Grow Together

Delighted to share my newest illustration, because it’s about time I created something containing my 3 favourite themes, plants, animals and naked women. The Holy Trinity. I often create work as part of collections, but I think for once I’m happy with this as a stand alone piece.

I’ve barely drawn this year, especially personal projects, and I could easily feel deflated compared to the amount of illustrations I was able to complete over the 2 previous years, but I’ve grown a lot as an individual, overcome some really tough times and been reminded of what’s most important to me, specifically the power of the outdoors and the people around me. So this image kinda encapsulates that, and if it’s the only illustration I complete for myself this year, I’m happy with that.

Printing, as always, is causing me stress, but I’m hoping to have this available as the normal sizes but also a limited run of A2 prints! On my website, as well as at my upcoming markets. So watch this space for new products!

It's been a while...

I’ve been very quite in the art world over the summer, working on a few things behind the scenes here and there, but mostly just taking a huge break and not forcing myself to create when I don’t totally feel like it, and I’m really glad I did! There were definitely times where I felt guilty for not creating, and questioned whether I could call myself an artist when I haven’t drawn in months, but I continuously reminded myself of how silly these feelings were. Thanks to this long break, I’m feeling ready to jump into the winter and utilise the increased demand for products over the festive season, as well as more cosy nights in creating.

I’ve already hosted 2 market stalls to get back into the swing of things, made note of techniques to improve each one, and booked plenty more leading up to Christmas! I’m hoping to purchase a few things to jazz up my displays, as well as investing into new stock, which I’ll be sharing more details about super soon.

With this increased momentum of planning markets and creating new products, I’m also hoping to get the ball rolling again with the many different social media platforms and start posting more regularly again to engage customers. So to start that off, here’s a post to say I’m back!

BOOK RELEASE

Last week, The Life of Stevie Smortberry : Nana’s got the Electric Touch, finally got released!

Attending the launch in Crystal Palace, meeting Genea in person, and finally seeing my illustrations printed in the physical book, felt almost surreal! And to know they are also available in Waterstones and Foyles is even crazier, the two biggest suppliers! I’m so proud of this project and can’t wait for more and more people to see it!

Content creation

With all freelance project coming to an end last month and social weekend plans getting in the way of market stall opportunities, I decided to focus my free time recently into some content creation, to try and promote my products, create more online sales and draw in more audiences and hopefully new commissioners.

Most of my content creation was done on Instagram in the form of reels, as this seems to be the main area of focus on social media at the moment, but I will admit I’ve experience a disappointing result and I’m loosing faith in the platform all together… However, I’m sure having this additional content out there can’t hurt and even if it brings just a few more sales and a new project here and there then it will be worth it. Just at the moment with sales and work being at a real low point, it’s quite a deflating space to be in. I’ve also been up-keeping my activity of other platforms including LinkedIn, Pinterest, Behance, Dribble and The Dots, again with limited outcomes for now.

Content creation has never been my favourite part of freelancing, but saying that, I’m quite happy with what I’ve created. I feel my posts are reasonably professional, showcase my work in an interesting way, and there’s also a recent amount of variety amongst them! It’s also nice just for me to remind myself of some of the work that I’ve done as I haven’t had the time or motivation recent to do much drawing at all.

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