelled all my holiday plans. Now I know this isn’t high on the list of awful things that have happened as a result of the pandemic but it was still sad for me. As luck would have it though, with so many speakers from all around the world, many were including photos of their areas of work within their talks. I couldn’t resist drawing all the wonderful locations on show. From New Zealand to Brazil, Peru to the UAE, this conference had it all and it was like going on a little holiday from my back garden.

A selection of drawings from the week

Each evening I uploaded the day’s drawings to the OxGVC facebook page and the response was amazing and far greater than I imagined it would be. It was great to see people find the drawings from their talks and by the end of the week I had fellow delegates and some of the speakers contacting me and letting me know when their talks were and that it would be great if I could do some drawings of them. Of course, I drew whenever I could and everyone was pleased with the results.

Even though the illustrations were going down well on the facebook page each day, I was still a little uncertain when I uploaded the tea towel on the Friday evening for everyone to see. No one had asked me to do this and I hadn’t mentioned anything about it in case it went horribly wrong. I uploaded it to Facebook then swiftly closed the tab and told myself I’d look later. Had I offended everyone? Would someone be like…Oh no! do I really look like that? Then the likes started appearing and people were leaving lovely comments and having fun finding themselves and the people they knew on the tea towel. If anyone was offended by how they’d been drawn they were kind enough to keep it to themselves. After all, what’s a virtual conferences without a virtual souvenir tea towel?

I am so proud of this project and it has helped me so much develop my portrait skills. We’re still a long way off a full body though - everyone shall remain floating heads for now.

If any organisers are reading this - thank you so much for a wonderful conference and hopefully there’ll be more in the future!

Inktober thoughts

Thu, 07 Nov 2019 15:29:09 GMT

Inktober thoughts ... what I learnt in a month

Another year, another inktober. This was the first year I decided to do inktober “properly” and what a 31 days it was. I must admit, I did do inktober last year in amongst my third year university work and even though I finished, it wasn’t what I would consider to be my best work (if you scroll back far enough on my instagram you’ll find it) so we’ll pretend that didn’t happen and focus on this years work instead.

I decided that I was going to do inktober just a couple of days before it started so had to quickly scrabble around and find a prompt list. I went with the “official” list as I knew a few people who were also using that list and I really wanted to see how everyone (myself included) would come up with different ideas from the same word. There are so many other prompt lists out there; so definitely have a look around before settling on which is right for you!

Normally when you think of inktober, you think of black and white pen drawings but that wasn’t really something I wanted to do. I’ve spent a lot of time this year refining and developing my style and I really wanted to continue that development in these drawings. To do this, I decided that each day I’d create a new stamp and a new character based on the prompts and also try to come up with a little line of poetry which included the day's prompt word. To put it simply, I’d just given myself a lot more work to do and I was in for a very busy October!

Looking back at all 31 drawings, I can definitely see how much I refined my drawings over the 31 days and how much better I became at making my characters believable. Instagram was so useful to me during this process. I didn’t think anything of it when I was posting on my page and story each day, but as the month progressed it was so interesting to look back and see how my ideas were getting better and how I was beginning to create narrative within my drawings (something I tried so hard to do at University with varying success). I guess it’s true that sometimes it’s just best to stop trying so hard and let it come naturally!

When it came to coming up with ideas for each prompt and creating my stamps I didn’t really have much of a plan. I had no idea what I was going to do each day and it was so much fun to just sit down and come up with loads of silly rhymes to start the day. Of course, life outside of inktober goes on so I did sometimes have to do a couple of days in advance but apart from that, everything was unplanned! The prompts themselves this year were a mixture of words- some I had ideas for instantly whereas other were a lot harder and obscure. Ripe? bait? tread? those were some of the hardest prompts this year. Overgrown was also a hard word to make anything rhyme with! In terms of rhyming and writing I feel that I’ve also managed to improve upon that this past month.

Now onto my favourites of the month. I have so many! My favourite is this little ghost who lives in a tree but is hiding from me (above). I know I said that this month was all about making stamps, but this ghost isn’t actually a stamp, he’s a stencil. I cut him out in tracing paper and then stamped all the leaves and branches around him which gave me this lovely white space to work with. This was a technique completely new to me and something I will definitely use again in the future. For me, this is what inktober was all about - learning new ways of working and developing my practice.

D&AD New Blood Festival

Thu, 18 Jul 2019 21:07:50 GMT

D&AD New Blood Festival

So, third year finished, our degree show came and went…what to do next? D&AD New Blood Festival happens every year and is a showcase of university courses and their students’ work. This year is was between 10th-13th July at the Old Truman Brewery, Shoreditch, London (a great location surrounded by lots of trendy shops). Each year the Illustration course at Plymouth University take the third year students and their work to the festival and it’s a really fun way to end the degree.

There’s a lot that goes into having stand at D&AD - getting 32 people’s work together and organised isn’t an easy thing to do. We decided to have a loose theme to our stand this year in order to make it fun and more interactive. Our whole stand was based around a dress shop. Sounds interesting doesn’t it! Each student had 2 paper A-Line dresses to showcase their work on as well as their individual portfolio and a double page spread in a course portfolio. We also showcased individual dummy books, ceramics and sketchbooks. I had three dummy books on display “The Hugabaloo”, “Dragons” and “Everything A Mouse Can Do”. This meant that my work was being showcased to lots of industry professionals (and although I tried not to, I often found myself secretly watching anyone who picked up my books!)

I took part in D&AD mostly because I don’t like to be idle - I’m always happiest when I’m working towards something but I also thought that it was a really good opportunity to showcase my work. Lots of industry professionals go to D&AD to scout for new talent and, of course, they cannot see your work unless you exhibit. It was a fun four days and by the end I am delighted to say I was approached by leading Publishers …… wow!

A quick note

Thu, 18 Jul 2019 20:54:00 GMT

A quick note...

I’m so happy to have just finished my degree with a First Class Honours! I studied Illustration at the University of Plymouth where I specialised in the children’s market. I had the best three years at university and couldn’t have wished for a better course or better tutors. I grew so much at university both as an illustrator and as a person and I cannot recommend the course enough.

The world of children’s book illustration and the children’s market is such an amazing place in which I am only just beginning my career. I’ve decided to start a blog - somewhere to write about the places I go, exhibitions I see and anything exciting that happens in between.

Have a read through and enjoy!