I finished a HUGE project this week. Well I say finished, but I got the first colours over to Ladybird for Dear Father Christmas. If you’ve seen me refer to it as Dear Santa before now, that’s because we just changed the name this week. It’s been intense because the deadline was pretty short so we could get it out this year rather than wait for Christmas 2023.
Now I’m tired, my head is aching, and I’m distracted - I need a few days for the dust to settle before catching up on my other projects. But if you folks are like me, I’m guessing you will be familiar with the process of ideas coming thick and fast while you’re on a tight deadline. I use a notebook app to scribble them down then re-visit once the project is done.
The two main ideas I wanted to explore while I’m taking my time out are maps and collections. I recently worked on the cover and interior illustrations for Peter Bunzl’s Magicborn. One of the interiors was a map (sneaky peek of a snippet below).
Now, I LOVE everything about maps, but I don’t get to do a lot of them. So, I’ve set myself a brief for August - to illustrate a map of where me and my best friend grew up and mark off our favourite places. It’s a birthday present and I know she will love it. The second project is a collection piece. This one is for my dad - he has a big birthday coming up in June (a few days after mine). I’m going to draw him a collection of the pubs he’s loved throughout his life - there are many.
I know I can’t do both of these in a day, or even a week, but I can use these fun self directed projects as my time outs. These personal projects are cathartic - I made a series of zines a few years ago that were based on my childhood - they have a different quality to my portfolio. They hold a lot of memories and emotional weight. It can be therapeutic to delve into your past this way through your illustration.
Now, can anyone think of a good title for my dad’s pub collection? I was going to call it Pub’s Dad Has Loved And Lost but it’s a work in progress.