Hello,

12 months ago, I set some solid goals for my illustration business.

2025 was going to be the first complete calendar year I was working on illustration.

Only in January, I found out after five years of trying and treatments, I had become pregnant.

There’s a lot I could say about pregnancy and the events that followed. But having been on such a journey, I appreciate that it’s a story not everyone wants to hear.

I’ve also gained new insight into parenting.

I felt like I’d been knocking on the door of an exclusive club for 5 years, continually being denied entry.

Only to find, now that I’ve been let in, it’s more like the Crystal Maze: loads of weird rooms with different themes and challenges, and no one has a clue what they’re doing.

In short, 2025 was full of nausea, anticipation, some fear and doubt, pain, lots of joy, love, relief, comfort, discomfort, many appointments and appreciation.

What I gained

2025 brought me:

• A new perspective

• A home, after four years of housesitting

• Weak knees

• And unfortunately, due to lifting things and using muscles I hadn’t previously, injured wrists. So I’m in double splints. I’m hoping it doesn’t impact my illustration practice too much.

I also gained my biggest client this year and was able to complete a big project that pushed me outside my Comfort Zone (a project that hasn’t launched yet so I don’t have much to share.)

Oh, and I gained a new name as we decided to change ours now that we have a new family member.

So I am now going by Libby Barr Illustration with a new web address libbybarr.com (that diverts to my old one until I have time to update it.)

What I learned

I started this blog to keep myself accountable to my goals, and if you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I’ve been pretty quiet this year.

Although I’d been so ill in pregnancy, I went to the Labour ward armed with my sketchbook, ready to ‘document every moment’ of the baby’s first days.

I laugh now thinking about it. I was inspired by seeing the beautiful sketches from the sneaky artist Nishant Jain when his baby Rohan was born.

Little did I realise…

Anyhow… I am proud of what I achieved in 2025 in life and work.

I learned it’s ok to steer off course for a while and be kind to yourself.

I also learned it’s ok to repurpose illustrations like this Christmas card commission. Spot the difference!

What’s next

I’ll be taking the next two weeks to review and process the goals I set in 2025 and to decide what I think will be achievable this year.

I want to thank everyone for being patient as I continue sharing my somewhat slower-than-planned journey here.

It’s a joy to see there are 333 of you and that this post from March resonated with so many, with 1277 reads.

I may have taken a pause, but

I’m still here.

And I’m ready for what 2026 has to offer.

Happy New Year!

I look forward to reading, meeting, collaborating and sharing with you in the next 12 months.

Libby

Hi there!

I’m in Battersea this week. Just along from the famous power station on the Thames.

London has been enjoying/enduring a heat wave for I don’t know how long now, and we are doing our best not to complain about the weather.

But inevitably, us Brits do.

We’re on our LAST EVER cat-sit, with the lovely Ragnar.

We’re on the brink of becoming homeowners, but I don’t want to speak too soon.

Either way, it’ll be our last cat-sit because I’m soon heading into my last couple of months of pregnancy, so I don’t have the will to move (quite literally.)

So this newsletter is #16, which, to those who don’t know, is the 16th month of illustration for me. The last 7 have been pretty slow due to the above, but I’m plodding on.

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Not all Illustration clients are art directors

I wanted to touch on this because so many workshops I’ve taken focus on working with clients who are art directors. These have been the likes of:

• Magazine art directors

• Publishing houses

• Brand creative directors

Or someone who has the responsibility for the art and design of a project that needs an illustration commissioned.

I have realised, however, that since becoming an illustrator, my projects have all been working with those who don’t bear the title or don’t have much experience of illustration or design.

And I think it’s something new illustrators need to think about and plan for.

There’s also a big difference between a client who has worked with an illustrator before and those who haven’t.

Tips for working with non-art-director clients

Here are some things that might be worth considering…

Illustration clients might not understand the illustration process

When you start out as an illustrator, you might assume the person asking you to deliver an illustration knows what it takes to do so.

I’ve found this is often not the case, and the client may look to you for guidance.

• Firstly, consider what your process is. What are the steps you will need to carry out to deliver an illustration? Including idea generation and final delivery. Doing this might also help you quote properly, once you realise the steps and time involved.

• Map out the process stages

• If necessary, provide this to the client so they know what to expect (I’d highly recommend this)

Even if the client has worked with an illustrator before, your process might be completely different.

It’s a great idea to share your process before you agree to start a project to reduce misunderstandings. I recently included mine in a pitch/quote pack.

• If you’ve received a project brief, try to go deeper to understand the different elements and communicate to the client how you’ll handle each part. If you don’t have a clear brief, write one with the client.

Illustration clients might lack the time to work with you

You start out on one of your first big projects, but it’s not flowing like the mock project you were set in your recent illustration course…

Unfortunately, not all clients have dedicated time to work with an illustrator.

This means feedback might not be forthcoming, which can lead to feelings of being lost and unsure of where a project is going.

It can also stretch out the length of a project, and if you haven’t been paid anything yet, that might be painful.

Try to:

• Set a project timeline following your process and share this with your client

• Hold your client accountable with calls or meetings, and follow up with documented actions

• If your client can’t make a call or a meeting, ensure you’re keeping up regular communication by email.

Illustration client feedback can be vague

You might have managed to arrange a meeting, but the feedback you receive isn’t very clear or actionable.

Not all clients know how to give constructive feedback.

They might not have worked with an illustrator before or understand what kind of feedback you need to be able to move forward.

Try not to feel disheartened. Your client might just need a little guidance.

• Help the client articulate what they think of sketches with open questions:

  • What about it do you like / what about it do you not like? why?

• Try to play back what you’ve heard so you’re on the same page

• If you haven’t received clear enough feedback during a meeting, set out questions, referenced to specific sketches and send them out after the meeting. The client may need more time to think.

Illustration clients might propose ideas that you don’t think make sense

You might receive an alternative design or idea that the client has created. This idea might be miles away from yours…

• Firstly, go back to the initial brief and try to consider where the client is coming from. Perhaps your understanding of the brief isn’t aligned.

• Try to put yourself in the client’s shoes. It’s easy to lead with your own views and ideas, but the client might understand their audience better.

• If you think the client’s idea doesn’t work, try to articulate why and propose solutions.

This list isn’t exhaustive, and the above points are mostly a ‘note to self’ for future projects, but they may help other illustrators who are working with illustration clients.

My experience is limited as a new illustrator, but it’s amazing what you learn from your first few projects!

Your experiences

What experiences with ‘non-art-director’ clients have you had that would help other illustrators?

Have you developed any strategies to help keep a project on track?

I’d love to hear about them.

Finding a balance

Working on illustration commissions and prioritising client needs can sometimes feel limiting, like you’re losing some of your creative spark as an illustrator.

I’ve found that having some personal work running alongside client work can keep me motivated to continue creating and developing my style.

Current personal work

Right now, I have 2 main streams of personal work.

• Making collections for licensing

• Designing a nursery wall-hanging for our soon-to-be child’s bedroom

My baby’s birth has a clear deadline, so I’ve decided to lead with the wall-hanging project and utilise parts of the design to build licensable collections.

The wall-hanging project

I’ve decided to go for an A-Z design on a nature theme with icons related to things that my husband and I have experienced over the last 11 years together.

Each icon represents something we can tell a story about, so it feels super personal.

We’ve decided to incorporate 3 languages: English, French and Polish as they have personal connections too and we’d like the baby to eventually know some words in each 3 languages.

• Initial sketch

• Refining the design

My collections for licensing

I’ve got a lot of sketches in progress for collections (my goal was to produce 1 every month), but I haven’t finalised so many yet.

In the next month, I’ll be aiming to get some over the line.

Here’s a wrapping paper I designed as part of a birthday collection.

Once we move, I’ll be looking to re-open my Etsy shop and get some of my designs up for sale.

Thanks for reading this month! I hope you’re keeping cool wherever you are.

Thanks for your patience as I plod through this stage of my illustration journey.

I’m looking forward to what the next few months will bring!

Libby

Share The New Illustrator

Hi there!

Welcome to my month 14 update. 14 months of illustration and I’m proud to still be wearing the newbie illustrator badge, perhaps with a little more confidence these days.

I’m in Wandsworth, South London, this week with Lou Lou and Jellybean.

It’s an attic flat in an old Victorian house. The flat looks out, through a big window, onto a sea of green leaves, from neighbouring trees, which goes some way to cancelling out the noise of a nearby busy road.

We’re hopefully soon coming to the end of our 4-year house-sitting journey.

Yes, we’ve been 4 years without a home.

I’m delighted to say that we had an offer accepted on a property and we are crossing fingers and toes that it’ll all go through and that we’ll be in by the Summer.

My biggest project yet

Last month, I was pitching for a new project.

I was extremely lucky to have an old work connection reach out to me.

It’s the kind of project that will be a great boost for my financial goals for the year and provide me with credible work for my portfolio.

The project includes:

• Logo design and branding

• Around 20 illustrated small icons

• A few basic illustrations

• Plus some social media graphic design to pull everything together

The project is related to renewable energy installations for the home.

If you know my work, you’ll know I don’t have this kind of work in my portfolio… far from it.

I was approached because my contact knew of my Engineering background (I have a design engineering degree) and my work ethic.

So I’m really grateful that I was considered without examples of this kind of work.

I said when I defined my goals this year that I’d focus on building my licensing portfolio but would consider each commission request that came in.

This was definitely one I wanted to, and was able to say yes to.

I will say - this project will not be fully aligned with my current illustration style due to the client needs but it’s a great opportunity to diversify and show that I can complete this kind of work for paying clients.

Although I was approached for the work, I felt the need to pitch back to the client to show that I’d understood their needs, in order to have the best chance of closing the deal.

So I set about putting together a written brief, proposal and quote.

I believe this got me the project and raised my game from a credibility perspective with the wider client team.

I picked simple branding for my pitch deck and included all my contact information in case the project ever changed hands.

I think it’s important to keep the deck simple so it doesn’t distract from sketches or the project theme.

I also included my contract terms, which I’ve adapted from those supplied by the AOI (as a member.)

I then sent the deck to my client.

After a clarification call and revision of the brief, we were both happy to get started.

Progress so far

I’d say I’m 50% into the project now. Things I’ve completed:

• An initial research and sketch review

• Refined a logo concept based on feedback

• Drafted concepts for all 20 icons

• Sketched out and agreed on a strategy for the illustrations

Things that are working well

Here are some thoughts I’ve validated and things I’ve learned through the process that I thought might be helpful for other new illustrators.

• Professionalise your offer with neat presentation templates and communications. This adds perceived value to your offering.

• Stage gates are key - share and discuss research, agree on key themes and preferences. After feedback, share and discuss sketches. Avoid moving forward to refined sketches until the client feeds back. It’s very likely your sketches will spark thoughts and a better understanding between you and the client and avoid wasted time.

• Initial client preferences tend to hold out - listen to the language they use and play back what you hear. Clarify and ask questions.

• Set clear expectations for decision making. E.g. ‘I’ve posted my sketches. Please provide feedback by the end of this week on which ones you’re happy to take forward and provide comments for revision for those you’d like to change.’

I’m using Miro with this client, so we are both sharing and commenting in an interactive space, which I find super useful.

Here is a sneak peek at my logo development process. These are symbols that represent the themes within the project.

These symbols are the absolute basic forms of the subject matter. I use the symbols as a basis to build a logo design.

I can’t wait to share the final project designs with you!

I’d love to know about your first biggest project. What did you learn that might be helpful for others?

An even bigger project?

Whilst I take on this big project, I have another big one running in parallel.

One that has almost thrown all my illustration goals out of the window.

In 2024 I wrote about illustrations I made to help me deal with grief and loss from a long infertility journey.

I really appreciated all the support and love I had from the community here, so thank you ❤️

It turns out 2025 has brought about a new journey, and I’m happy to share we are now halfway through a pregnancy.

We’re more than grateful for this news and the new direction that our lives are taking.

As I wrote my annual goals here, I certainly didn’t realise I’d be very ill for a solid 3 months.

I was really sick. A sick feeling that I almost came to live for each day, given our experience getting to this point.

My brain is now ticking again, just in time for the above branding project, and I’m here for it.

I’m not quite sure what I’ll be achieving illustration-wise this year. Probably not as much as I had planned.

I say this without shame or sadness.

Sometimes life takes you somewhere you didn’t think you’d be, and it can be beautiful.

I am looking forward to new influences for my work. I might just need to carve out a new schedule!

Key takeaways this month

• Old connections are everything. Remind them what you’re up to (on social media or catching up for coffee), and work may come your way sometime in the future.

• It’s ok to listen to your body and rest. There will be plenty of time to go again.

Here’s a little illustration I made this week for a yoga collection that’s been on my to-do list.

What I’m excited about for the next month

• Pushing forward with the branding project

• Starting a new personal illustration project related to our upcoming arrival that I can’t wait to share with you…

• Feeling the warmth of the sun on my face as Spring goes into bloom (you can keep the pollen, though.) ☀️🌻

Has Spring brought you a new perspective on your goals for 2025?

Thank you for reading!

Libby

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Are we addicted to illustration courses?

I’m talking about those short courses advertised on social media ‘that’ll give us the edge.’

Those short courses ‘that’ll solve all our illustration career struggles.’

In my quest to transition into illustration, I’ve had LOTS of conversations about illustration courses with fellow new and experienced illustrators.

Many of us self-identify as course addicts, but are we just addicted or are illustration courses pushing us forward?

It’s the golden egg of a question we need to ask ourselves.

And from my many conversations, I’ve realised there are different reasons why we choose to take an illustration course.

Should I take the course?

Before booking your next illustration course, it’s worth asking yourself some of the following questions:

• What do I want to achieve from taking this course?

• Is this course aligned with my career/personal goals?

  (If you haven’t set any goals yet, this might be the time to think about doing so.)

• Do I have time for this course? Live courses often provide recorded sessions so they fit around your schedule but will you take the time to go back and watch them?

• Can I afford this course?

• Do I feel this course is good value for money?

• Could this course distract me from other key illustration business goals?

Not just learning

Depending on the format, an illustration course may offer more than educational content.

You might be looking for additional things like:

• Community:

  Is there a space within the course environment where you can interact with other course participants?

• Accountability:

  Is there a buddy/ group system built into the course?

  If not, could you set one up with other participants?

• Critique:

  Do you receive personal feedback from course tutors (or participants) about your work?

  How honest will that feedback be?

These elements could help build confidence if you’ve been holding yourself back.

They could also serve as a distraction from other tasks.

Seek recommendations

One way to find out if a course is right for you is to ask people who’ve taken it in the past.

• Do you know any past participants of the course?

• If not, could you seek out past participants?

  You could do this by searching the course name on LinkedIn, social media or Google.

I’ve received many messages about the courses I’ve written about here on Substack and I’m always happy to answer questions.

Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask.

Which Course?

There are now thousands of illustration courses available, many offered by experienced illustrators sharing their knowledge and skills with others.

In my eyes, short courses are anything shorter than a degree. They can range from a few hours, a few weeks, a term, 6 months or even a year.

Types of Courses

From what I’ve experienced, I’d put most illustrations short courses into 4 different buckets:

Illustration/art practice

• To help you develop a regular practice or develop your style. This might be ‘learn to draw portraits’ for example.

Illustration/art practice (industry-specific)

• To help you develop your practice and style for a specific illustration industry. This might be a ‘character design for children’s books’ for example.

The business of illustration

• To provide you with an overview of the illustration industry or to help you consider diversifying into other illustration industries/sectors. This might be ‘ways to make money from your art.’

The business of illustration (industry-specific)

• To provide you with more targeted learning about making money in a specific illustration industry. This might be ‘everything you need to know to become a successful children’s book illustrator’ for example.

Sometimes courses are a mix of practice and business but I find that they generally fit into these four buckets.

I think about where the courses I’ve been on in the past fit within these buckets and where I need the most help right now, depending on my goals.

Course Formats

Usually, courses are either self-paced, where you receive videos you can watch in your own time or cohort-based, with live sessions you can join and learn alongside other participants. Sometimes courses are a blend of both.

Online self-paced

These are some platforms I’ve come across. Have you used others you’d recommend?

• 21-draw

• Domestika

• Skillshare

• The AOI - Inside Illustration (included in the AOI membership)

• Creative Live

• Goodtype

• Udemy

Here are some artists offering self-paced courses that I’ve enjoyed or been recommended. Do you have a favourite I could add to this list?

• Peggy Dean

• Tom Froese

• Weronika Salach

• Sarah Van Dongen

Artists either run courses on the above course platforms, on their website or a combination of both. Some offer cohort-based courses too.

It’s worth checking out your favourite illustrators’ websites because there’s a chance they have a course offering.

When considering a self-paced course it’s worth considering:

• Are there practical exercises associated with the learning content?

• How long will I be able to access the course content?

• How will I record my learning?

  You might want to dedicate a sketchbook or a digital document for note-taking.

Online cohort-based

There are many cohort-based programmes and these courses tend to be more expensive due to the interactivity with the course facilitator.

A facilitator might present all the course content or invite speakers to provide multiple perspectives on a topic.

Here are some cohort-based courses I’ve taken or heard about from fellow illustrators.

• Getting Paid to Draw - by Mike Lowery

  I’ve talked about this one a lot on The New Illustrator. It was my first insight into the illustration industry. The course includes self-paced modules alongside a live community forum, live masterclasses and sketch sessions. It’s predominantly a ‘business of illustration’ course. Mike has a fantastic roster of facilitators for different sessions which really makes this course stand out. The course currently runs in the Spring for around 8 weeks.

  The downside is perhaps the lack of live interaction during the classes as sessions are mostly in webinar format, although there is an opportunity to submit questions to speakers in advance. This course runs annually and Mike offers an alumni discount to return the following year.

  At time of writing this course is $960 / £750

• Inky Goodness: Make Your Mark

  I’m currently on my second round of Make Your Mark. This is also a ‘business of illustration course’ It provides more personalised feedback than any course I’ve come across. Lisa Hassell has an amazing ‘black book’ of illustrator and art director contacts from her time running an agency and the masterclass guests and art directors supplying mock and live briefs are top-notch. The course currently has a 6 months schedule of classes.

  The downside is perhaps the intensity of the course. It’s designed to get you working on real-life illustration projects and to provide you with constructive critique. Depending on what you’ve got going on in your life, you might need to make space for the course to make it worth your while taking.

  The Inky Goodness membership community (which comes with the course) is filled with experienced illustrators and there is often discussion on project pricing, agencies, contacts and other juicy topics. This makes it a unique course that I feel raised the game for me from an illustration business perspective. This course runs around 2 cohorts per year and Lisa offers an alumni discount to repeat.

  At time of writing this course is £700 / $905

• School of Visual Storytelling

  I came across SVS through their podcast. I’ve heard of well-known illustrators taking their courses. Membership and access to courses is priced on an annual basis. I haven’t heard direct feedback about the courses so would love to hear from anyone who’s taken them. Let me know in the comments!

• Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration

  A soon-to-be newly renovated UK illustration hub, the centre is offering a range of online courses around book illustration. It seems as though they are taking a break from courses in 2025 to focus on the centre opening but it’s worth signing up to their newsletter for updates.

  I took the Non-Fiction book planning course run by Owen Davey through the centre and really enjoyed the extremely personalised feedback from Owen and the small cohort setting. The course was 10 weeks long and had a discount for early stage illustrators.

• Make Art That Sells - by Lilla Rogers

  I’ve heard great things about the MATS Children’s Book Illustration course. Lilla, a former illustration agent has a whole suite of courses designed to help build a really strong illustration portfolio. I’ve heard these courses are also intense and require dedicated time to make the most of the illustration briefs.

  Have you taken any of the MATS courses? Let me know what you thought…

  The MATS courses are a mix of self-paced and live, with the flagship Children’s book course currently £400 / $ 516 lasting 5 weeks.

• Good Ship Illustration

  I’ve only heard good things about the Good Ship and half of the illustrators I know have taken one of their courses. There are 3 main courses at time of writing: Fly your freak flag (finding your style), The business course and The picture book course.

  The great thing about Good Ship courses is lifetime access to the course resources and community. I believe this is through a private Facebook group. the Good Ship also seems to have a great roster of illustrators involved in their picture book course.

  I’ve so far had some hesitations due to the lack of personalised feedback from course facilitators as this has been so impactful on the other courses I’ve taken. I am however considering the business course and there may be a live illustration course coming later this year which sounds very interesting…

  The business course is currently advertised for £495 / $640

• Let’s Make Picture Books - Steph Fizer Coleman

  Another picture book course I have heard good things about.

  Have you taken it? What did you like about it?

• Writing & Illustrating a Picture Book - Curtis Brown Creative

  This is a course I don’t know much about but seems unique as it covers both writing and illustrating. It’s run by CBC that has predominantly writing courses so it may be of interest for someone who wants to work on developing these skills.

There are a range of licensing and surface pattern-focused courses which all run for a pricer $2000 and are advertised to share ‘how to become a successful licensed illustrator.’

Here are a few I’ve heard about:

• Art of Collections - Cat Coquillette. A 1-year course/ community membership.

  I am currently a participant!

  This is technically a self-paced course coupled with a cohort community completing monthly business and collection creation tasks. Cat provides personalised feedback and the community is very supportive. I’m yet to get a feel for whether this course is value for money but it’s proving good accountability on specific licensing goals I have this year so I’m optimistic.

• Leverage Your Art - Stacie Bloomfield. An 8-week course.

• Immersion - Bonnie Christine. An 8-week course.

  Have you taken either of these courses? This level of investment needs careful thought. Jenni Macklin recently wrote on Substack about how to decide if Immersion is right for you.

Check out online courses from institutions like these:

• V&A Academy

  The Victoria & Albert Museum run the odd workshop and course in illustration. Most notably: Introduction to Fashion Illustration, a 6-week course.

• University of the Arts London (UAL)

  UAL runs various creative short courses, some online and some on campus.

The list is endless with galleries and colleges now offering online course options.

In-person cohort-based

Colleges and universities all over the world also run short courses in illustration in a classroom environment. Have you looked up your local institution?

Meeting for a course in person can provide a great local community, especially when you’re working as a freelancer.

Which illustration course do YOU recommend?

Have you taken other courses that aren’t listed here that might be useful for other new illustrators? Tell us about them by commenting here or messaging me directly.

I hope this list is helpful for when you need your next illustration course fix…

Thank you for reading!

Libby

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TW: This post contains mention of miscarriage

Hello there!

Today, I’m writing from near Paddington train station in London. We’re currently cat-less and staying in a hotel between cat-sits with Bertie and Chaplin.

February has been a bit of a blur as I was ill for a good few weeks.

Despite not being 100%, I want to celebrate a mini milestone…

It’s newsletter number 12… which means I’ve been illustrating for 12 whole months!

It’s been a hell of a great year.

Here were some of my favourite months:

2. Getting paid to draw - the course + my first paid jobs

7. Popping my cherry with The Guardian Art Director feedback

10. I started from scratch. Here’s what I achieved in 2024

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A colour palette crisis

In February, I received a great commission to design artwork for a community music festival poster.

The commission was to be delivered in 3 formats: an A4 poster, a long banner and a Facebook post.

As I work in vector, I felt these 3 formats would be fairly easy to pull together.

I worked fast, producing initial sketches and revising them a few times through conversation with the client over a 48-hour period.

The challenge was when it came to colouring my artwork.

Until now, I’ve been working mostly in my own set colour palette, and I’ve not ventured far from the shades I’m comfortable with.

I’d been wanting to experiment more with colour but hadn’t dedicated time to do it yet.

For this piece of work, I needed to define a new palette that aligned with the event, and for some reason, I found this really tricky!

I think it was the pressure of getting it right, to make the poster shine and attract people to buy tickets.

The initial colours I played with made my artwork look young and the poster unbalanced.

I panicked, and due to illness, to be honest, I wanted to give up.

I took a break to gather my thoughts and set about researching palettes from scratch.

I started looking at images that had the feel I was looking for and began dissecting the colours to understand why they worked.

I looked at ‘festival’ images. This led me to choose 3 main shades of dark blue, deep red and orange.

I added a few additional shades and named my first palette ‘Warm nights’

I wanted to provide a range of 3 colour-ways as options for the client to choose from, so I set to work building a second palette, one that had a more daytime Summer feel.

I found an image I liked and started building a palette around it.

It had warmer, citrus shades so I called the palette ‘Fruity Summer.’ The blue and white tent was requested by the client.

Finally, I found another image I liked and extracted more muted, cooler, pastel shades similar to some other festival posters I’d come across. I named this third palette ‘Pastel Pop.’

All this image colour analysis got me thinking about the impact of my colour choices.

I’d previously been drawn to quite contrasting primary colours, and these, combined with my clean and cartoon-like style, can make my artwork err on the young side.

Instead, the colours that seem to work better and have a mature feel are those that are closer in tone.

I presented the options to the client, and they decided to use 2 of the palettes - Fruity Summer and Warm Nights.

I’m excited to see the finished poster and banner when the event details are finalised.

I’m also feeling much better about colour choice and feel like I have a method for experimenting with palettes for my next projects.

Entering an illustration competition

In February, I also decided to submit an entry to the World Illustration Awards.

It was something I wasn’t sure about as the awards asked for ‘technically excellent’ work, and I didn’t feel my work was elevated enough.

But I wanted to get used to putting myself out there.

So, I decided to submit the work that I was most proud of in the last year.

These were the illustrations I developed to demystify fertility treatment.

The illustrations might be simple, but they have a lot of meaning behind them.

So, I submitted these 3 images into the ‘Exploration’ category, which is the category where illustrators explore style and topics.

Here’s the blurb I added to my entry:

I began this project 2 weeks after an early miscarriage, my only pregnancy in a 5-year infertility journey. Fuelled by a feeling of isolation and frustration, I wanted to explore how accessible illustrations could be used to demystify the complex topic of fertility treatment and help encourage communication around it.

Information on how I used the illustrations:

I used my illustrations to create the concept of a fertility survival kit: a journal, poster and postcards. This project primarily helped me process my grief. An infertility journey can feel like recurring grief and conversations around it are difficult. I listened to others’ infertility stories throughout the project and after posting about the project on my illustration blog.

I wrote more about this project back in December.

I’m really happy to submit this work as an entry, and the process has given me the confidence to consider applying for others in future.

Did you enter the awards this year?

So that’s it for 1 whole year of illustration in the bag!

I might take a Spring break in monthly updates this month because it’s month number 13, and I’m a little superstitious like that 😝

I do, however, have the post I promised about illustration courses ready to go.

I just need to add a few images, so I will get it published next week.

Have a great month.

I hope the sun is beginning to poke through the clouds wherever you are… ☀️

Thanks for reading.

Libby

Hi Hi!

I’m in Earlsfield, London for a few days looking after Ross the cat between 2 longer sits.

As Ross’ face suggests, things have been slow in January. More on that below…

Aims for the year

After spending 2024 developing my practice as an illustrator, I decided 2025 would be about monetising my illustrations.

I completed 2 illustration business courses1 last year and was trying to figure out where I fit.

I decided I liked the idea of illustration (or art) licensing.

This takes different forms, but for me, it will be creating designs for greetings2 cards and gifts and selling my illustrations to licensees (as opposed to seeking commissions.)

This will be my primary focus in 2025.

To test out my designs with my target market, I’d also like to open a small online shop.

A shop feels like a rite of passage for an illustrator and will be good for gathering data on what’s popular.

Subscribe now

Defining my business

After leaving my corporate job (in manufacturing management) I’ve run 2 product businesses and currently run an Engineering services business with my husband.

I’ve learned from some fun successes and many mistakes across these 3 ventures.

2 business planning bits have been key in each one:

• defining the product and how it adds value to the customer.

• creating a roadmap that links goals, a strategy and a plan to achieve them.

I don’t pretend to be a business expert or to have succeeded in business.

In all of my ventures, life has gotten in the way of plans, but having a framework to circle back to has been essential to keep moving forward.

My second product business went from us making things in our living room to running a manufacturing facility with contract staff, shipping pallets across the globe and being featured in Cosmopolitan.

We couldn’t have done it without starting with these fundamentals.

So I’ve begun to use some familiar tools to keep me on track this year, Namely;

• The Business Model Canvas

• The Value Proposition Canvas

• The Customer Persona Canvas

All of these tools and more can be explored here on Design a Better Business.

I’d really recommend trying them out to test out your business model.

I had the chance to do this with other small business owners in workshops when I started my first business. There are also helpful videos and examples online.

I’ve created versions for my illustration business and I’ll go back to revise it as things progress.

I’ve also begun using The Maker’s Yearbook by Nicola Taylor as a review tool and planner.

I met up with some other illustrators in January who are using it too and this was helpful to bounce business ideas around.

Defining my goals, strategy and plan

So I’ve come up with some goals to keep me on track in 2025 around some rough categories:

Sales Goals

• Monetise my illustrations to achieve an initial target of £1000 income/month.

• Achieve my first licensing deal by the end of the year.

Strategy:

• Client outreach: 5/week (~250/year) using email, LinkedIn etc.

• Launch a product/design test shop by Spring 2025.

I will assess non-licensing focused illustration opportunities and accept them depending on my workload.

Portfolio Development Goals

• Become a sought-after licensable illustrator through the breadth of my portfolio covering seasonal, occasion, evergreen trends and topics that interest me, by the end of the year.

Strategy:

• Regularly create new portfolio collections (6-18 illustrations and patterns on a theme): 1/month (~12/year)

• Launch a full range of cards x5, prints x5 and stickers x5 in an Etsy shop in the first half of 2025.

Communication Goals

• Record my journey and share it with potential clients and other new illustrators for accountability and feedback

Strategy:

• Keep a Substack blog - how it’s going 1/month and an educational post 1/month

The educational portion will act as accountability for me to develop new skills

• Post my collections on Behance 1/month

• Post my collections and progress posts on LinkedIn 1/week

• Supplement the above with Instagram posts related to my new work and blog - I’m reluctant to put a target against this but ideally, post 3/week.

The Plan

I’ve used a weekly planner template to put the above into action, defining a focus area for each day of the week.

It looks roughly like this:

• Monday - Planning and Learning

• Tuesday - Collections and process recording

• Wednesday - Outreach and learning

• Thursday - Collections and process recording

• Friday - Writing

The plan is subject to change as, bearing in mind I am still a pet-sitting digital nomad moving every two weeks…

I’m really grateful for this lifestyle but aim to be in a fixed home and place of work by the end of the year.

Slow January

After all of the above planning, I have to admit January has been a slow start.

I’ve been taking time out for some self-care after a very eventful 2024.

January Progress

Sales

• Outreach 9/20

• Shop launch:

  • Dormant Etsy shop rebranding complete.

  • Sample products ordered: 3 greetings card designs. Colours need reworking and new samples to be ordered.

• Commissions: 1 enquiry received

• Other: 1 ‘collaboration’ enquiry received

Portfolio Development

• Collections: 1 Birthday mini collection created: 3 cards and 3 patterns

Communication

• How it’s going blog - complete

• Illustration Industry/skills blog - not achieved

• Minimal social media posts in January

Now my weekly framework is in place to guide me going forward.

I’m hoping to move onto a slightly faster-paced February and make some headway and will let you know how I get on!

What I’m excited about for the next month

• My next post will be all about illustration courses. I’m on a new one specific to illustration licensing so I’m looking forward to sharing more about it.

• Getting stuck into my weekly schedule

How’s January been for you so far? And how are you feeling about the year ahead?

Libby

Hi there!

I’m in Dalston, East London right now, cat-sitting over the festive period.

Misty and Eevee are providing our entertainment and the odd worm from the garden…

Just starting out

This time a year ago, I hadn’t formulated the idea to pursue illustration.

I wasn’t even sketching regularly.

I was feeling pretty low and felt like something was missing. (Here’s how it all started.)

Fast forward to today and I feel very different.

I’ve got an exciting buzz of ideas that sometimes stops me from getting to sleep at night and equally, gets me up out of bed in the morning.

A feeling I haven’t had for a very long time.

I’ve learned so much and made incredible connections.

It’s been 10 months of work and fun.

I haven’t been looking at the numbers until now.

So today I’m looking back to enable me to plan ahead.

My favourite work

Before I get into the numbers, these are my 3 favourite projects from the last year.

How I feel is my #1 metric and these brought me joy.

Feel-good greetings cards

I designed a number of cards off the back of my Autumn portfolio brief which felt like a turning point for me and defining my style. You can see some more on my website.

Party people puzzle

Some of what I call ‘TV doodles’ - doodles made while watching TV, led me to create my first jigsaw puzzle design. This image represents the skills I gained in mock-ups too!

Fertility survival

This year didn’t come without some major lows. Thank goodness for illustration, I was able to pour my energy into this fertility survival guide project which helped me find joy again.

What the numbers tell me

Illustration Work

Despite writing a blog about trying to become an illustrator, this year hasn’t been about getting illustration work.

It’s been about growing in my art practice and building confidence and community.

I only started sketching daily in February and realised I wanted to try illustration in March.

Despite this, I was approached though by 2 clients who I was glad to work with this year.

• Trusted Housesitters - for a social media post

• Private commission - Christmas card designs

Earnings < £500

These two gave me some validation that my work was appreciated by those willing to pay which was an exciting achievement.

I did send a few emails about my work to a handful of potential clients but decided to hold off doing more outreach until 2025 as I wanted to finish changes I was making to my portfolio and website.

Community Building

Community is an important factor for my well-being in work as community tends to help make me feel safe.

I do my best work when I have connections I can share with and learn from.

I decided to start this blog on Substack: The New Illustrator

My mantra for Substack has been - ‘it’s a diary for me and my sieve brain to keep a record.’ but it’s also provided much-needed community as I start out.

I’ve had people cheering me on and providing vital accountability (thank you!)

This also provided me with validation that I’m on the right track.

All your reading, comments and likes have helped build my confidence.

I’ve been making an effort not to check any stats on Substack but to focus more on my art practice.

I also decided to actively avoid Substack productivity posts and notes because I want it to be about sharing the journey more than anything else.

But looking at some of the figures now helps me plan what I want to talk about in 2025.

Substack

• Blog posts: 20 - this number is major for me as I sometimes struggle with consistency. Substack feels like a supportive platform which is one of the reasons I stuck around.

The breakdown:

• How it’s going: 10 posts - 1 post for every month I’ve been illustrating

• Portfolio briefs: 4 briefs - these really pushed my practice forward. I can see when I look at my portfolio. These were vital for my development. You can check them out here.

• Tutorial/Educational: 2 - I aimed to develop a directory for new illustrators with lots more content but circumstances this year limited my ability to create these. I’m looking forward to doing this in 2025.

• Other: 4

Most popular post: When illustration gets personal turning pain into power.

This post had 421 views. This was a personal project that helped me process some difficult things this year and I appreciate everyone’s support and encouragement with it.

Substack Subscribers: 140 - all new as I started the blog in March.

This number means a lot - that 140 people might be interested in my journey as a new illustrator but it’s not a number that I’ll be using to define my success in 2025.

Instagram

I’ve also been building community on Instagram.

Meta isn’t my favourite company but Instagram is a place I currently feel comfortable.

I respect those who have decided to make elsewhere their home and I get it - I no longer use Facebook or X because they actively make me feel low.

Instagram is all about visuals and it has also become a visual diary for me.

It’s a place that helps me evaluate my work. For some reason once a piece is out in the world I see it from a different angle and I begin to ask myself:

• Could I have added something extra?

• This piece differs to my current style, which do I prefer?

• Why does this stand out more?

(I really need to develop these evaulation skills without the need to post!)

I also love the community on Instagram and my focus has been about making engaged connections.

I actively try to connect with other illustrators and it’s less about following those I can’t connect with, if that makes sense.

I also save lots on Instagram, using it similar to Pinterest.

I keep categorised lists - which I should really write a blog post about - would that be helpful information?

Here are my Instagram stats for my new account @libbybrewillo

Followers: 1250 - all new as I started the account in February.

Reach: Last 90 days: 10,349 - Thanks to a @thenew_illustrator Affinity tutorial I shared to my stories.

Highest reaching posts in last year - no surprise that most are reels, but surprisingly the most successful was a tagged story (of a reel.)

Engagement: Last 90 days: 932

• By top posts likes:

  

  I use this information as a barometer of what people find joy in and connection with. Some are coupled with captions relating to personal stories of my progress and achievements which people seem to enjoy.

• Content interactions: Last 90 days: 5309

I’ve made lots of genuine illustrator connections on Instagram, many from courses we’ve both taken and the interaction means a lot to me.

I’ve loved seeing others develop as illustrators because its hard and we need to support each other.

I use an app-blocking tool called Opal to manage my usage. It sometimes works!

I also repurposed an old business account for @thenew_illustrator (I know, it’s cheating a bit but it was a dormant account I worked hard to build from scratch in the past and was in need of use)

This account has been a bit quiet but I intend it to become more of a ‘my process’ account to partner with this blog in 2025 than @libbybrewillo which I see as my portfolio.

Followers: 4,442 - I don’t remember the starting point but it’s stayed about the same as illustrators join and I remove inactive followers.

All this data will help me as I plan 2025 goals. I’ll be sharing the tools I’ll be using here so look out for my next post.

Achievements List

Here’s a fun illustration I did sharing some of my ‘tries’ of 2024:

I wholly recommend making a list of things you achieved in the last year.

It’s been a practice I’ve done for a few years and really helped me gain some perspective.

So let’s look at what I did over the last 10 months:

• Started a daily sketching practice and became pretty consistent - I need this for my health now!

• Attended 3 major courses: Getting Paid to Draw, Make Your Mark Bootcamp (which I seriously need an affiliate link for I’ve had SO many people contact me about it through my blogs) and Non-Fiction book planning with Owen Davey

• Designed a range of greetings cards

• Received my first commission!

• Tried my first product illustrations

• Tried my first editorial illustrations - and got my first art director feedback!

• Tried my first branding and advertising illustrations

• Tried my first children’s book illustrations

• Started a digital co-working community with - I’m so grateful for connecting with Jenni, a fellow former Engineer, and using our connection to connect with others. Here’s to lots more digital drawing co-working in 2025!

• Grew a new social media account

• Created (and maintained) a blog - maintaining this has been a huge personal achievement

• Created a website

• Created a portfolio I feel proud of

• Printed my first business cards

• Started an in-person illustrator meet-up through the Inky Goodness community in London, celebrating the end of 2024 with a Christmas meal together.

And I did it all without a home. We’ve been cat-sitting, moving house every 1-3 weeks all year and managing hospital treatment in between. It’s been a ride. Thanks for being here with me.

I’ve felt more alive this year than ever.

Thanks for reading!

Libby

TW: This post contains mention of miscarriage

Hi!

I’m in Southfields this month with our old friend Orlando. Here he is saying hi from the garden.

Southfields is a little north of Wimbledon and a fairly calm and quiet place to be in London.

A very personal project

This month I want to share a more personal illustration project with you.

I’ve been in two minds whether to publish anything about it yet but as 2024 nears its end, I’ve decided it might be a good time.

It’s my 6-week Make Your Mark course ‘passion project’ that I completed in November.

Ironically, this month’s newsletter (#9) marks 9 months of illustating.

So I guess I’ve had this bun in the oven for 9 months but I’ve been on a fertility journey for a little longer.

One that’s clocked up 5 years so far.

It’s a journey I’ve been quite open about with people in my personal life.

I’ve literally been dreaming of how I can share the experience through illustration if only to process some of our experience.

The passion project module of Make Your Mark is designed to allow you to explore something you’re passionate about.

After experiencing a significant loss this year, I decided it was time for me to open up.

I felt it was time for me to regain some power and birth something from this 5-year journey.

I was also encouraged by these illustrators for sharing difficult topics in a comical and relatable way:

Coming up with the brief

I began thinking about what information I wish I’d known in the beginning, when I began fertility treatment.

If you haven’t been through it, I’d describe it as a fairly intrusive, lonely and confusing time, filled with rollercoasters of emotions and what often feels like a continuous grief cycle for the parties involved.

It’s something you don’t quite get to grips with and although life goes on, you are stuck in a loop.

A loop that doesn’t define you but somewhat overshadows life.

Reflecting back, I wish things hadn’t been so confusing in the beginning and I wish I’d been able to communicate some of the harder stuff along the way, with others going through it and those close to me.

Although I like to talk about the topic to increase awareness, I’ve received many well-intentioned supportive words that are often hard for me to hear and sometimes stop me from opening up.

I want to express my emotions but I don’t want to be a broken record and for something going on so long, it can start to feel that way.

The journey can be a bit of a mental health struggle and the support mechanisms are similar to any mental health journey. Sometimes offering a listening ear rather than advice is the best (but an approach I often forget when supporting others.)

So, I decided to make a mini fertility treatment survival kit aiming to combat loneliness and confusion throughout the journey.

I decided to work on 3 elements:

• An acronym buster poster to help decode language on online forums, a helpful place to meet others going through treatment.

• ‘Hard to hear’ postcards to help friends and family understand how they can best support loved ones going through treatment.

• A journal with calendar stickers and a results tracker, providing a place to journal thoughts and feel more in control of the process.

The Design Process

Putting pen to paper for this project was so cathartic and just what I needed.

I illustrate in a fun and uplifting way and I wanted this project to be no different. I wanted to make the theme relatable so I developed spot illustrations to make readers smile.

I had chats with people who have been going through treatment and illustrator peers which was really helpful to flesh out my ideas.

The results

The poster - and A-Z of some of the many acronyms used in fertility chat.

The ‘hard to hear’ postcards - with comics and advice for supportive conversations.

The journal and sticker set - a mock-up that I may get made in future!

I feel proud of what I achieved in 6 weeks alongside other illustration work.

There’s obviously a lot more to say and many more illustrations that I could create on the topic.

It might not be a fun read and it won’t be something I’ll be writing about here too often but it has been a release for me. It has given me confidence in my practice.

I’ve enjoyed connecting over the project with a handful of people on my course and in my network. Those who didn’t know anything about infertility, those who I know have been through treatment and those who I know but hadn’t mentioned they were going through it.

Every conversation has been like a warm hug.

I’m grateful to also share some of my story with you here.

I recently enjoyed watching the newly released film Joy (available on a certain streaming service) which is about how IVF began. It’s a touching reminder of the experience people go through and what made treatment possible. I’d definitely recommend it.

What I’ve Learned

• Being vulnerable can make you stronger

• Illustration can make challenging topics easier to digest

• There’s power in sharing your story

This month’s resources

Materials I’ve used

• Affinity Designer

• Mockup templates - like the journal one above - this free site is particularly good: mockups-design.com

Clubs, Workshops & Tutorials I’ve attended

• 1:1 Illustration coaching with Tom Froese which I talked about here

• Non-fiction book planning with Owen Davey and the Quentin Blake Centre for illustration

• Introvert drawing club - drawing goats!

• The Association of Illustrators online events:

  • Unlocking commissions through passion projects

  • Illustration in motion with Ivyy Chen

• The London Illustration Fair

What I’m excited about for the next month

• Sharing my greetings cards from my Autumn portfolio brief with you

• Developing more cards for the rest of the year

• Setting and sharing my goals for 2025

As always, thank you for reading! Feel free to reach out to me about any of the topics raised in this post!

Libby

Hello!

This week I had my first ever ‘illustration coaching’ call.

I’d been considering coaching and had my eye on a few coaches before choosing Tom Froese.

I’m part of Tom’s Patreon so felt comfortable choosing him for this session.

I was looking for someone who understands the industry and could help me navigate a bit of overwhelm that I’ve been feeling over the last few weeks.

I also appreciate Tom’s illustration style and his ability to create playful conceptual illustrations which he guides us through in his Patreon sessions.

Tom also hosts a great podcast and interviews some heavyweights in the illustration industry.

Digital Drawing Co-working - Tuesday 12th November.

Tom touched on how engaging in community is key when starting out and that’s why I’ve enjoyed and I’s coworking sessions so much.

It’s a very small handful of people (usually different each time.)

We take 30 min to work on our own projects quietly, then continue with another chattier 30 min, talking about what we’re struggling to figure out when it comes to digital illustration or just what we’re up to at the moment.

If that sounds like something you’re interested in, sign up for our free session here.

So a little bit about why I felt I needed coaching….

The think overwhelm I was feeling was from trying so many things and starting to feel a bit lost in it all.

I was feeling like I wasn’t sure what I was doing anymore.

I wasn’t sure which path to take with all the options in front of me.

I needed someone to shine a light on the things I felt I could see but were out of focus.

So we had a 1hr coaching call.

Tom sends questions over in advance which helped shaped the discussion.

My 3 Takeaways

Human-to-human conversation heals the soul.

My tech wasn’t working so I needed to take the call on my phone. My battery was dying at one point. I was a bit dishevelled and I could have presented myself a little more professionally.

Tom had read my website bio and I somehow feel I never live up to it in person.

These afterthoughts aside, it was a great conversation and much-needed.

It’s like my brain has had the on / off switch pressed and things have reset and have become a lot clearer.

Talking to someone about your work/practice/goals is extremely helpful to work through challenges.

I think we all need it on a regular basis and we can easily get lost in an alternate digital reality sometimes.

So I’d encourage everyone to talk… to real people about your journey.

Go a bit deeper, on one or two things.

With the courses I’ve been taking, I’ve had the amazing opportunity to try different aspects of the illustration industry.

I’ve now tried a bit of editorial, packaging design, branding, children’s book illustration, educational, stickers, maps, lettering, poster design, comics, licensing… not to mention sketching challenges, life drawing, urban sketching, the list goes on.

I’m exhausted reading this list as I’m sure you are.

I think this is where the overwhelm started.

Coupled with big things happening in real life outside illustration, the wheels of the bus had started to loosen.

So chatting with Tom, I realised I need to choose 1 or 2 things to focus on.

The 2 things I’m choosing are as follows:

• Non-fiction children’s book. I’m halfway through a course on this and getting awesome 1:1 feedback from Owen Davey and I would like to make it my main focus while the feedback is fresh.

• Greetings card design. I’ve set myself a brief already so I’m going to push forward with this and aim for 1 card design per day for 5 days as a kick-start next week. I’ll be sharing my work on IG if you want to follow along.

No more working on MYM bootcamp briefs. I’ve just finished a big one and the others can wait.

No illustrating for Instagram. I don’t do this much but the platform sucks me in sometimes.

2 focus areas.

Let’s see how I get on with them for the rest of 2024 (that’s 7 weeks btw.)

Enjoy creating. My portfolio can wait.

I talked a little about sometimes feeling like I lose my creativity when presented with a brief. I think this is down to current comfort level and experience.

I think working to briefs is key to building your portfolio but it’s important I leave time to develop my style.

Not in pursuit of a style but naturally, to develop more as an illustrator.

Illustrating in a comfortable safe space for a while, without the pressure of the pieces being portfolio perfect.

So with my 2 focus areas set, the aim is to work on them without feeling the need to feed my portfolio.

The work is for me to explore.

Period.

Have you had illustration coaching? Can you recommend other coaches? Let me know by reply or in the comments!

On that note, I better get back to my focuses…

Sending you all my thoughts in these difficult times around the world.

Lots of reflections on lots of issues this week.

Stay safe, stay warm and thank you for reading!

(Maybe see you on Tuesday)

Libby

Hi!

Happy Halloween or Samhain to you.

Alas, I didn’t come with any themed illustrations.

Everyone else is doing such a good job at spooky posts on social media, that I thought I’d leave it to those who do it best.

I’m in Poland this week. We’re working from Warsaw.

No cat responsibilities for a whole 3 weeks!

Here’s a glimpse into my mobile illustration studio…

It’s been a fun month full of learning but I’ve also been trying to maintain the balance so I’m prioritising key course assignments at the moment.

A magazine cover

I’m finally able to reveal that I was working on a proposal for Ferment magazine’s October issue - celebrating Belgian beer.

It was a live brief set by Adele Juzara, art director at Ferment, the craft beer magazine and subscription service, as part of the Inky Goodness Make Your Mark Bootcamp.

This was a really fun brief and I felt a bit more comfortable with it compared to the Guardian magazine one on grief.

Perhaps because beer is a physical thing (I’d like to work on my conceptual illustration skills!)

Here are some initial sketches I made.

If I’m being totally honest - I preferred my first two concepts

• a tapestry-style design

• stained glass-style design

I went with the third monk swimming in beer idea because everyone on the course was drawn to it because of its direct humour.

I was super nervous as this was my first ever brief set by an art director (it came before the Guardian brief.) If I were to go back, I might have stuck to my guns and gone for one of the other concepts, integrating some humour into them.

Here are my colour roughs:

• The Belgian flag colours

• More traditional colours with a pop of red

• Yellow and blue pops with an outlined title

I ended up going for blue and based on Adele’s feedback, adding a bit of texture to the image.

Adele was extremely kind and helpful with her feedback. She spent extra time on this and it was greatly appreciated by the Inky Goodness cohort.

A Risograph bootcamp

I got the chance to participate in a 1-day hands-on workshop this month, in Lewisham in London, all about Risograph.

Risograph is a type of printing that prints layers of individual colours, usually in large volumes as the machine creates a stencil for each layer.

It’s a super cool way of printing and can produce interesting effects.

Everyone in the illustration community seems to be talking about Risograph printing so I had to find out all about it!

Luckily we had a cat-sit near the Pagemasters, the riso studio in Lewisham, so it was a short walk for me.

It was 7 hours of Riso fun learning about gradients, alignment, trapping and formatting.

We produced our very own Risograph guidebook.

Disappointingly there was no consensus on how to pronounce Riso.

There was a mixture of R(ee)so, R(igh)so and R(ih)so.

Apparently, that’s the charm.

There’s no right answer.

I’m sure someone’s going to enlighten me after they read this… please let us know in the comments!

Here is a piece I created during the workshop. We handmade some designs on tracing paper that were scanned into the machine, a method that is rarely used now with digital files.

The brilliant thing about Risograph is that the community seems to be so sharing and kind.

I’m looking forward to planning a future Riso project!

My first genuine pricing enquiry

In the last week, I received my first pricing enquiry through my website.

I say genuine because illustrators tend to receive random DMs from people on Instagram, from accounts with zero followers that seem to disappear after a while. These end up in my blocked message folder…

In the email I received, I was asked to price an advertising/branding opportunity.

After initially thinking it was (obviously) spam…

I checked the following:

• Name

• Email address - was it from a weird email not associated with the person’s name or company?

• Email contents - was the wording iffy?

• Website - where was the company based and are they likely to be enquiring about illustrations? Was the name of the person contacting me on said website?

The name was there, plus a nice picture.

So unless someone had hacked into this lovely person’s email account and worded a very polite project brief, I made the assumption it was genuine.

To price, thankfully, as a member, I had the AOI pricing calculator for a bit of help. It doesn’t suggest prices but more helps with the terms based on what the illustration will be used for.

The key considerations I made when quoting were:

• Time to illustrate based on the basic brief provided

• Number of revisions - I shared an expectation in my reply

• Licence term - I shared a term based on the price quoted

Having a licencing term up front when pricing is the single most common advice I’ve seen from illustrators in different online communities.

Artwork that’s expected to be used for a long time, should pay back.

Usually, this kind of enquiry goes out to several illustrators to quote so we’ll see if anything comes of it!

… I’ll keep you posted as and when I can.

What I’ve learned

This month I’ve tried to keep my head down and focus on a couple of key projects. I’m prioritising balance and allowing some personal briefs to go on hold while I focus on those that will bring the most depth to my portfolio.

One of these is my greetings card brief although I have made a good start.

I loved getting hands-on with real people and Risograph. I felt part of the illustration community and comfortable sharing my story which was a great feeling.

After discussions with friends and others, I’m learning my journey has only started. I need to keep reminding myself that it’s ok not to have everything figured out yet.

This month’s resources

Materials I’ve used

• Affinity Designer mostly

• Collage and sketching in the Risograph bootcamp

Clubs, Workshops & Tutorials I’ve attended

• As part of Inky Goodness Make Your Mark Bootcamp:

  • Craft your passion project with Julia Praschma

  • Mentoring with Lisk Feng

  • The Plum Agency and Picture Book Illustrator Jess Mason

• Non-fiction book planning with Owen Davey

• Risograph Bootcamp at Pagemasters

What I’m excited about for the next month

• My first illustration coaching session with Tom Froese - very excited about that…

• Finishing my Inky Goodness passion project - I’ll share all about it next month!

• Continuing wth greeting cards as part of my latest brief.

and I are running another illustration coworking session on November 12th. Sign up here!

Has any of this month’s update been helpful for you? I’d love to know if you’ve tried Riso before and how you got on?

Thank you for reading!

Libby

Hello there!

Today I’m in Ladywell, South London looking after my new cat-sit pal Pudding while her parents are sunning themselves in Mexico.

I’m a little late getting this September review out and it has been another busy month…

First Art Director feedback

In September I finished two editorial briefs initiated on Make Your Mark Bootcamp, the course I’m currently taking.

I can’t talk about the first brief because it was live and the magazine cover will be published later this month…

Spoiler alert, I didn’t get the cover.

The second brief was set by Sarah Habershon, Art Director of G2 magazine to accompany a feature on ‘the power of shared grief, from covid to the queen.’

Preamble

I was a bit intimidated by this brief.

I hadn’t illustrated anything on a sensitive topic before and generally started the project feeling ‘I don’t know if newspaper editorial is for me’

This meant I didn’t spend a huge amount of time on the project and looking back, I feel I could have gone further in my initial idea development.

This was a mock brief (not to be published) but I knew having live interaction with an Art Director would be immense learning.

The process had 3 stages and followed Sarah’s usual process.

Stage 1 - Inital sketches

I thought as it was the Guardian, they’d be looking for something quite abstract but I soon learned this wasn’t the case.

These were my cover proposals…

And these were my feature proposals…

While reviewing the sketches she’d chosen (not mine), Sarah shared that she’d be looking for something quite figurative for a topic so personal so I realised then that I’d gone in the wrong direction.

I learned a lot from Sarah’s review of her favourite sketches. This session was about an hour and a half of Sarah talking through all her thoughts.

I learned that an Art Director is simply an individual who has an opinion and a preference for their publication.

I’m not sure I saw the Art Director as a real human until I heard Sarah talk and the process started to feel much more relatable.

I learned that it’s more about the relationship between the Art Director and Illustrator than I’d previously realised and this somehow made me feel better about potential rejections in future.

Sometimes you and your work just won’t be a match.

I learned about things to avoid:

• speech bubbles, jigsaw pieces or cliche symbolism

• technology, because we see it on such a regular basis

But these again, were Sarah’s opinions and may differ from publication to publication.

Stage 2 - Colour roughs

I received positive feedback from my peers about the flag pulling sketch so I went with this for the cover. I added human figures under umbrellas as the article mentioned queuing in the rain.

Sarah seemed to prefer the submissions featuring mourners under umbrellas so this was a good steer. I added a soldier too to reference the Queen.

My colour roughs were reviewed by course director Lisa Hassell.

I didn’t have the opportunity for Sarah to review them because I had a technical issue at the time of uploading and missed the deadline… oops.

Lesson learned.

I probably should have tried out more colour palettes here but for some reason I felt I needed to stick with red, blue and cream.

I think I just wanted to get the pieces handed in as doing this kind of project for the first time was somewhat overwhelming.

Lisa and I both agreed the cream theme, option 2 was the most hopeful colour.

Lisa’s feedback was that the cover needed to be more zoomed in or the background needed more interest.

She also noted that one of the hearts on the feature could be bigger to create more contrast.

Stage 3 - Final submission

I made the suggested changes before submitting.

Although I felt I could have spent more time on this project, it felt good to complete my first every editorial brief.

Sarah then reviewed all final submissions live, including my work.

In summary her thoughts were:

• Cover - initially made her smile due to the soldier but would probably get rid of him and put more focus on the people.

• There’s maybe too much focus on the Union Jack flag, maybe if it was blowing in the wind so it wasn’t so prominent.

• Feature - The two illustrations don’t go together cohesively enough - I could include figures in the feature illustration to match the cover.

The feedback all made sense.

What I learned

• The time in front of Sarah was invaluable. Hearing the feedback of everyone else’s pieces was just as valuable, if not more valuable than my own.

• I could see why things were working and things that didn’t.

• I begun to understand the difference between a finished piece ready for publication and something that needed more work, in Sarah’s opinion.

• I got more of a feel for what G2 is looking for and what might be better suited for The Guardian newspaper (long-read) itself.

• I’d probbaly try to get more connected with the topic next time I do a brief like this. I was too focused on what I thought they wanted than developing an authentic solution and I think that shows in my final illustrations.

Some more illustrations I created this month!

I finished a jigsaw design for my portfolio:

I created some fun mock branding for my portfolio:

I started trying out some ideas for greetings card designs for my Autumn brief:

This month’s resources

Materials I’ve used

Mostly digital apps - the brief was completed on Procreate but I’ve been mostly focusing on using Affinity Designer for my other work. I find it much better because I can scale things so easily.

Clubs, Workshops & Tutorials I’ve attended

• As part of Make Your Mark Bootcamp:

  • 30-days of sketch review - I won a community prize for my work last month!

  • Behance for Creatives

  • Working session on a packaging brief with illustrator Luke McConkey

  • Masterclass with Marc David Spengler - this was amazing!

• Non-Fiction Picture Book Planning with Owen Davey - a new 10-week short course I’ve joined! Another course, I know, but I just couldn’t resist this one as a Winter focus.

• Digital co-working with and I. Look out for our next session…

• Draw Brighton - Life drawing

• Pencils 4 Tea portrait club

• An IRL Inky Goodness London pub meetup

• AOI talks:

  • Showcasing your work and building community

  • Drawing Diversely with Justyna Green

  • Illustrators in Motion with Danielle Rhoda

What I’m excited about for the next month

• Progressing with potential client outreach - the aim is 100 rejections…

• Continuing with Inky Goodness briefs

• My first ever inktober. You can follow my progress here.

Yesterday I reached 100 subscribers to The New Illustrator!

So a huge thank you for joining, sharing and commenting along the way. I hope some of the content has been useful.

If you’d like to see how my portfolio is shaping up you can view it here.

I’d love to know if you’ve been developing your portfolio too.

Have you been reaching out to Art Directors yet? Let me know by reply or in the comments.

Happy Spooky season!

Libby

Hi there!

Today I’m sharing an Autumn portfolio brief that will run from Sep-Nov.

If you want to catch up on my previous portfolio briefs and resources, you can access them here:

• May - an illustrated map

• June - a sticker set

• July - an exhibition poster

I’ve had a good break from setting portfolio briefs during August and I’m looking forward to delving deeper these next three months to produce…

A RANGE OF GREETINGS CARDS

Why Greetings cards?

I had been avoiding greetings cards as a new illustrator because, with lots of experience as a market seller in East London, I didn’t want to go down the route of making and selling my own cards.

The cold winter days, warming my well-wrapped-up feet on a piece of cardboard is etched on my memory.

But I’ve recently come around to the idea of licensing my designs to greetings card companies.

And I can’t do that without some greetings cards within my portfolio.

The brief

This time it’s a ‘real’ brief, set for the purposes of pitching to licensing agencies.

Design a range of cards covering the following:

• Birthday - adult

• Birthday - children

• Christmas

• Valentines

• Thank You

• Blank

Something a licensing agency said in a talk I attended recently was:

When someone is buying a card, they see it as a reflection of themselves or the person they are buying it for.

They said that greetings cards also don’t usually feature realistic human characters as they may not relate to the person buying, so avoid these.

So with those points in mind potential ‘safe’ topics:

• Florals

• Animals

• Party

• Type-focused designs

• Cute stuff

• Pattern

Here are some beautifully illustrated cards I came across at the Studio Boketto stand when I attended Top Drawer retail trade fair in London this week.

The brief runs till November with the idea of having cards ready for Christmas to give to loved ones but have a portfolio ready for the new year for agencies.

Getting started

I’ve already got some ideas sketched (which I’ll share soon) and will be leveraging from work I’ve already created.

I’ve been analysing card displays in greetings card shops and what stands out for me and without a doubt it’s COLOUR 🌈

Things to consider

• Format. There seem to be different standard formats and sizes in different countries. Have a search or measure some examples from companies you would want to work for.

• Standing out on the shelf - I’ve found visiting greetings card shops helpful for this. Thinking ‘why does this card stand out more than others?’

• Consistency across the range. As art directors tend to be looking for a consistent style, bear this in mind when deciding on a design

• Broad appeal ‘are people going to want to buy, gift or have your design in their living room?’

Confession Time - As usual I have never designed a greetings card for licensing! So I’m going to be learning as I go. I’m assuming that might be the case for you too. Here are some resources I will be considering using:

Resources

I found this video which seems quite helpful from the well-known illustrator Liz Kohler Brown.

I’ll be researching greetings card retailers online like:

• Hallmark

• Ohh Deer

• Scribbler

I’ve also been following who has been writing about her experience in greetings cards design so I’ll be gleaming some tips from her Substack, like this post ‘Anatomy of a Greetings Card.’

Who’s with me?

If anyone wants to join, I’d be happy to share your stuff on Substack and feature it as a post on The New Illustrator Instagram page.

But am also really happy to have you follow along, if you don’t have time to take part at the moment.

I’ll be sharing my sketches in Substack notes as well as the comments of this post as I go instead of the Substack chat this time. And maybe I’ll do an update post each month with how it’s going….

Thanks for reading!

Look out for my progress, I look forward to seeing yours!

Libby

Hi there!

Today I’m writing from Walthamstow in East London.

I’m looking after Kyan the cat in his lovely home with a wonderful shared garden space.

Yesterday on his adventuring, he met a young fox cub.

It was a joy to watch. Excuse the grainy photo.

I got my sketchbook out this morning and made them a little motif to remember their meeting.

That colour workshop

This month I had the pleasure of attending one of the colour tutor workshops run by Juliet Docherty, The Colour Tutor, in-person in Cambridge.

It came highly recommended by members of the Introvert Drawing Club.

Before I say more, Juliet is moving and it looks like the workshops are coming to an end. She did say, however, that if you are desperate to attend one, she may have a weekday option available but you’d need to be quick and email her.

The day was a hands-on paint-fingered introduction to colour theory.

The workshop covered the foundations with an emphasis on play and experimentation.

It was also discussion-led, challenging our preconceptions of colour and colour mixing.

As a nomad, I don’t work with paint very often so I was a little wary of whether the workshop was quite right for me at the moment.

Thankfully, the medium you use is not important.

• I now understand the key principles such as hue, temperature, saturation and value and I’m able to apply colour with much more consideration.

• I am now able to understand the colour wheel and sliders in digital art programs and think about how to make improvements with small adjustments.

• I’m playing with the red, yellow and blue content of colours and experimenting digitally in the same way I did with the paints in the workshop.

• I can understand why swatching is a good idea! Adding a little bit of one colour to another and building it up until you have many colours from just 2.

Big thanks to Juliet and all her insights. I received so many recommendations of artists to look at and books to read.

A book that was recommended which looks like a great starting point if you can’t attend a workshop was ‘Color Theory’ by Patti Mollica.

Also recommended was taking inspiration from 1960s lifestyle illustrations.

So I’ve started a Pinterest board for that!

30 days of sketch: The art challenge inspiring my work

Today is the final day of an art challenge I’ve been participating in!

It’s the first challenge I’ve done in full. It was run by The Inky Goodness Collective and had 30 prompts to explore different themes in your sketchbook.

I’m super proud of completing it but more importantly, it has helped me develop my style further.

I’m continuing to experiment but I feel like I’m beginning to find a voice that feels fun and right for me right now.

Here are my favourite illustrations from the challenge and the impact they had.

Prompt: Things that move

Takeaway: Purple is not evil! (It looks more pink in the photo) I had committed to using my Posca marker pens and I used purple by accident. Now purple has become part of my digital work too.

Prompt: Wild Birds

Takeaway: Chasing after pigeons is hard. Simple lines can create a lot of character. This one seemed to be quite popular with people who saw it on Instagram.

Prompt: Song Lyric

Takeaway: Type isn’t as scary as I thought and I like using highlighters in my work! I’m a big fan of pastel shades and these pens have now become a staple.

Prompt: Places I go

Takeaway: I like combining illustration and text like this and the image is inspiring me to think about how I could illustrate on restaurant windows.

Prompt: A room with a view

Takeaway: I really enjoy stylising people in this way. I’ve since had ideas to make illustrations showcasing businesses using this style and I’m excited about developing that project.

Prompt: Upside down (with Kyan the cat)

Takeaway: I think this kind of illustration would make for a good greetings card. I’m about to start a greetings card portfolio brief so I’m going to use this for reference.

The Conclusion

Art challenges spark my creativity.

Initially, it did feel like pressure to ‘keep up’ with the prompts each day but now I’m craving my next art challenge to continue the creative sparks.

I’ve decided to commit to Inktober for October, so I’m looking forward to that!

I made a list of all good art challenges if you are considering trying one out.

This month’s resources and what I’ve learned

Materials I’ve used

• Posca pens - ‘pastel’ and ‘deep colours’

• Highlighters - pastel

• Fine line markers - I’ve notched up on thickness from preferring an 0.5mm to a 1 or 1.2mm

Clubs, Workshops & Tutorials I’ve attended

• As part of Make Your Mark Bootcamp:

  • Sketch review with Ferment magazine Art Director

  • Working session on the above brief with illustrator Luke McConkey

  • Sketch review with G2, Guardian magazine Art Director

• The Colour Tutor Workshop with Juliet Docherty mentioned above

• Co-working with myself and Jenni!

• Co-working with Holly Surplice

• Co-working with Beth Spencer and Sara Dyer

• Draw-along with myself and Jenni - PARTY PUPS - catch the replay here

• Draw-along with Tom Froese - 3D, rotate, repeat

• Draw-along with Introvert Drawing Club - restaurant scenes

• Draw-along with Robyn Hepburn - exaggerated animals

• Life-drawing with Draw Brighton

Talks & Events I’ve attended

• AOI surface pattern design talk

• As part of Make Your Mark Bootcamp:

  • Commercial Markets: Branding & Advertising

  • Branding & Advertising with Danii Pollehn

  • Commercial Markets: Greetings, Gifting & Licensing

  • Licensing for illustrators: Gifts & Greetings Market with The Bright Agency

Other things I’ve been consuming

• Books:

  • Find your artistic voice - Lisa Congdon (Audible)

  • Picturebook Makers - a lovely gift from a friend that shows several children’s book illustrator’s processes

  

  • Getting Illustration Clients - Brazell & Davies - I’m part of a book club of illustrators reading this book in The Inky Goodness Collective. I’ve read 2 chapters. It seems quite high level so far but I think it’ll be helpful when I start sending my portfolio out.

  • Various charity shop children’s books, focusing on non-fiction.

• Podcasts:

  • Creative Pep Talk - Andy J Pizza

  • 3-point perspective - SVSLearn

What I’ve learned this month

• Less is more when it comes to colour and mixing your own rather than buying a load of pre-mixed can create much more effective palettes.

• I can be consistent and finish an art challenge!

• Co-working and draw-alongs feed my practice. Jenni and I will be hosting a digital drawing co-working session on the third Tuesday of every month, so watch out for those.

What I’m excited about for the next month

• Working on a load of personal illustration projects and finishing The Guardian and Ferment briefs, I can’t wait to share more on these!

• Re-starting The New Illustrator portfolio briefs but this time they’ll be seasonal as opposed to monthly. Autumn will be coming your way very soon!

• Preparing to reach out to art directors with my portfolio

As always, thank you for reading!

What projects have you been working on this month?

Libby

Hello!

Over the last 10 days, I’ve been participating in a 30-day art challenge. It’s part of an illustrator collective I’ve recently become a member of.

The challenge is called #30daysofsketch and aims to help you get into a daily practice of sketchbooking. There are 30 drawing prompts exploring different themes.

It’s been really fun so far and I think it’s been helping improve my creative flow - improving my balance between ‘work’ projects and drawing for fun.

Some of my illustrator friends including have been taking part in Doggust, with dog-themed art prompts and the 3-materials challenge, limiting the number of art materials used.

These drawing challenges seem to help illustrators get unstuck but also help people connect with others, try out new materials and styles which can sometimes lead to new avenues in their work.

You can also gain exposure through art challenges with art challenge hosts resharing your work!

So I thought it’d be a good idea to research art challenges and put together a list.

I wanted to find other challenges that might interest me for the next time I might need some inspiration!

So here’s my list. Let me know if you can recommend any others and I’ll add them!

I’ve included example prompt lists but these change every time the challenge refreshes, every year or in some cases every month or week!

Note: All these challenges are hosted on Instagram and there may be other accounts utilising different prompts but these are the ones that I found during my research.

Seasonal challenges

Often challenges run for a specific month of the year.

Here are some of the ones I’ve found and the number of posts for that hashtag to give you an idea of the number of people participating.

• January - #Whimsuary

  This one is centred around creating 12 whimsical images throughout January for a 12-month calendar.

  • Number of posts: 5,200

  • Hosted by: @sarahfandrey_illustrations and @whimsuary

• February - #Figuary

  Life-drawing every day of February.

  • Number of posts: 25,026

  • Doesn’t seem to have prompts/run by anyone

• March - #Marchofrobots

  Robots of course! This challenge includes prizes.

  • Number of posts: 119,190

  • Hosted by: @chocolatesoop and @marchofrobots

• April

  #Pleinairpril

  Painting outside. Includes free live painting demos you can sign up for.

  • Number of posts: 99,325

  • Hosted by: @warriorpainters

  #Ourplanetweek

  A week-long challenge at the end of April inspireing action for a greener and healthier future for the planet.

  • Number of posts: 30,316

  • Hosted by: @asiaorlando_ and @ourplanetweek

• May - #Mermay

  A month of mermaids! Started by Disney illustrator Tom Bancroft. Includes judges and prizes.

  • Number of posts: 1,539,725

  • Hosted by: @mermay_official

• June - #Junicorn

  Unicorns of course.

  There’s also an ‘advanced Junicorn challenge (run by @ecraster) that includes setting and genre prompts to try out.

  • Number of posts: 37,843

  • Hosted by: Vaious including @solis.oculus

• July - #3materialsdrawingchallenge

  Sketch with only 3 materials over 50 days beginning in July.

  • Number of posts: 15,866

  • Hosted by: @charlotte.durance @kathryn_boyt and @naomitippingillustrator

• August

  #Smaugust

  Dragon-themed art.

  • Number of posts: 84,630

  • Hosted by: Various including @katy_lipscomb

  #Doggust

  All about dogs and exploring different dog breeds.

  • Number of posts: 41,264

  • Hosted by: @dogsinaugust

• September - #Sketchtember

  A sketch a day.

  • Number of posts: 69,982

  • Hosted by: Unkown

• October

  #Inktober

  Using inks and pens to create art for the month

  • Number of posts: 27,766,201 - without a doubt, the largest challenge participation I’ve seen!

  • Hosted by @inktober

  

  #Witchtober

  • Number of posts: 333,704

  • Hosted by: Various including @marigonasuliart

• November - #FolkTaleWeek

  1 week in November. Art and illustrations inspired by folk tales.

  • Number of posts: 105,634

  • Hosted by @folktaleweek @kalyquarles and others

• December - #Inkmas

  Christmas themed art

  • Number of posts: 4,590

  • Various including @karina_isabelle

Monthly challenges that run throughout the year

Other challenges run more regularly. Here are some running monthly, weekly or ad-hoc. You can participate for the whole duration or dip in and out according to your schedule.

General Drawing

• #Doodleaday(insert month) hosted by @ellolovey

• #MakingArtEveryday hosted by @lisabardot

• #Adrawingaday by @sketchbookskool

• #Doodlewash (Drawing or watercolour) hosted by @doodlewashed

Specific Themes

• Colour #thecolourcoop hosted by @thecolourcoop

• Lettering #letterwithshannon hosted by @byshannonlane and @letteringlisa

• Portraits #portraitparty hosted by @charlyclements

• Jehane’s golden thread, varying weekly themes #jehanesgoldenthread hosted by @jehane_ltd sign up via email

• Kidlit, children’s book illustration #kidlitartdrawingchallenge hosted by @kidlitart_drawing_challenge

Draw This In Your Style

If you don’t fancy taking part in a monthly challenge there’s always #DTIYS, with over 4 million posts, you can find a drawing and redraw it in your style.

A notable #DTIYS is ’s recent #hibadge2024 where over 1500 illustrators took a stand for human-produced art (not AI.)

It was so fun to see all the different illustrator and artist approaches.

Here’s my badge:

So those were the challenges I found - there are many more but I hope I’ve captured the best.

Let me know if you’ve participated in others!

Which one would you like to try next??

Thanks for reading!

Libby

Hi there!

For the first time since starting this blog, I’m not currently looking after a cat.

Cat-sitting is on hold for 4 days as we await our next booking.

So today I’m enjoying cat-free time and working from a very quiet British Library in London King’s Cross.

I also managed to attend the Royal Academy Summer exhibition this week and my inspiration cup was filled to the brim!

The recap

It’s been 5 months since I started illustrating (blog number 5) and the last month feels like the biggest step so far.

I feel like I’ve said that before but it’s true again.

Looking back at the last 5 months…

• Month 1. I started drawing daily, joining sketch groups, illustration talks, online life drawing classes and sketching (mostly cats) at every opportunity.

• Month 2. I joined the course ‘Getting Paid to Draw’ which introduced me to the illustration industry. I got to know the different sectors and how to begin building a portfolio. I worked on my first illustration briefs and started thinking about what I’d like to work on.

• Month 3. I started setting myself illustration briefs to explore what I like illustrating, to set in place a working routine and to establish accountability for building my portfolio.

• Month 4. I continued my briefs and spent time researching, attending workshops and making illustrations. I threw together my first portfolio on Behance and was accepted onto the Inky Goodness ‘Make Your Mark Bootcamp’, a program for professional and aspiring illustrators to help them succeed in the industry. This came with membership to the Inky Goodness Collective.

• Month 5. I’ve been finding my flow and enjoying Make Your Mark. I’ve been working on one live brief, with the opportunity to be published on the cover of Ferment, a craft beer magazine and one non-live brief, set and reviewed by the Art Director of the Guardian magazine.

It’s been an amazing 5 months and I’ve tried to stay as free-flowing as possible. I’ve wanted to experiment without the pressure of finding my style or niche. I feel like every month has raised the bar and my newest course has taken things to another level.

Making Your Mark

When I saw Inky Goodness and Make Your Mark Bootcamp (MYM) advertised, I was wary.

I had begun to realise there are a TONNE of courses in illustration and the illustration industry.

It feels like a lot of illustrators are diversifying their income by creating courses and workshops which is great, but I need to be careful and determine which are worth the investment for me right now.

It felt like MYM was similar in some ways to Getting Paid to Draw and I’d already started setting myself illustration briefs, so why did I need ANOTHER course?

What sold it for me was the idea of interactive buddy groups and that the program was in-depth over 6 months. That’s a lot of content.

I also liked that it was UK-based with UK-based illustrators and Art Directors as planned guests. What I’d had so far had mostly been from the US and I thought it’d be good to see any contrast.

Price-wise it’s 6 months and £600 which includes 12 months membership to ‘The collective’ which is £130 on its own.

So £100/month for the main course.

I was about 3 weeks in when I realised this course and community is very unique.

Seen as an individual

What makes it unique for me is what feels like ‘being seen.’

What I mean by this is being involved. Being asked to speak on my progress during sessions, having my ideas critiqued and encouraged in workshops and being part of a weekly buddy group of fellow illustrators who support and care about your journey.

And I think this difference is what I need to come into my own.

It’s like the difference between attending a lecture and a workshop.

Feeling part of it.

There was an element of this in the Getting Paid to Draw community space but on Make Your Mark, it’s during all the live sessions.

This is down to the attention to detail of Lisa Hassell the course facilitator. You can tell she knows each of the illustrators’ work.

Also, when you are completely new and treated the same as other participants who have been illustrating for years, you start to feel like you can achieve the same goals.

Throw in talks and illustration briefs set by some of the best publications and agencies in the industry, off-shoot challenges and working groups, run by some of the collective participants, it’s an amazing deal.

It does need time commitment but that suits my current situation.

I’ve already said numerous times ‘I’m just so glad I joined’

Raising my game

For me, the boot camp has helped me focus on 2 things: Process and Priorities.

Process: How I create an illustration. Seeing other people’s illustration processes has helped me refine my own.

This means using mood boards more consistently, developing sketches to a solid level and building confidence in my ideas.

Priorities: There are a lot of resources and sessions to keep up with. I have been able to set boundaries and choose my daily activities, prioritising things that; bring me joy, maintain balance, and contribute towards my goals.

Other Achievements

• I hosted my first ever Digital Drawing Co-working with this month and it felt really successful. It was fun to share digital drawing tips with each other. I’m looking forward to planning another session!

• I continued my own briefs: finishing my map and progressing with my exhibition poster. Here are some of the icons that may make it onto the final design.

• I had the loose goal of setting up my own personal portfolio site by July. I managed that too. I think I’d usually have wasted time planning this but instead, I set it up in under 2 hours, making it as simple as possible.

This month’s resources and what I’ve learned

Keeping the balance

Some things I’ve used to stay sane this month

• 40Hz binaural beats (Spotify playlist)

• Healthy Minds app (free)

• Journalling

• Staying hydrated

• Time in nature

• Dance. My favourite track to dance like a nutter this month has been this.

Workshops & Tutorials I’ve taken

• As part of Make Your Mark Bootcamp:

  • Brief set by Ferment magazine Art Director

  • Working session on the above brief with illustrator Luke McConkey

  • Brief set by G2, Guardian magazine Art Director

  • Working session on the above brief with illustrator Luke McConkey

Events I’ve attended

• As part of Inky Goodness Collective/MYM:

  • Commercial Markets: Editorial Illustration

  • Commercial Markets: Publishing

  • Commercial Markets: Children’s book publishing & picturebooks

  • Crafting the Life You Want with Aardman Animation Director & Designer Gavin Strange

    This was SO inspirational! So creative and championing finding your own weird.

  • Industry Talk: Bright Agency, how to get into publishing

  • Industry Talk: Flying Eye Books + Owen Davey, children’s book publishing

• The London Illustrators Fair

• The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

• Illustrators in Motion: AOI with Sophie Winder

• Yoillo illustrators picnic in Regents Park - where I met some MYM participants IRL!

Clubs I’ve been joining

• Draw Brighton - online Life Drawing

What I’ve learned this month

• How to plan and execute a solid illustration process

• I can confidently produce work to show to Art Directors - eeeek!

• Loads more about the industry from all the Inky Goodness talks. They’ve been so inspiring!

What I’m excited about for the next month

• With 2 course briefs on the go, I’ve decided to pause The New Illustrator briefs for August. I’ll finish my poster and focus on building the New Illustrator Illustration Directory.

• Getting feedback from Ferment and the Guardian on my editorial illustrations

• Continuing to build my portfolio

What a month!

Has what you’ve read here sparked anything within you? Let me know.

This blog is for my accountability (and sieve brain) so I can look back and forward but I’d love to hear if you’ve found any of my ramblings helpful.

As always, thank you for reading!

Libby

Hi!

I hope you’re having a good July.

Today I’m sharing a quick post on how I set up my personal portfolio website this week!

This is in no way sponsored. I’m just sharing to help other illustrators or business owners who are looking to manage their ongoing costs.

One of my goals has always been to set up a minimal-cost website.

Having set up 4 or 5 different websites in the same number of years, monthly fees start to add up.

A few years ago I vowed to teach myself WordPress. The site-builder seemed unintuitive and I just didn’t have enough time or brain space to get to grips with it.

I want to spend my time illustrating, not setting up or managing a website.

I would describe myself as fairly tech-savvy but only when there’s an intuitive interface or clear instructions.

Many illustrators I’ve spoken to used Adobe Portfolio to set up their personal portfolio sites. This comes ‘free’ with an Adobe subscription.

In light of the Adobe subscription cost per year which I discussed in a previous post, it doesn’t seem like the most generous of freebies.

And with many abandoning Adobe of late due to their AI policy, an alternative may be required.

Cheap Domain

By personal portfolio website, I mean a site that is your own and not attributed to another platform like Behance or an illustrator folio through an association like the AOI.

So people can access it directly, I needed to buy a domain (the website name e.g. www.libbybrewster.com.)

I contemplated creating an Illustration brand but decided using my own name would provide more flexibility in the long term.

If you need help creating a domain name, I like using Name Mesh suggests domain options after entering different keywords.

My go-to domain site is Namecheap, as its name suggests it’s usually cheap but the dashboard you get for managing your domains is straightforward, and the site is popular so it has lots of support articles I can reference if I run into issues.

You need to pay for the registration of a domain which is usually around £10 per year.

£10 is the only outlay I have for this website - the hosting and personalised email are free.

Free Hosting

Someone needs to host the website for you. Hosts usually provide a website builder. Examples of hosts are Squarespace and Wix which have a monthly subscription.

If you don’t require your host to run a shop, Google Sites might be a better and much cheaper option.

This is the website host I used.

The set-up process was super simple and took me about 1 hour.

I chose a template and simply uploaded my images.

Granted, my website isn’t particularly sexy.

I think I could make it look slicker but I feel like a portfolio site should showcase the work cleanly so the platform fits with my current requirements.

Connecting the domain to the host

To connect the domain to the site, there is an option in Google site settings (the cog icon) which lays out all the steps you need to follow.

In summary, I had to set up something called a CNAME record and TXT record on my Namecheap dashboard.

You sometimes have to wait for the internet to update. I waited and had an error but clear instructions on how to resolve it.

www redirection

The only downside to Google Sites is that it works as a www. and when people miss off the www from your domain like libbybrewster.com, it initially shows up with an error.

I solved this by setting up the following:

A record, URL Redirect record, A record into the Advanced DNS settings on my NameCheap dashboard as per this helpful article on wwwinsights.

The article seems complicated and I don’t understand half of the terminology but ignoring the detail, the instructions work.

It required me to check my site IP address which I did using NS Lookup.

If you have any issues I’d be happy to advise.

Free Email

I’ve set up personalised email for free on three different websites in the past using Zoho Mail.

There are limitations such as email attachment size but you can use file-sharing sites instead of email attachments to get around this.

It’s a little bit hidden on the pricing plan page but you need to scroll right down to ‘Free Forever Plan.’

By following the instructions in Zoho Mail help, I set up two TXT records on my Namecheap dashboard. I also added 3 MX records in the Namecheap Mail Fowarding section.

Once you’ve done this it can take a couple of days to go live.

I like Zoho because it comes with a pretty decent mobile app which I can manage alongside my personal email or you can redirect your Zoho emails to your Gmail if you prefer.

Personally, I like keeping them separate.

Further Development

My site definitely needs more work but for a simple option, to get me started and showcase my work, it feels good to go.

One thing I worried about was that my illustration style isn’t consistent yet.

I do think this is an issue in attracting clients. Clients want to know what they’re getting when they commission work.

But I’m only 6 months into my journey and there’s time for that.

Placing everything on the website helps to see what it looks like in a client’s eyes. It has already helped me to see where the gaps are and where I need to focus.

Other Options

When I put the question out on Substack about portfolio host options I was suggested some of these platforms that you may want to consider:

• Cargo - for something a bit more arty and flexible formatting

• Wix and Squarespace as mentioned, for shop capability

• DeviantArt and ArtStation

• Adobe Portfolio, if you already have the subscription this may be a no brainer

• Cara and Instagram

Have you already got a personal portfolio website?

Which website host are you using?

Do you plan on sticking with your host in the long term?

If not, were these instructions helpful? As I mentioned, I’m more than happy to help if anyone needs support in getting these set up.

I’d love to hear your experiences and tips too.

Thanks for reading!

Libby

Hi there!

Today I‘m sharing our JULY portfolio brief and the first as the newly renamed publication ‘The New Illustrator.’

The monthly portfolio brief is designed to inspire new illustrators (like me) to create a portfolio piece that would appeal to potential illustration clients.

The brief aims to provide structure, guidelines and resources to help us push through to completion.

Working on illustration briefs isn’t easy for me but I feel like the 2 briefs I’ve set so far are really helping me shape up my practice - and I’ve learned a tonne!

At the bottom of this post, you’ll see a gallery of the previous portfolio brief outputs for MAY and JUNE.

The July (believable*) brief

At the end of this month, the iconic looks of Taylor Swift will be exhibited at the V&A in London.

As this exhibition will draw a new audience to the museum, they have decided to commission a new poster for the existing exhibit: Design 1900 to Today.

This collection features 250 objects representing design over the last 120 years.

• The museum would like the poster to present a new take representing the design collection and would like it to feature illustrations of at least three objects from the exhibition.

• The museum is interested in a poster design that draws influence from different design styles from the last 120 years but that still appeals to those visiting the Taylor Swift exhibition and perhaps the V&A for the first time.

• Some research shows ‘Swifties’ or Taylor Swift fans as 25-44-year-old females.

• The post should be in colour, A1 format or 22” x 34”

*This is a believable brief that has been made up to enable the creation of an illustration suitable for a portfolio and isn’t associated or affiliated with The V&A but you can find out more about them here.

Things to think about

• Which objects would be the most appealing to be featured

• The scale, which will be quite large compared to previous briefs

• Text/font to go alongside the illustration

Switch-up options

Here are some things you could change to make the brief fit your personal portfolio better:

• A poster for a different exhibition or event

• A smaller format flyer

• A poster for the Taylor Swift exhibition itself

Confession Time - As usual I have never designed a poster for paying client! I think the last poster I designed was a recycling poster for high school… So I’m going to be learning as I go. I’m assuming that might be the case for you too. Here are some resources I will be considering using:

Resources

FREE Blogs

• How to Make a Poster Eye-Catching and Effective - Format

• How to create a vintage wine poster in Illustrator - Retro Supply Co

• How to Make a Poster - This is also a lovely page on the Transport for London website with videos of illustrators they have commissioned for posters talking about their process:

  They also have 15,000 poster examples you can view in their online collection!

• You can also browse the V&A shop which includes previous and current exhibition posters

FREE Youtube videos

• Illustration Masterclass: Create an Art Deco Poster - Kyle T. Webster

• Anatomy of Poster Design - Gareth David Studio. Gareth has a whole series of different videos on poster design that might be useful to go through.

Skillshare / Domestika courses

Paid-for courses you may want to try:

• Creating a colourful and conceptual illustrative poster

Project Timeline

There will be 3 stages of the project:

• Week 1: Research & initial sketches (sketch) 1st-7th

• Week 2: 3x concepts for the client (black line) 8th-14th

• Week 3: Final (colour in any medium) 15th-21st

There will be 3 separate Substack chat threads where you can share your progress if you are interested in joining.

If you are subscribing via email, chat is a feature on the Substack website (and app) where all subscribers to a specific publication can chat with each other.

These chat threads will be free and open to anyone, to share the output from each stage:

1. Research

2. Concepts

3. Final

This way you can follow or join in at any point through the month.

Access the New Illustrator chat thread here.

Thank you to everyone for their votes on last month’s concepts. I’ll decide at the concept stage this month on how to gain feedback and choose which to take to the final design.

I'll also be using a Google calendar to keep me right with the deadlines which you are welcome to subscribe to here.

Report-out

You can follow along in the The New Illustrator chat as the month progresses. I’ll then aim to provide a summary of the project work shared in the chat in next month’s (Aug) portfolio brief post.

The MAY Brief

In May I attempted a map for Visit London…. and it’s still in progress but I’m getting there! Thank you for all your encouragement! I’m much further ahead now that I’m learning things in Affinity Designer.

Next, I’d like to add colour and detail to the site-specific illustrations and bring the whole composition together. I’ll be working on this during our digital co-working session tomorrow.

I’m finding the map project is requiring a lot of graphic design skills which I hadn’t anticipated but I’m really enjoying seeing it progress.

You can catch up on my progress to get to the final in the New Illustrator chat.

The JUNE Brief

Here are my final mindfulness stickers for Young Minds.

If I had any criticism for them, I’d say the colours could be more neutral. The pink may not be appealing to everyone.

The design may also not appeal to the age group 15-18 year-olds but due to the positive feedback, I have a plan to finalise the other concepts I came up with. I think these could appeal more to that demographic. You can see the other designs in the chat.

I plan to have them all printed and may even sell some on an online shop so watch this space!

Feedback

I’m really open to questions and ideas to make these briefs better so feel free to comment or reply with anything that comes to mind!

Also, I welcome any feedback on my final designs.

I’m completing these solo at the moment but keep the invite open to anyone feeling inspired to join or use any of the resources shared for your own project.

Don’t forget I’ll also be posting my usual monthly blog of what I’ve been up to in the 3rd week of the month here. You can catch up on my previous posts in the meantime.

Enjoy July and maybe I’ll see you in the chat!

Libby

Hi there!

I’m grateful to be cat-sitting for old friends of ours, Buddy and Elvis in Clapton this week. There are a whole host of inspiring musical names in that sentence.

Like me, the cats have been feeling the heat in the 28C-degree London weather (that’s 82.4F.) This is pretty unique for London and us Brits are trying hard not to complain.

I’m super happy to have finished a sticker set design this month! I am planning to get them printed so I’m very excited about that.

I’m still working on my London map but I’ve gained a lot of knowledge with Affinity from the sticker project, so I feel confident I’ll soon be finished with that brief too

Also - I’ve set up a digital drawing co-working next week with fellow new illustrator and blogger - check out her blog Tiny Press.

I’m so grateful for meeting Jenni through Introvert Drawing Club - it’s all about connections in this community and I’m excited to connect with more digital artists.

Hey big spender

I’m hitting you with the hard stuff this month and giving you a low down on my expenditure. It’s been something I’ve been meaning to analyse for a while as I’m not sure of what I’m spending per month.

I’m quite considered when it comes to money but I want to look at my spending and review whether all my expenses have been worth it.

I’m not sure yet, but I'll have a better idea when I’ve laid them out.

So let’s get into it…

Big things

It’s been around 4 months that I’ve been committed to illustration, in an attempt to make it a long-term thing.

My biggest expenses so far have been courses.

• Getting Paid to Draw with Mike Lowery - £750

  A 2-month course focused on masterclasses from experienced industry professionals and 3 key assignments. 17 masterclasses in total, a guided course from Mike and a community forum.

  Highlights: Art Directors from Wired and Frankie magazine, Kyle Webster, a formula to get paid work and how much money to expect in different sectors.

  This was invaluable for me as a complete newbie and definitely worth the money.

• Inky Goodness Make Your Mark Bootcamp - £600

  A 6-month course which includes a 12-month Inky Goodness Collective membership. 12 modules. 4 masterclasses, 6 industry assignments, industry mentors, feedback sessions, buddy groups, industry assignments and a community forum.

  I’ve just started, but this seems like a great next step after Mike’s course. It feels intense, the calibre of the other illustrators is quite high as you need to be accepted onto it so I feel it’ll push me a lot further - and I get 12 months of benefits. It feels like it’ll be well worth it already!

• iPad Air & Apple Pencil Pro - £700 (with trade-in)

  I was really struggling to run our 32GB iPad with the illustration programs I needed to utilise. I was also super limited on the number of Procreate layers due to the storage. So upgrading to 256GB gives me loads of storage space so I don’t need to juggle external storage and a bit more power to run everything I need. The Apple Pencil Pro has more features too.

Big things total £2050

This is a big number for no clients but I needed these courses to get my feet off the ground. Considering this figure includes the hardware I use every day, it feels like a good investment.

Mike’s course was a breakthrough for me. It gave me invaluable confidence and I made an amazing friend out of it and many other online cheerleaders that I’m so grateful for.

I have my eye on one more course later this year… I’ll share more about that in one of my next posts….

Other Things

• Serif Affinity software - £80 (in the half-price sale)

  I almost missed Affinity’s sale… 3 packages equivalent to the Adobe Suite, I feel like this was an absolute bargain.

• Switching my substack to my domain - £40

• Posca markers - £40

  

• Other art supplies/sketchbooks - £100

  Should there be a spending limit for art supplies? As a nomad, I have to fit mine in my suitcase so I’m super limited. Maybe a good thing!

• IT accessories - £80

• Books - £20

• Orange Beak Book Rhyming Workshop - £50

• Social Media Coaching - £65

  This is a new one this month and I couldn’t give up the opportunity to do it after meeting Polina Belenchuk at an event. It’s 3-weeks and in a group of 5 artists and illustrators and it’s been invaluable so far. Bring on the reels!

• Domestika credits - £10

Other things total £485

Total £2535

Annual on-going spend

• Association of Illustrators membership - £225

• Inky Goodness Collective membership - Free until June 2025, £130 thereafter

• Introvert Drawing Club Substack subscription - £60

• Draw Brighton Patreon membership - £3.40/month = £41

• Tom Froese Patreon membership - £8.40/month = £100

• Draw 21 membership - £59

• Domain (thenewillustrator.com) - £9

Annual on-going spend total £494 = £40 / month

I feel like £40/month is a really respectable number and I expected it to be more actually.

I’d LOVE to sign up for more subscriptions, memberships and courses but I’m just at content capacity right now, especially with the Inky Goodness course.

How am I paying for all of this?

You may be wondering with no clients yet, how I can afford this stuff.

I’m the Co-Founder of another business with my partner. Currently, I manage the recruitment on a very part-time basis which provides me the time to pursue illustration.

For the last 3 years, we’ve also been cat and house-sitting which has meant that for a large proportion of the year, we don’t have energy or rent bills. I’m so lucky to have been able to do this.

This month’s resources and what I’ve learned

Materials I’ve used

I’ve been quite digital-focused this month. In my sketchbook, I’ve been using mainly brush pens, a graphic marker (Pigma Graphic 2) and some fine liners.

But….

As I mentioned above I’ve just bought some Posca paint markers! I’m about to lean into colour and I’m very excited. I’ve managed to find space for them in my suitcase…

Workshops & Tutorials I’ve taken

• Social media mentoring with Polina Belenchuk

Events I’ve attended

• Yoillo - animation screening and illustrator meetup

  I love this meetup and am glad to have made more lovely illustrator connections.

• Progressive Greetings Live - the greetings card Expo in-person in London

  This was an eye-opening insight into the greeting card industry. It was great to see card companies and illustrators displaying their work and get a feel for the market. What did I learn? It’s quite saturated!

Other things I’ve been consuming

• As part of Inky Goodness Make Your Mark Bootcamp:

  Scientific rules for making & breaking habits - Steven Bartlett on Youtube

  Definitely worth a watch to understand how habits are broken.

Clubs I’ve been joining

• Draw Brighton Life Drawing

• Pencils4Tea - Kirsty Lockhart on Zoom via Instagram

  My new favourite weekly draw-along to music - 1 song - 1 portrait!

• The Introvert Drawing Club (I have upgraded to paid subscription)

  • Portfolio co-working with & Sarah Dyer

  • Drawing SneakyArt with Nishant Jain on replay - wow this workshop was worth my subscription fee - loved it!

• Picture Book Flow sketch together - Claire Alexander

  • A free monthly drawing co-working for character design/picture book illustration

What I’ve learned this month

• You can never have too many illustrator connections - fun and exciting new things will blossom when you least expect it.

• I’m not spending too much each month. I’m getting so much great content from what I am spending and I feel like my portfolio will really shape up in the next 12 months.

• My workshop attendance has reduced. Finding balance is key. Spend time in nature, and take time to notice because when you feel more balanced, productivity will grow. I’m working on this one and plan to share more next month.

What I’m excited about for the next month

• Everything Inky Goodness

• Finishing maps, London and my ongoing Pottery studio map project

• Co-working with Jenni and our digital drawing friends

Has any of this spending insight been helpful for you?

Reply or comment with anything that resonates.

Thanks for reading!

Libby

Co-hosted by us, Jenni Macklin (Tiny Leaf Press) and Libby Brewster (The New Illustrator), two former Engineers finding their way in the world of illustration.

When is the next session?

Tuesday 24th Sep 10am EDT / 3pm BST

Who is it for?

All types of digital drawers.

​Whether you’re a complete beginner or a pro, whether you use Procreate, Affinity, Photoshop or something else, everyone is welcome.

What to expect?

​Get some work done, share projects, challenges and tips.

​Let’s get unstuck together!

• We’ll spend a few minutes at the beginning of the call to chat and say what we’ll be working on.

• Then have a quiet session where you can just work on your stuff but are free to unmute if you have questions.

• After the initial 30 minutes we’ll wrap up with a chatty section to ask any digital art questions and share how we got on with our work.

Click the button below to register…

Register here on Luma

During the session Jenni will be working on Procreate on the iPad and Libby will be working on Affinity Designer on the iPad.

What digital stuff got you stuck?

Reply or comment below if this session is for you and share with us what’s got you stuck when it comes to digital drawing…

See you there!

Libby & Jenni

Hi there!

Welcome to The New Illustrator, a place to help you navigate the world of illustration, so you can focus on the things that bring you joy.

I’ll be honest, I’m very new. When I started illustrating and saying I was trying to become an illustrator, I was full of imposter syndrome.

I’m still full of imposter syndrome, but my strategy and comfort zone is to research. Research, and try new things, until I find my safe space. A space where I find like-minded people, support and begin to build my confidence.

So that’s what I’ve been doing and The New Illustrator is part of creating a safe space for people to ask the questions they’ve been afraid to ask and we’ll find the answer together!

I’ve got a lot to learn and a long way to go but I feel like I’ve now got some realistic goals and a rough plan on how to get there.

Shall we get started?

Let me introduce myself

I’m Libby. I spent the last 2 years of high school building a portfolio for art school. I dreamed of immersing myself in the Fine Art and architecture of the Mackintosh building at the Glasgow School of Art.

Illustration of this beautiful building coming!

I’m glad to say, my dreams came true and each day, I looked at that beautiful building, but from the other side of the street - from the Product Design Engineering department.

A product design career felt like it was something I could handle. There was more of a map for where I was going.

I was incredibly lucky and went on to work and travel with some big companies, eventually leading the production of one of the UK’s favourite food brands.

After that, I went on to run my own production facilities, with a successful Amazon-based business and other projects.

In the new year of 2024, I realised something was significantly missing in my life and I picked up my sketchbooks again and started creating.

Since then, it feels like my life has changed. I’m more fulfilled than I have been for a long time. I feel excited to go to bed and get up in the morning. My notes files are brimming and my ideas are endless.

So I’m utilising some courses and resources to keep me on track - AND this site right here to track my progress.

What to expect here

The biggie I’m working on is a QUARTERLY DIRECTORY of everything happening to help illustrators build their careers.

In the meantime, you can expect MONTHLY BLOGS and PORTFOLIO BRIEFS.

There may even be a PODCAST in the pipeline…

Subscribe now

Introduce yourself

Thank you for joining me here.

I’d love to hear about what you do and what led you here. Please tell me in the comments. It’d be nice to hear where you work and what brings you joy day-to-day.