Ponderings after attending the Bologna Children’s Book Fair
Some thoughts following attending the Bologna Children’s Book Fair for (part of) a day.
What makes your heart sing?
Have you worked out what makes your heart sing yet? I actually think this is something that is probably continually evolving for most of us. It’s certainly changed throughout my life, but even changes a bit from day to day or different times of the day. I think people who find this out early on
Working from home
Working from home? Is it like Marmite (that may be a UK-centric question)? Love it or hate it? I have worked from home (apart from a six-month stint in-house nine years ago) since 1999. And, unsurprisingly, I love it. I love that I don’t have to worry about the weather, spend hours on a bus
Lifestyle illustrator: Hand-drawn type and drawing words
Blog post about my love for creating hand-drawn type and decorative text. With examples of my work. Illustrated by Tasha Goddard.
NEWS: List Happy by Vanessa King, illustrated by Tasha Goddard
Blog post about List Happy by Vanessa King and illustrated by Tasha Goddard, including some spreads, artworks and process videos.
Lifestyle illustrator: Illustrating everyday objects
Blog post about illustrating everyday objects, including sketches and finished illustrations
Life as an illustrator: My illustration process
Blog post sharing details of my illustration working process, including timelapse videos
Lifestyle illustrator: Illustrating people
Blog post about illustrating people, including a variety of examples of my people illustrations
Lifestyle illustrator: Illustrating rooms
A blog post with a selection of different illustrated rooms and talking about lifestyle illustrator, Tasha Goddard’s love of drawing rooms and a bit about her life, too.
Food illustrator: Uses for food illustration
This is part of a series of blog posts about different uses for illustration (particularly focusing on the themes and topics that I like to illustrate). While I don’t especially like to pigeon-hole myself too much, I do tend to think of myself as a lifestyle illustrator, with a particular focus on, or love of,
2022 Word for the year
It’s hard to go into 2022 with a positive attitude when the Covid numbers here are scarily high: And when some of those closest to me are going through really shitty times. But… I’m an optimist and so I am going to do my utmost to come down on the side of hope and see
Creative play
It’s so important to include creative play in your schedule. For fun, but also to grow and explore and build y our practice and to evolve your style.
Style exploration
I recently took Tom Froese’s new class on Skillshare, The Style Class: Work Out Your Illustration Style in a Daily Project. (If you don’t already subscribe to Skillshare, you can try it for 14 days free with this link.) This involved doing a daily drawing, using the alphabet to keep you going, and picking a
Soundtrack to corona lockdown
There is lots of newness (and a fair bit of the same) about this corona lockdown…
Self-portraits and daily practice
After Inktober I felt the need to keep up some kind of more focused daily practice. I do pretty much always draw or paint something every day, whether just doodles or rough sketches, or fully realised pieces for my portfolio or for a client. But the focus and impetus to stick to a daily practice
Illustrated recipe: Refried beans
We love tacos and I came up with this homemade refried beans recipe a good few years ago and use it every time we have tacos now. It’s really nice in tacos, served with some shredded lettuce, sliced tomatoes and grated cheese and maybe some sour cream, as well (cheese and sour cream totally optional
Printable Floral Colouring Bookmarks
I have a tendency to just grab a sticky note to mark my page when I’m reading. I have quite a few bookmarks – the ones that come in the books you reserve from the library, a fair few made by my daughters and laminated by (hopefully) willing early years professionals and teaching assistants, some
Christmas Colouring Book (printable) available now
A little later than I’d hoped, but I’ve finished my Christmas colouring book and it’s now available from my Etsy store. Jam-packed with 25 festive Christmassy designs to keep you calm and colourful through the month. You could even print them out four or more to a page and use them to make Christmas cards
Colouring for grown-ups
So… it seems grown-ups are getting totally into colouring now. Awesome! I’ve always loved colouring, and used to spend hours as a very young child colouring in Altair Design books using my big tin of felt tips. These days I mostly just colour my own pictures, but now and then my daughters will ask me
The Landlady – Patternmash project
I joined up for Hannah’s Patternmash project at the start of January. Hannah provides monthly briefs to create patterns/collections for. Not hugely unusual, I suppose, but… her briefs are really well-thought out and researched and in-depth and she provides supportive moodboards, colour palettes and more. I think it’s the depth and the reaching beyond the
Drawing, drawing, drawing
Much of my December designing was all done in Illustrator – though almost always starting with sketched ideas and plans. I then squeezed in some painting at the end of the month, using some new paints – Golden Acyrlics – oh wow, I am totally and utterly in love with these paints. The only acrylics
A Mini a Day: Week 1
So, this was the first week of doing my ‘A mini a day, a letter a day’ and it wasn’t a full week. I definitely enjoyed having a bit of a focus to my doodling and I think, though I still did my normal random (mostly floral!) doodles. I found myself being more drawn to the
A Mini a Day; A Letter a Day; A Colour Palette a Week
I’ve decided to do a mini (*) and a letter a day for a while (I’m not going to set a specific time limit – I might do it for a couple of weeks, or I might do it for a whole year). So, every day, in the morning, I’m going to pick a subject