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.

Subscribe now

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

Subscribe now

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

Subscribe now

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

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 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

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 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

illo there friends!

I’m in Haringey, North London this week with my Grecian cat companions Apollo and Athena.

These two are the most entertaining cat pair we’ve sat for over the last 3 years.

Here they are taking in the buzz of what’s known locally as ‘the ladder’ (for the streets’ ladder-rung-like shape on a map.)

Both cats remind me of parts of myself.

Calico Athena is anxiety-prone and jumpy at any noise, over-reacting to her surroundings, while ginger Apollo is an adventurer who needs to get out regularly to feel part of the world but equally loves to curl up in loaf position and enjoy a good snooze.

Brief encounters

This month marked my first illo there brief - my attempt to build a portfolio by setting myself monthly exercises for believable clients.

I decided to launch the briefs as a continuation of a wonderful course I took called ‘Getting paid to draw’ by Mike Lowery.

In hindsight, I don’t know why I chose maps as my first project…

Actually, I do - my friend is looking to commission a map so I decided to start building some map-making skills.

But oh my, my brain has been tested.

I’m so glad now that I chose something complicated because it’s led to learning that I’d never have acquired had I stayed in my comfort zone.

I gave myself 3 weeks to complete the first brief. We’re at the 3-week mark now and I’ve decided to give myself an extension.

Here’s why…

Lost in maps

An illustrated map could be described as an illustration with many smaller illustrations within it. I was excited by this because, for want of a better phrase, I’d be killing many birds with one stone.

As the Greg Franco map shows, I should end up with multiple illustrations that I could then use for other projects like greeting cards, wrapping paper or tourist-friendly prints.

That’s why I chose London. The city in which I live (most of the time.)

Having an illustration containing many other illustrations involves a complexity of composition I hadn’t anticipated.

Skills I haven’t acquired yet.

Further into the project, I realised I needed a software solution to put it all together.

Software I hadn’t sourced yet or begun to learn how to use.

So my plan of 3 weeks was a little ambitious in the circumstances!

I had a lovely first week:

• Defining the sites and icons to be included

• Walking and exploring the route

• Sketching all the sites

• Coming up with a fun interactive visual treasure hunt for children

I was really enjoying myself until I was faced with bringing the individual elements together.

I found out I had a problem scaling illustrations in Procreate when I printed some of my work this month (last month I wrote about receiving my first print order!)

One of my prints just looked a bit off. I discussed it with my printer Milo and after some thought I realised I had scaled down my drawings. They were a little fuzzy in places.

Scaling down my map icons was the same (Help!)

Raster headaches

I had heard about raster and vector on the Getting paid to draw course but hadn’t paid much attention. I started to understand now.

I’ve spent the last 2 weeks predominantly reading and watching blogs relating to the differences and software solutions for illustrators.

I’ll try to summarise…

Procreate for example works in pixels creating a ‘raster’ image made up of lots of tiny squares.

Adobe Illustrator on the other hand works in vectors marking out points along a line.

Vectors are very scalable as software solutions can accurately use the points along the line to make an image larger or smaller.

Scaling with pixels (raster) involves more guesswork for a computer program and the resulting image is a bit more blurry.

Up until now, I’ve been solely utilising Procreate for digital illustration. I find the user interface intuitive. It’s really easy to use without much experience and I just loved picking up my iPad to create.

But - unless you are drawing to the exact size your design will always be printed (minimal scaling) and you don’t have many elements to your project (don’t need many layers) you’ll run into some challenges.

Since using Procreate I’ve also been consistently running into its layer limit. When I’ve tried to limit my layers, I’ve always regretted it later as this limits the editing you can do as a project develops.

So I knew I needed a solution.

The go-to for professional illustrators is the Adobe package of Photoshop, Illustrator and sometimes InDesign.

Why I chose Affinity

As a freelance illustrator wannabe with no clients yet, the Adobe subscription fee is eye-watering.

The suite works out at £56/month for the full package - that’s £672 every year (without any discounts which are sometimes available.)

I decided to trial Photoshop which I have used before. You can get this under the ‘Photography’ package with 20GB storage for just £10/month.

But after watching countless tutorials I realised it doesn’t have all the features I needed (at least intuitively enough for me to figure out) and I figured I would need to add on something like Adobe Illustrator.

After a day or so of reading many Reddit posts and watching comparison Youtube videos, I decided at my stage of my career, that Serif Affinity would do the job.

At a one-off cost of £160 for Designer, Photo and Publisher on PC, Mac and iPad, it is a much cheaper alternative, albeit not the top dog.

I’d read many testimonies that people were either moving to Affinity due to the ongoing cost or just found it more intuitive having not gotten tied to Adobe yet.

There are a couple of features Affinity doesn’t offer yet but I figured, if I don’t know these functions exist yet, I’ll probably manage without them for now.

So I’ve started a full-package 7-day trial and I’m making good progress and my map is taking shape!

One bonus with Affinity is that True Grit Texture Supply supports Affinity and I’m a big fan of their brushes so this gave me some validation that others had made the same decision.

Caveats

I was toying with lots of freebies before committing to Affinity. I found Adobe Capture for the ipad very helpful - there is a very simple one-click raster to vector function so I used this to convert my Procreate drawings.

I also love Adobe Fresco. This is also free. It feels a little less intuitive than Procreate but allows more layers and has vector brushes and text options. It’s likely this will become my go-to iPad sketching app.

I explored Astropad which can be used to convert an iPad into a computer drawing tablet. This functionality is something I might need as I get used to Affinity (although Affinity has an iPad app too.)

Subscription for Astropad, the industry standard (unless you invest in a Wacom tablet) is $80/year.

I’ve plumped with the freebie Spacedesk, a second-screen app for now. It seemingly doesn’t allow for the iPad pencil pressure features that Astropad does but I’ll see how I get on when I try it.

Finishing my map

I’ve shared some of my initial progress in the illo there Substack chat but I’ve got more work to do until I’m happy with my final piece. I’ve got a draft in Affinity now and I just need to bring more style and sparkle to it.

I received some lovely and much-appreciated encouragement from Greg Franco, Le Cartographiste who I mentioned earlier and in the original brief.

I can whole-heartedly say, if I hadn’t set this brief I would have given up by now so thank you for subscribing. You’ve helped me push through the hard stuff.

All my resources and what I’ve learned

Materials I’ve used

Setting myself a brief this month has meant that I’ve stopped buying random art materials (Woop!) but I have invested in the following to make working on my iPad easier:

Ipad cover - I ended up throwing my iPad across the room (without a cover) and I’m so lucky it wasn’t damaged

Ipad stand - so I’m not holding it in my hand and causing another hand injury

Ipad glove - I’m not convinced I want to use this one as I was using hand gestures with the fingers that are now covered which is annoying and my hand feels restricted

Affinity trial (as above)

Photoshop trial

Spacedesk PC to iPad link

Ipad screen matte film - this is helping produce smoother lettering. I have also purchased some cheap metal Apple pencil tips which help too

Overhead phone mount and ring light - I chose this one for a £29 deal and I’m really happy with it.

Workshops & Tutorials I’ve taken

• As part of Mike Lowery’s ‘Getting paid to draw’ course:

  • Character design with Mike Lowery

  • Painting with Helen Dardik

  • Photoshop brushes with Kyle T Webster

• Orange Beak Studio - How to write a Best-selling rhyming picture book with Lou Grosart

  I promised myself I wouldn’t work on children’s books yet (until I’ve developed some skills for shorter-term illustration projects) but I couldn’t resist attending this workshop. The workshop definitely helped me think about how to start a writing practice in the meantime.

Talks I’ve attended

• As part of getting paid to draw:

  • Sketchbook Skool with Danny Gregory

• Networking with the Illo Guild

• Sketchnotes by Georgina on Behance Live - I have recently become fascinated by live illustration and sketch-noting. I am in awe of my friend Georgina who does this in the Education sector. She travels the world as an Adobe Expert and is so open to sharing with others. She embraces her learning journey and streams on Behance. It’s lovely to listen to her in the background when working.

• Sketchbook Tour by Melissa Martin, founder of Art Hang Party. Another listen-while-you-work gem! I haven’t yet attended an Art Hang party or caught up on replay but I certainly will be soon. These sketchbook tours are of all the things Melissa made in a month and it’s awe-inspiring!

Hard copy books I’ve been reading

• Picture This: How Pictures Work by Molly Bang - I need to work on my composition skills and this book seems incredibly helpful so far.

Clubs I’ve been joining

• Draw Brighton - Life Drawing & Portrait club (£3/m Patreon) My first portrait club this month was amazing! Everyone sits for each other in break-out rooms, so 1h and 3-4 portraits each session.

• Urban Sketchers London - I attended a ‘Summer Lates’ meetup at Kings Cross Coal Drops Yard. Their usual weekend sessions don’t suit my schedule so I was delighted to join mid-week.

  This is 2h of sketching and then sharing sketchbooks, before a pub trip (which I didn’t join this time but made some lovely contacts which was great.)

  

• Substack

  • The Introvert Drawing Club (I have upgraded to paid subscription)

    Vintage lettering drawing session - this was super fun!

    Social media support for artists

  • Ten-minute artist - (free) for daily sketching on a theme

  • Designers who Draw - (free) monthly swatching session with Raj Kaur for fellow illustrators - this was so useful to hear about materials others are using and to feel part of a community of like-minded souls.

    I am so limited because I’m still living out of a suitcase so I ended up swatching every material I carry - a 22-year-old watercolour set, coloured pens and pencils.

  

What I’ve learned this month

• Procreate won’t do it all if I want to work for real illustration clients but I don’t have to go for Adobe.

• Being a beginner is hard on your brain and ego but you get to be a kid again. I can embrace and enjoy this time.

• Working to briefs is constraining and pushes me outside of my comfort zone and I need to keep doing that!

What I’m excited about for the next month

• Finishing all the Getting Paid to Draw workshops - I didn’t get a chance to do this month

• Finishing my illustrated map and starting my next brief.

• My first commission project - the neurodivergent-friendly pottery studio. The kiln has arrived!

Month 3 of attempting to be an illustrator is in the bag.

It’s been a bit of a technical one this one so I hope it’s not been too boring to read and hopefully, it helps one person with their software choices.

Thank you for reading! I’ll see you for the June brief.

Libby

Hi, I’m Libby, and I’m stepping out into the world of illustration, like a kid in a sweet shop, I want to try everything 🤩 This blog provides me (and perhaps you) with monthly accountability to goals and details all the things that are helping me reach them. I’m so happy you could join me for the bumpy ride…

illo there friends!

Has Spring sprung where you are? Here in London, the sun is shining but it’s still jacket weather. I’ve been hanging out in the park with pup Reggie, who we looked after last week.

As usual, my pet-sit pal became my illustration muse and Reggie made it onto my first-ever zine!

I wanted to leave something special for the children of the family we were sitting for.

I made a little how-to video you can watch here.

Finding balance

In March I gave myself a hand injury. I was drawing too much.

My brain was full of ideas and my drawing flowed until my hand ached.

I took this as my body’s signal to rest and set in place some kind of routine.

I find routine hard as a digital nomad, constantly changing places with no day or place the same. We mostly live in other people’s houses, sitting pets.

We live surrounded by other people’s stuff and the energy they leave behind, along with their pet’s anxieties (which are often a reflection of the pet parents.)

I’m pretty sensitive to this energy and I need to manage my boundaries to keep my cup from overflowing.

Luckily I had booked myself onto a ‘day retreat’ run by , the author of Soothe: The Book Your Nervous System Has Been Longing For.

The day featured very slow yoga-style movements and rocking alongside deep breathing. A process that aims to bring the body back to neutral, freeing us from our daily fight-and-flight mind-body reactions.

I wanted to cry (with joy) within the first 20 minutes of the workshop.

My body was beginning to release the tension I’d been trying to shake for the last 5 years since I left my corporate job.

Nahid teaches the logic behind each movement which I often find is lacking from a traditional yoga class.

I’m now using the soothe techniques daily and I’d encourage anyone who has the opportunity to experience her workshops to go for it, it has been a great investment in my well-being.

Getting paid to draw

Luckily my hand injury began to ease in the first week of ‘Getting paid to draw’ a course run by illustrator Mike Lowery.

The classes, over 8 weeks, prepare you to find work in the illustration industry. Mike is witty and funny and draws great comic-style illustrations which have made their way into over 80 children’s books.

The course felt like a breath of fresh air from what’s on offer online and a great intro course for getting started.

It focuses on developing your illustration portfolio with 3 client-targeted assignments and workshops from industry professionals.

There is a ‘community centre’ where you can share your work, ask advice and champion each other which has been invaluable.

Thinking about real clients, real briefs and reaching out to art directors has made everything much more real.

The course has been exciting but has undoubtedly contributed to my overwhelm, providing more ideas and projects to add to my list of hundreds.

So I’ve also begun using the app Notion to connect my goals to my projects which is helping me build a daily structure.

Would I recommend the course? Yes, especially for industry newbies like me. The benefit of the workshops is that it’s not just a tutorial, it’s Mike asking questions and this provides candid, priceless information about the industry.

What’s included? I’ve listed the workshops I’ve attended so far in my monthly summary below. I’ve got a load more to work through next month too…

Actually getting to draw

Whilst attending ‘getting paid to draw’ I received my first illustration jobs! These came to me via social media rather than me reaching out (which is more what the course is about.)

I’m extremely grateful to these clients as each job provides me with key experience and confidence as I build my portfolio.

1. The first was a repost of a comic I did about cat-sitting. Trusted Housesitters the house-sitting app we use saw my post and asked to re-share it on their profile to their 210k followers with credit. They also gave me 6 months premium membership free on the platform (£100). This was worth it for me and a fun bit of validation of my work. Here’s the full post.

2. My next job was from a Facebook post of a drawing of dogs I did. My friend’s husband liked the drawing so he’s receiving it as a print for his birthday. Getting it printed will help me test the process and understand what my Procreate drawings look like on paper. I’ll be heading to my printer friend Milo at Printer of Dreams next week to see the print come out IRL. I decided on £15 for it. I did a little cost comparison on Etsy and thought about the time I took to make the drawing. It’s a low price and will obviously cost me more this time to go to the printers but once I set up a process I’ll re-cost them for selling online.

3. I’m also currently being commissioned by a friend who is setting up a neurodiversity-friendly pottery studio in Hackney, London. This will include an illustrated map of how to get to the studio and likely some illustrated instructions on how the studio operates. I’m really excited about this one as it’s the kind of project I’d love to do more of.

All my resources and what I’ve learned

Materials I’ve used

So this month, I’ve been acquiring a few more materials… I can’t walk past a stationary or art store without popping in.

Here’s a few of the newbies:

• Some travel sketchbooks, that fit in my pocket and a small handbag if I’m out and about. These are by Talens, art creation. One is plain and the other is dotted for lettering practice.

• A Blackwing matte pencil - a lovely soft dark line pencil which is great for sketching

• A Speedball 2966 cartooning ink pen set and black ink - I love drawing pen and ink so can’t wait to use this regularly. Note: not all inks are suitable for ink pens so it’s worth checking at the shop to make sure you get the right type.

• Some ‘I love art’ squeeze pens that I can put a water-ink wash into

• A Pentel 120 A3 DX 0.9mm mechanical pencil which is lovely and soft and now my go-to sketching pencil when on the go.

• A watercolour sketchbook with thicker paper for wet work

• An A4 cheap sketchbook for rough sketching and course notes

• The Notion app for organising ideas and project work

Workshops & Tutorials I’ve taken

• As part of Mike Lowery’s ‘Getting paid to draw’ course:

  • Art Licensing - Allison Cole - Allison also has a Domestika course with a lot of the information shared

  • Photoshop for Illustration - Sarah Watts

  • Watercolour sketching - Ohn Mar Win

• On Skillshare:

  • Composition for Illustrators - Tom Froese

  • One pallette illustrator - Tom Froese

  • Drawing toward illustration - Tom Froese - I highly recommend this one for newbie illustrators!

• In-person:

  • The AOI (Association of Illustrators) Meet-up: Blend Illo Sketchy Brekky - Tracey English - such a fun in-person meet-up in Peckham London where we learned from Tracey and all collaged together, passing our pieces around the table to add to.

• Palestine charity draw-along - Sarah Dyer & Yusuf Goolam-Hossen - Hearing about Yusuf’s trips to Palestine and drawing from photos he took there. In aid of Gaza skate team.

Talks I’ve attended

• As part of getting paid to draw:

  • Art Direction at Frankie Magazine - Alice Buda - A very interesting talk about editorial illustration and the challenge of editorial budgets (that aren’t that big!)

  • Finding Illustration Clients through Workbook Creative - Heidi Goverman

  • Illustrating children’s books - Vanessa Brantley-Newton - I can’t describe how amazing Vanessa’s story is. She is such an inspirational illustrator. It’s definitely worth seeking out her work and joining one of her workshops.

• Introduction to Lettering - Martina Flor, live via Youtube

Hard copy books I’ve been reading

• Beyond the Page - Quentin Blake - Free from the library, I did some research on how Quentin approaches drawing people

• The Illustrator's Guide to Procreate - Ruth Burrows - a fantastic book that provides an overview of the app and how to use the tools through various example projects

Clubs I’ve been joining

• Draw Brighton - Online life drawing

• Substack

  • The Introvert Drawing Club & Draw Your World - Drawing dogs

    I recently invested in an annual subscription to The Introvert Drawing Club and I’m loving the open and supportive environment it provides.

  • Ten-minute artist - for daily sketching on a theme

  • The Creative Flock - I attended a free co-working session which was good for accountability and getting some work research done.

What I’ve learned this month

• There are so many resources for illustration out there. As much as I’d like to, I can’t utilise them all. At least not all at once. My course provided lots of workshops this month and although they have been inspiring, I’m looking forward to focusing on my creative process.

• Working to client briefs is hard and I need to exercise that muscle more often.

• Routine is important and setting aside time to spend without my devices.

• Illustrator meet-ups are brilliant - meeting someone else from my course and attending the AOI workshop has brought a new dimension to it all. It’s easy to say you’re an illutrator online but until you get out there and say it in person it all feels a bit detached.

What I’m excited about for the next month

• Finishing all the Getting Paid to Draw workshops

• Getting stuck into my first commission project - the neurodivergent-friendly pottery studio

• Launching Portfolio briefs here on Substack for portfolio accountability on May 1st. Read all about it here.

That’s it for month 2. Thanks for reading and if any of this is remotely helpful to you, let me know by reply or in the Substack comments.

Libby

I hope you’re having a good March so far. Today I’m writing from London, with Harry the cat pacing at my feet. He’s our current cat-sit pal for the week.

According to him, it’s been dinner time since 14:30. It’s now 17:30 and he has an hour to go. We believe in you Harry! 🐈‍⬛

So here are the beginnings of my story. I look forward to keeping you updated and providing all the tips and recommendations along the way.

How it all started

A few months ago, I met up with a friend. They had recently gone through a big life change.

They had closed down their wonderful shop - a shop, and community that they had built from scratch and spent years nurturing.

Due to reasons that you can probably imagine, the shop was no longer viable and they made the difficult decision to close its doors.

I felt their pain as we connected throughout the process of closure.

I was meeting my friend after what felt like a 6-month grieving period and they were re-emerging into the world, like a Spring bloom.

‘I’m focusing on joy in my life right now’

my friend said, their eyes gleaming with a new sense of purpose.

We had a lovely catch-up and my friend’s beautiful words lingered with me as I left their apartment…

‘focusing on joy’…

They’d recently taken up a new hobby and it seemed to have re-ignited a spark within their soul. They had begun to fill a void left by their recent loss.

Without getting too deep, I’d been battling with a feeling of grief of my own. I was dis-regulated, frustrated and generally feeling sorry for myself.

All this talk of joy made me think about the joy in my life or my current lack of it.

I felt very grateful for many things, but at times, couldn’t understand where I fit in the world.

In the following weeks, I began to consider whether the joy my friend talked about, for me, was creativity and that my feelings were somehow tied to the lack of it.

…Perhaps the joy that was missing for me, lay in the pages of the sketchbook I’d started the previous year.

Picking up a pen and letting loose on the page gave me a sense of clarity and control that so many things in my life lacked.

Little Libby 

The sketchbook I mentioned was one of many sketchbooks I’d started over the years.

Picking each one up once or twice when I felt the urge before becoming distracted by work and the drama of the moment.

Keeping a sketchbook was something I’d always done. I’d studied design engineering at university and I loved sketching concepts.

My engineering career was the path I chose close to the end of my school years. Up until then, ‘Little Libby’ wanted to be an artist. But teen Libby wanted to travel and earn cash 💰 so design felt like the wiser choice.

‘I can still do art in my spare time, right?’

It turns out I wasn’t that great at engineering, I just loved being creative.

I ended up working in manufacturing and realised I wasn’t bad at solving problems and making things happen.

I met my amazing life partner (now husband) along the way and when I left manufacturing we started a product business together, which involved some design and comms work that I really enjoyed.

I was always left wondering though…

‘what might have been in the alternative universe where I followed my true passion?’

I have no regrets but in the last few months, I’ve been questioning whether it’s too late to follow ‘Little Libby’s’ dreams.

Illustrator Imposter

So as I contemplated this possibility, I picked up my pens.

At times, I felt like I could TOUCH THE SKY, I was brimming with so much excitement. 🤩

After a few weeks, I committed to sketching daily.

Minutes became hours. Ideas were flowing and I started to feel a big shift.

Is it possible I could do this every day forever?

So here we are, 4 or so weeks into my journey, and the start of this blog.

It seems silly (and probably offensive to all illustrators) to think that I can make a career out of something I’ve literally just started.

But everybody has to start somewhere and this isn’t really the beginning.

I understand the road is far from easy and requires a huge amount of work, dedication and determination. I’m here for it and ready to see where the next months take me.

So I’m putting the possibility out into the world. Maybe I could be an illustrator.

The imposter syndrome is real.

What I do know is that I love drawing and creating illustrations.

Whether what I’m doing takes me somewhere professionally (which I hope it does) or this blog just becomes a record of my sideline passion, I’m ok either way.

So that’s how it all started and I’d like to invite you to come along with me.

My Intentions

I aim to share my journey as a kind of diary. I want to record the steps I take because:

1. My memory is atrocious 

2. I’ve learnt so much in four weeks already and I need a way of synthesising my learning

3. I’d like to set myself some goals and be accountable to them

4. Journalling is good for the soul and I also have writer imposter syndrome which is something I need to work on

5. I’m going to set myself a curriculum to build a portfolio and all of this might be useful for someone else in my position, trying to follow their passion later in life.

All my resources and what I’ve learned

So here’s the juicy stuff. It’s been 4 weeks of sketching and experimenting with illustration.

Bear in mind I live as a digital nomad so my set-up has to be fairly light. It’s already beginning to grow, but here’s what I started with…

Materials I’ve used

• Cass art A5 spiral bound sketchbook, 100 pages (now full.)

• Cass art branded *waterproof fine liners (*turns out they aren’t waterproof! I would definitely recommend investing in a good brand, now using the beautiful Pigma MICRON, what a difference.)

• A couple of Stabilo Pen 68s - I LOVE THESE. The nibs just feel good and the grey 568/95 is ideal for creating shadows on pen sketches.

• Apple iPad & pencil that I already owned (from a previous 'I’m going to make my own digital illustrations’ phase a couple of years ago…)

• Sketchbook for iPad, upgraded to Procreate (the tutorials and buzz around Procreate were too hard to ignore and it does feel more powerful but I’ve watched videos on Youtube that say they are very similar.)

• Cheap double-ended colour marker pens from Flying Tiger. I’ve just bought these to see if I like using coloured pens and whether I want to invest / how many colours I might need.

• iPhone notes app - I have a HUGE notes file with illustration ideas. I think I might need to move this to notion as it’s getting BIG and unmanageable.

• A foldable ruler which I’ve used quite a bit. A putty rubber, I’ve moved to using a more solid one. I was just used to using the putty one when charcoal drawing.

• A wee sponge and a watercolour set I won in an art competition when I was 16 back in Scotland. The set is just there to look pretty at the moment as I need to watch some watercolour tutorials.

What I’ve learned in the first 4 weeks

NOTE: I’ve decided not to tag the illustrators mentioned in the below sections for the moment. My Imposter Syndrome is lurking heavily. Feel free to give them a search. Most of them are here on Substack!

• Sketching and creating help me relax, focus and forget about my every day worries.

• I feel most confident with a black pen in my hand. I also feel better without doing an initial sketch which can be dangerous and wasteful.

  

• I want to connect with colour but don’t feel I’ve found my medium yet. I’m doing a lot on Procreate but I’m still getting used to the brushes.

• I love sharing (currently on Instagram as @libbybdraws) I’m a bit of an oversharer and have returned to Instagram after a long hiatus (to avoid doom scrolling) so I’m struggling a bit with managing this.

• Sketching doesn’t need to take more than 10 minutes a day (and sometimes I need to limit myself!) Ten Minute Artist with Adam Ming (on Substack) helps you keep up the habit with fun group exercises. The Substack comes with an accountability thread where you can share your work and see the work of others which is SUPER helpful when you are new to the online art community.

During this month, I’ve learned a ton. Here are some of the resources I’ve used.

Workshops & Tutorials I’ve taken

• Domestika PLUS FREE 30-day trial - would I recommend it? I’m not sure. I’ve just cancelled PLUS. The platform works as a pay-per-course model or pay-per-month and get *some* courses free. A large proportion of the free courses on PLUS are in Spanish with English subtitles. I don’t usually mind this as a format but when I’m trying to follow an illustration tutorial I find it very difficult to look at both the visual and the text at the same time. With PLUS you can buy credits and get discounted courses at about £5 each) I chose the following:

  • The Art of Sketching: Transform Your Doodles into Art - Mattias Adolfsson. This is fantastic for doodlers turn artists like myself.

  • Procreate for Beginners: Digital Illustration 101 - Brad Woodard. This is OK. It’s a bumper course of over 4 hours. The course lacks step-by-step instructions for certain things and I had to google alongside it to figure out some key points but overall it’s worth doing, especially for the price.

  • Character Creation from Observational Drawings - Sarah van Dongen. This seems great so far. I haven’t finished it but there is a good first section on materials. Sarah’s work is really colourful and she talks about her challenges with drawing which is really endearing.

  • Children’s Book Illustration: A story in a moment - Mark Hoffman. I found out about Mark on Instagram with his ‘Gab & Doodle’ sessions. I haven’t begun this course yet but I’m looking forward to it. (I just remembered I chose it so I’m loving this blog accountability so far!)

  I’ll keep my free membership on Domestika and buy-per-course I like if one comes up.

• Skillshare FREE 30-day trial - Just started. I’ve taken:

  • Procreate Drawing Party: Digital Illustration on an iPad - Mike Lowery

• Get Creative on Substack - (£11) - This was an essential workshop for a complete Substack newbie! Thank you Claire for guiding me to get started. And I’m following your advice, to just start writing…

Talks I’ve attended

• ILLO GUILD Talks Rejection - (Free) - I was blown away by this talk. What a lovely group of people being honest about their journeys in children’s book illustration. I was inspired and encouraged by what they said. Some illustrators talked about the hundreds of rejections they had. I really needed to hear this as I know the journey will not be easy and sometimes it’s going to feel super lonely.

• Gab and doodle with Mark Hoffman - Instagram draw-along (Free)

  • Estrela Lourenco - it was so great to hear her back story and about her children’s book illustration projects. It was lovely to hear about her child’s influence on her journey.

Podcasts & AudioBooks

• Thoughts on Illustration by Mr Tom Froese - an open an honest podcast (I’ve only listened to the interview episodes so far. I’m working my way backwards through the series.)

  • Interview with Adam Ming - great to hear about such a successful late-career changer. Adam’s part of the illo guild and I’m enjoying following his journey.

  • Interview with Andy J Pizza - great to hear from Andy, about ADHD in illustration, ‘pantsing’ which was a new one for me… and the battle to let go of ego to stay creative. This is something I definitely need to work on.

  • Interview with Kyle T. Webster (2 parts) - an insightful 2 parter. I particularly enjoyed part 1 and hearing about Kyle’s back story and I look forward to following his Substack The Accidental Expert

  I must say I’m really enjoying these. I’m also looking forward to some gender diversity in future interviews :)

• The Illustrator’s Guide - James Hughes - a high-level overview of the kinds of things you need to think about to be an illustrator / the business of illustration.

Hard copy books I’ve been reading

Great for inspiration. I went through these during a day at The Barbican Library (Free to browse and a cool place to hang out if you’re ever in London.

• Pictures & Words: New Comic Art and Narrative Illustration - R Bell

• The Cartoonist’s Workbook - Robin Hall - some fun exercises.

• Illustration: A Visual History - Steven Heller

• Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes - Walt Stanchfield - my favourite for sure!

Clubs I’ve been joining

• Draw Brighton: Online Life drawing - Patreon £3/month

• Ten Minute Artist - Adam Ming as mentioned above (Free/Paid subscription on Substack)

• Introvert Drawing Club - Beth Spencer (Free/Paid subscription on Substack) - I’m yet to join a live session but excited to do this soon.

Who I’ve been inspired by

• Adam Ming - for starting his journey to illustrator at 38 and being so open about his journey on the To Froese podcast.

• Beth Spencer - for being endlessly creative and inspiring on a daily basis on Substack and Instagram!

• Tom Froese - for opening up my world of illustrators on his podcast and openly talking about his anxieties around making it.

• Marloes De Vries - for addressing the topic of not wanting to have children through illustration (as I’m inspired to bring other topics like this into illustration) and for making beautiful inspiring travel guides. I’m juggling with belongings nomading at the moment but once we settle I will be collecting some of her pieces.

• Koosje Koene - beautiful sketch booking and sharing on Instagram.

• All the other illustrators I’ve been following, established and new. Thank you for sharing your work and being part of this industry!

What I’m excited about for the next month:

• Being part of Mike Lowery’s ‘Getting paid to Draw’ illustration course. This was my first big investment at $960. I’m a few days in and I can tell it’s going to be worth every penny (cent.)

• Delving into Skillshare and all of Tom Froese’s workshops.

• Following along on Substack of course….

Thank you for reading my number 1 - congrats if you made it this far - see you next month!

Libby

Subscribe now