Hello, my name is Nicola and I am a picturebook illustrator and writer in the UK.

If you’re reading this post via email, or you’ve visited my website before, then you might already know that. But you could easily have forgotten because I only managed to post a measly six times in 2025. And those were bunched together at the beginning of the year, so barely once in the last six months!

I’ve been on the internet for a long time and have always had my own website with a blog. At first it was focused on crochet patterns then shifted into urban sketching, and now the whole thing is more professional and showcases my illustration portfolio.

I used to write a short blog post fairly frequently. Showing off a painting with some in-progress photos, a day of sketching on location, or trying out a new technique or material. My site wasn’t followed by a huge number of people, but there was a little community of arts and crafts folk with WordPress sites that were active and connected, mostly via the reader feature. It was really nice.

Over the years, as my website has become more professional, I’ve abandoned more and more drafts and ideas. I’ve stopped scanning sketches, and rarely even share a photo to social media. I’ve probably been online more than ever though. Alternately doom scrolling politics and injecting my eyes with comparisonitis. Every time I would get an urge to post on social media or write a little blog post I would think “this is not good enough.” “No one will be interested in this.” or “What a frivolous thing to be writing about when the world is burning.” “I should be spending my time doing something actually useful, or at least productive.” And then I’d go back to doom scrolling.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and decided that I want a change. This is my little bit of the internet. I pay for it and maintain it. Like a garden or allotment. I don’t want a static website with just a portfolio and contact page. I don’t want to be a brand or have to carefully curate everything I put online to maximise some algorithm or other. I don’t want to SEO. I want my website garden to be alive with flowers and vegetables and constantly changing and growing. And if people stop by to take a look then that’s great too.

So I thought I’d kick off 2026 with a (re)introduction. Hi, my name is Nicola and I am a picturebook illustrator and writer in the UK. I also do lots of other things and I’ll be writing about some of it here. Nice to meet you.

I started posting some old sketches to BlueSky last week and I’m feeling good about that too. You can follow me over there, or here, or not at all. That’s also fine.